When Steve Blake dished out 12 assists in 24 minutes in his first preseason game – one practice under his belt after missing three weeks with a concussion suffered on the second day of training camp – the easy assumption was that a 13-year veteran could get by without all those two-a-days, videotape sessions and exhibitions.
Maybe not. But maybe that wasn’t the right perspective in the first place. Instead of focusing on how the absence would affect Blake, perhaps the more relevant question was what impact going without the second team’s point guard for an extended period would have on the unit as a whole.
It’s not like they have last year to fall back on here, either. Of the five players who began the season in Stan Van Gundy’s second unit, only Anthony Tolliver and Jodie Meeks were on the roster when last season ended. Then Meeks – the player around whom much of the second-unit offense was designed – was lost in the first half of the season’s second game, replaced by yet another first-year Piston, Reggie Bullock.
On the great chemistry continuum of the NBA, the second unit is still at the speed-dating stage.
Tolliver doesn’t expect it to take weeks to coalesce, necessarily, but he also is willing to chalk up Tuesday night’s second-quarter disaster – Indiana turned a six-point deficit into a 14-point lead with a 20-0 run over five minutes to start the quarter – in some measure to the dislocation his group has suffered.
“It’s always an adjustment whenever you have a different point guard,” Tolliver said of the sheer lack of minutes the second unit has been together under Blake’s direction. “He’s been showing signs of being great for us. I’m not worried about chemistry within the second unit. I think as we play more together and kind of get used to each other more, we’ll be fine.”
The Pistons, about to embark on an 11-day, six-game road trip on Thursday, had a scheduled day off on Wednesday. But you can bet Van Gundy will be in the lab, wrestling with decisions on how to help the second unit without it coming at the expense of a first unit that’s been really good.
His options vary from more extreme measures like moving a starter to the bench, to middle-of-the-road fixes like altering his rotation pattern so the bench doesn’t play as a five-man unit, to staying the course and hoping a little greater familiarity leads to the type of productivity Van Gundy anticipated coming into the season when he saw depth as a decided strength of the Pistons.
“We’re going to have to rethink the whole thing,” he said. “It’s only been four games – and we’ve had some guys have some decent individual games – but that unit is not playing well. It’s really been our starters carrying us. We’re going to have to find a better rotation. We’ve either got to find something that will help them offensively or we’ve got to get a different rotation.”
Van Gundy could elect to get Marcus Morris out of games midway through the first quarter, for instance, and then bring him back to start the second as the go-to scorer with the bench. But there’s a downside to consider in reducing the time the starters spend together, too.
“We may have to do that, which means then you’ve got to break your lineup early – which means you’re not going to go on a run to get the lead,” Van Gundy said. “We have to somehow figure it out. Because right now that part’s not working.”
Another real option: cutting the rotation down to eight or nine players. Van Gundy could spread the wing minutes around between Morris, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Stanley Johnson, effectively eliminating Bullock’s role. Or he could keep Bullock in place and use more of Morris at power forward with Johnson assuming a greater share at small forward, which would squeeze Tolliver’s minutes.
But most coaches, and Van Gundy’s track record puts him in that company, are loathe to make major changes on such small samples. Bullock played so well in the preseason the front office picked up his fourth-year contract option. It might seem a little premature to cut out his role now after 25 minutes of playing time for the season.
He’ll weigh the potential downside of significant change against the risk of squandering the early momentum generated by their 3-0 start by continuing to roll with a struggling second unit.
The youngest among them, Johnson, isn’t ready to write off his group just yet.
“It’s only been four games,” he said. “Let’s not lose perspective. We’ve been on track a couple of times. Not anything crazy.”
It might not come soon enough for Van Gundy’s satisfaction, but help is on the way. Brandon Jennings is expected back at some point in December and if he’s up to speed, he immediately becomes the central figure and prime scoring threat for the bench. Meeks could be back in February. That’s a lot of punch and scoring versatility waiting in the wings.
It’s also a lot of punch and scoring versatility not available to Van Gundy as he ponders changes in advance of the season’s longest road trip.
“We’re going to have to figure that out,” he said. “I mean, that’s my job. We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to have to play that to get better play out of our bench.”