A galling loss on a night worth dismissing

One-game samples are ineffective projection tools. Eight-minute samples are even worse.

Just when the story was going to be how the Pistons performed with their big lineup vs. their small lineup on the night Rip Hamilton returned after an eight-game injury sabbatical – more on that later – it became how they broke down in the last eight minutes, allowing Charlotte to close the game on a 9-0 run and steal a game the Pistons had no business losing.

It was a galling loss for an organization that prides itself on taking care of business and a regime – Michael Curry’s – that vowed to eliminate the types of emotional lapses that would flare up on the Pistons during the Flip Saunders era.

“They just started playing better than us – simple as that,” said Allen Iverson, eyes a little glassy, face a little stunned. “We got a 78-71 lead and couldn’t get it done. That’s just unacceptable.”

But it would be wrong to lump this one in with every other game the Pistons shouldn’t have lost in the past few years and extrapolate further that this team bears the same fatal flaw that predestined them to playoff shortcomings. In fact, this game didn’t fit the mold of most of the losses of the past few years that got filed away as inexplicable. In fact, this team remains a work in progress, learning to play close games without Chauncey Billups and struggling to achieve a new karmic balance while the transition to Rodney Stuckey plays out on a parallel path to the integration of Allen Iverson into the mix – and all on a night Hamilton came back to further tinker with the chemistry.

And yet, until the eight-minute mark of the fourth quarter, it was exactly the type of game Pistons followers could have expected. The first game back from any extended road trip is usually an aesthetic failure and this one certainly fit that description. But the Pistons, with a full crew for the first time in almost three weeks but still an assortment of bumps and bruises, were pretty much in control. They took a seven-point lead in the final few minutes before halftime and kept it right about there – widening it as far 10 points late in the third and still up by nine points after two Allen Iverson free throws with 7:43 to play.

Here’s what happened in the 14 possessions the Pistons had between Rasheed Wallace’s 3-pointer with 8:48 to play – their last basket of the night, in fact – to give them a 74-67 lead and the Hail Mary 3-pointer Allen Iverson left short when the Pistons got the ball back with 0.7 left following Raymond Felton’s 19-footer to give Charlotte its first lead since 35-33 midway through the third quarter: The Pistons missed seven shots, committed four turnovers and made only two of their four free throws.

“I thought after the first quarter – the second, third and fourth quarters – our defense was good,” Curry said. “I thought we got good shots. I thought we made some bad decisions, missed a couple of free throws and we just didn’t finish the game out – 78-71, just didn’t finish it out.”

It was as if they suddenly got thrown outdoors to play in Michigan’s sub-zero chill.

Some of that, uh, production came with both Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess on the floor and some of it came with Tayshaun Prince at power forward and the Pistons going small. The concern with the small lineup was defense. The assumption was it would give the Pistons plenty of pop.

But it wasn’t their defense that betrayed the Pistons down the stretch. It was their offensive execution. Felton scored 10 of Charlotte’s last 12 points – two 3-pointers and two long twos. Rodney Stuckey contested three of them. On another he got caught in a switch and couldn’t recover, but it was still an 18-footer in a four-point game with two minutes to play from a guy not known as a sizzling shooter.

Prince missed four shots, though one was less his fault than his teammates’ – he got caught with the ball and no time to shoot, so launched a prayer over Emeka Okafor that missed badly. Stuckey missed a short runner in the lane. Wallace missed a bank shot. Iverson clanked a jumper.

Stuckey and McDyess misfired on a pass along the baseline that would have yielded a good shot. Iverson got caught in traffic and threw a pass away. The Pistons were guilty of a 24-second infraction, the best evidence of how their offense failed to function down the stretch. And Wallace was called for an offensive foul – his sixth – with 29 seconds left and the score tied, an incredible call at that stage of the game when all he was doing was jostling with Okafor for position to establish himself to receive and entry pass and hadn’t gained any undue advantage.

Felton made all five of his shots in the quarter. His teammates were 2 of 12. Again, it wasn’t the defense. It was the offense, and the fourth quarter saw the Pistons best offensive players in the game exclusively, except for the first 2:58 when Jason Maxiell was in the game along with McDyess. Other than that, the Pistons who played the fourth were their six best offensive players – Hamilton, Prince, Wallace, Iverson, Stuckey and McDyess.

Ten points? Two of 13 shooting? Five turnovers? Those numbers are aberrational. The loss is galling, but it’s so far afield from anything else this team has put forward that it can’t be categorized as anything.

The numbers suggest the Pistons were better defensively with their big lineup on the floor. The Bobcats were 13 of 27 when the smaller lineup was together until the last few minutes, 15 of 43 against the big lineup. Then they made four of their last five, thanks to Felton.

But it’s a one-game sample. Project at your own risk. And be especially skeptical of anyone drawing conclusions from the final eight minutes on a night a team that remains a work in progress had any number of asterisks it could attach to a game it should best forget.

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