Three quick observations from Wednesday night’s 140-111 loss to the Charlotte Hornets at Spectrum Center
OVER EARLY – Coming off their best game of the season and riding the season’s first back-to-back wins, the Pistons got taken out of it early and emphatically at Charlotte. Against the NBA’s second-highest scoring team at 114.9 points a game, the Pistons didn’t do nearly enough to make things tough on the Hornets in the early going. Charlotte scored 49 points in the game’s first 14 minutes and led by 26 points two minutes into the second quarter. The Hornets opened 7 of 9 from the 3-point line and didn’t cool off much from there, finishing 24 of 42 for 57 percent. The Pistons slowed Charlotte after the first 14 minutes, limiting the Hornets to 16 points over the final 10 minutes of the first half as they pulled to within 14 at halftime. But spotting an elite offense a 26-point lead meant the Pistons were going to have to do a lot better than trade runs for the rest of the game and that’s pretty much what happened. Charlotte closed the third quarter on a 12-0 run to turn a 13-point advantage into 25 to suck any remaining suspense out of the building. Charlotte’s Kelly Oubre finished with 32 points and hit 8 of 9 3-point shots in the first eight minutes of the fourth quarter. Trey Lyles led the Pistons with 17 points and seven rebounds; Cade Cunningham scored 16 points with seven assists.
BEY WATCH – Saddiq Bey’s recent surge coincides with two other events – donning a head band and assuming Jerami Grant’s role within the offense. Grant was hurt Dec. 10 at New Orleans. Bey scored just four points in the game after that, a loss to Brooklyn Dec. 12, but in nine games since then coming into Wednesday he’d scored less than 20 only once – 15 points Dec. 21 at New York – and averaged 25.0 points and 8.6 rebounds over that time. The hot streak got cooled off in Charlotte, Bey’s native city. With the game out of hand, Bey didn’t play in the fourth quarter and he wound up with 11 points in 27 minutes, shooting 4 of 13 overall and 3 of 9 from the 3-point arc. “There’s a few things we do to take advantage of his skill set,” Casey said of Bey being plugged into Grant’s role, “but most of the sets, the actions, we do the same things. It fits. I think Saddiq’s been very efficient with what he’s doing.”
CHANGING FACES – The Pistons are down to just two players on 10-day contracts after having eight last week, but the two left – Micah Potter and Justin Robinson – were the first two off of the bench in each half at Charlotte. Potter, who went undrafted out of Wisconsin last year, got the call over Luka Garza as the second unit center because he was a better fit against Charlotte’s P.J. Washington, an undersized center who would have forced Garza to guard at the 3-point line. Potter scored eight points in eight first-half minutes and that’s when he finished with along with six rebounds. Robinson scored nine points. Garza played the last eight minutes. Isaiah Stewart joined the Pistons in Charlotte after missing the past five games in NBA health and safety protocols, but was ruled out while working his way back into condition. That leaves only Cory Joseph among the eight players who’ve missed games over the past two weeks still unavailable, though Joseph is now also out of health and safety protocols and could be available when the Pistons host Orlando on Saturday.
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