Detroit Pistons' Three-Point Woes Should Concern Lawrence Frank

It wasn’t a very impressive performance for the Detroit Pistons in Wednesday’s NBA preseason opener against the Toronto Raptors when it comes to 3-point shooting offense and defense.

But the Pistons won 101-99 and coach Lawrence Frank claims he’s not worried about the 3-point shot on either side of the court.

Maybe he should be.

The Pistons were a woeful 0-of-13 in shooting threes and allowed Toronto to shoot 11-of-26 in triples.

“I don’t look at a win or a loss, I look at the fact that we gave up 11 made threes,” Frank said. “So to me, my concern is more 3-point percentage defense. Going in from last year, we made some strides the last 42 games. So it’s obviously between dribble penetration, curls off split games, transition, sometimes side pick-n-rolls where show angles weren’t great and the ball got into the middle opening up the line, not closing out hard enough to shooters. So this is the first test and it obviously shows we have a lot of work to do.

“It’s not so much the stats, it’s the play that produces the stats that we focus on.”

What’s encouraging for the Pistons is that they scored 37 points in the first quarter with their regulars. But they only scored 64 points the rest of the way.

That’s not a good sign for a team that badly needs to put together four solid quarters to be competitive in the NBA.

But Pistons forward Greg Monroe insists that the 37-point first quarter is more indicative of his team’s potential.

“It felt good,” Monroe said. “We started off really well, the ball was moving, but we lost sight of that the rest of the game. We have to play at that level for a full game, not just the first quarter.”