“We don’t shoot in practice” Says Detroit Pistons Jennings

"“If you ask the question about why we’re not making shots, we don’t shoot,”"

This is the explanation Detroit Pistons point guard Brandon Jennings gives to the problem with the 3-10 Pistons.

"“We don’t shoot in practice. We haven’t really had a chance to work on our games or anything. When we do have shootarounds, we’re not able to get up shots like we should.”"

The Pistons are 5th in the Central Division and 14th in the Eastern Conference only above the Philadelphia 76ers, who still have yet to win a game this season. The team is 27th overall in PPG with 92.2. While 92.2 PPG seems like a pretty decent stat, the team allows 97.1 PPG. You don’t win many games when you get out scored.

So does Jennings have a point? Is the reason the Pistons are 3-10 and arguably one of the worst teams in the league because they don’t shoot enough? Well unless you go watch the team practice or see what they do before games, it can be hard as a fan to know if what Jennings says is true. So as fans we can look at statistic and history of the players and the coach. So that is where I started.

One would assume that if the team isn’t shooting enough that it is probably the fault of the coach. He runs practices and I would assume decides if the team will do shoot arounds. If you look at the shooting stats of Van Gundys team the first year as the Orlando Magic coach the numbers seem to tell the same story.

The Magic as a team averaged 104.5 PPG (58 games in which they scored 100 points or more, they had 5 in the playoffs) however, they only shot 47% when it came to field goals. They did have a free throw percentage of 72% made it to the second round of the playoffs before getting beat by the Detroit Pistons.

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In his last season as head coach, the team only averaged 94.2 PPG, shot 44% in the field goal department and saw their free throw percentage fall 6 points to 66%. They ended up losing in the first round to the Indiana Pacers.

Here is how the Pistons have done this season when it comes to shooting.

While 13 games into a season isn’t a very good amount of games to really compare numbers, low FG percentages by players is a little uneasy even for it being early in the season.

There really isn’t an easy answer to if the Pistons terrible shooting so far this season is because they like Jennings said aren’t shooting enough or if “we don’t shoot enough” is just an excuse for terrible playing by the players. Jonas Jerebko, while he hasn’t played as many games as Jennings (2 less than him) hits 51% of his field goals while Jennings only hits 43%.

In fact three other people besides Jerebko hit more of their field goals than Jennings. While some of that is due the to difference in time played, Greg Monroe and Kyle Singler both have higher FG % than Jennings and have played basically the same amount.

As the season continues fans can only hope that the team turns it around and maybe even shoot more to satisfy Jennings. What do you think is the Pistons problem this season? Let us know below.