Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Don't you love Eric Ebron? Don't you love the hack-a-whoever strategy? No???

I haven't exactly sworn off posting about the Lions, but I'm pretty close. I'm only interested in the outcome of the games as far as their draft position is concerned. I mainly watch the games to see players like Slay & Ansah come into their own and to identify what needs to change for next season. So, I don't see much point in posting anything until the season is over, unless something notable happens.


Well, something happened after the game that pissed me off. Following the loss to St. Louis on Sunday, there was more than the usual amount of attention paid to Eric Ebron. Detroit selected Ebron with the 10th pick in the 2014 draft, and he's been...underwhelming. The pick was superfluous at the time, and with needs on the OL, at CB, potentially at WR (Golden Tate was considered a questionable signing at the time) and with every DT on the roster at the time heading into free agency the following year, picking a TE that high was a head scratcher. OT Taylor Lewan went 11th, WR Odell Beckham Jr went 12th, and St. Louis took DT Aaron Donald with the 13th pick. Any one of those guys would've been a preferable alternative, although I'd rather not have to deal with Lewan's attitude problems. Both OBJr and Donald made the Pro Bowl as rookies. So a storyline going into this game (media are always looking for hot takes) was the comparison between the production the Rams get from Donald, a guy the opposition always has to account for, and what the Lions get from Ebron, who was 2nd on the depth chart behind our other stone-handed TE who is a better blocker.

The results on the field were about what you'd expect. Ebron had 3 catches on 5 targets for a total of 27 yards, the longest completion going for 11 yards. Donald had 5 tackles, 3 of them sacks, and 6 QB hits. He continually collapsed the pocket, drew double-teams, and forced the ball out quicker than the Lions wanted. In other words, Ebron was Detroit's 4th-best receiving threat and Donald was St. Louis' best defensive player.
Here's what Ebron had to say after the game:
“I’m happy for his success,” Ebron said of Donald. “I’m happy for the scheme he’s in. I’m happy that they’re giving him an opportunity to shine.
“I’m not upset. You guys are upset. The media is upset. The fans are upset. I don’t care. I didn’t choose to come here. They (Lions) chose me to come here. There’s nothing I can do about it.” 
On one hand, he's right. He didn't pick himself. A lot of the ire around Ebron comes from Mayhew's decision to grab him with the 10th overall pick, and that's something over which he has no control. On the other hand, it's not like his name was entirely out of place at that point in the draft. He was rated pretty highly, so the only weird thing was that it was Detroit, who already had 2 TEs, who was picking him there. His production has been more like that of a 3rd round pick, not a top 10 guy, and that is ABSOLUTELY under his control. You want to shut some people up Ebron? Play better. Stop dropping every other ball that hits your hands. Get open. Figure out how to block a little.


The biggest problem is the 2nd quote, where he says he isn't upset, he doesn't care, and he didn't choose to come here. First of all, he's clearly upset, so that's a lie. But he seems to take more of victim's stance instead of empowering himself to change. He hasn't been good. His comments seem to suggest that he thinks he's been good enough, there's nothing he can really do to get better, and he doesn't want to be here anyway. Great. Looking forward to watching Ebron go through the motions for the final 3 games?


***

The Pistons have essentially been a .500 team. They follow up blowout losses with blowout wins, heartbreaking losses with nail-biting wins, and so forth. Their actual record is 14-12, which I know is ACTUALLY over .500 (and their Pythagorean Win Expectation would disagree with me at 15-11), but they FEEL like a .500 team. I was hoping they could get over that .500 hump by stringing some quality wins together, but unfortunately some costly mistakes from Andre Drummond and the coach SVG led to another loss against the Clippers.



Drummond had an ok game. He was 4-8 from the stripe, which is acceptable for him, 20 & 15 with 3 steals is good, but no blocks and he only shot 8-17 overall. But he missed a key FT at the end of the 4th that opened the door for LA to tie it up (I'll get into why he was even on the line in a clutch situation in a sec), and he went rogue on Detroit's last defensive possession, which caused a lapse in the defense and left Jamal Crawford open for the game-winning 3.

Reggie Jackson was spectacular. 34 pts, 11 rebs, 7 dimes, .500 FG% & 2-2 from three, solid defense on Chris Paul. The bench was ok, giving rarely seen offensive production from Steve Blake and Aron Baynes. They were still in the negative for +/- but the Pistons started their big push to take over the game with the bench on the floor in the 4th quarter.



Stan Van Gundy made some largish mistakes at the end of the game that led to the Pistons losing the game. First, he left Drummond in the game while Blake Griffin was shooting free-throws. There were just over 25 seconds left in the game and LAC was about to be down by 2 if Blake made both (he did), so the Clips were in a situation where they HAD to foul. I didn't know you could commit a foul on a FT attempt with the ball in the air, and apparently neither did SVG, but Doc Rivers knew and so he had Redick foul Drummond with no time going off the clock. Drummond split the pair of FTs, putting the Pistons up by 3. Stan compounded the error by not fouling. If the Pistons foul there, either Paul or Blake are shooting 2 FTs and still have to foul or lose. By not fouling, Redick was able to get open and drain a 3. Whoops.

Last thing I'm going to say about this game. The fouling/intentional fouling situation is ridiculous. The games become unwatchable, they get unnaturally extended by excessive timeouts and substitutions, and no one wants to watch a free-throw contest/time out-off. I hated this even when the Pistons weren't as affected (hardly anyone employed Hack-a-Dre when we sucked), and now I hate it more. This game was particularly bad, and the final 3 minutes of regular time & 5 minutes of OT took nearly an hour. Here are my suggestions to fix the
current state:
  1. Treat all off-the-ball fouls like a defensive 3 seconds call. It's still considered a personal foul, but the fouled player gets 1 shot & the offense keeps the ball
  2. If the FT shooting team commits a foul on a made free-throw attempt, the FT is wiped off as with lane violations
 I don't know if either of these are exactly perfect solutions, but I think both rules would help close some (what I consider to be) loopholes and make the game more enjoyable to watch.

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