DETROIT – The sample sizes are preposterously tiny, but the trend, at least, was encouraging.
The Pistons – on the occasion of having Blake Griffin and Reggie Jackson for the first time in three preseason games and getting minutes together with Andre Drummond – played like strangers in the first four-plus minutes of the first quarter before Drummond departed with two fouls.
That started a snowball effect that saw them fall behind 20-6 and open the game on a 1 of 14 shooting skid.
“We were 0 for 8 in the paint at the rim,” Dwane Casey said.