Van Gundy's Pistons have old Magic feel with new Drummond foundation

The Pistons aren’t yet near the top of the Eastern Conference, but they’re building toward it.

At 19-16, Detroit finds itself tied for the No. 8 seed in the East. Yet with the mishmash of equally competitive teams in the middle of the conference this season, that standing places the Pistons only three games back of the Bulls for the No. 2 spot. Either way, that’s quite the improvement from last season’s 32-50 season, Stan Van Gundy’s first one in Detroit.

Last season was a learning experience for the Pistons, and it almost seemed like the team went through more costume changes than Cher at a Vegas concert during a Detroit season defined by identity crises. 

There was the Josh Smith era, when the team got off to a 5-23 start. There was the post-Smith era, when Brandon Jennings turned into the second coming of Chris Paul, and the Pistons went streaking. There was the post-injury era, the period after Jennings tore his Achilles and Detroit started to stumble again. Then, there was the Reggie Jackson era, the adjustment period after acquiring the point guard from the Thunder at last year’s trade deadline.

That was all in one season. 

Now, though, as Van Gundy tries to fit the recovered Jennings back into his rotation, Jackson and Andre Drummond have taken over, both on individual and team levels.

Drummond is averaging 18.1 points and 16.0 rebounds. The last player to put up those averages for a full season was Moses Malone in 1978-79. Jackson, meanwhile, is piecing together the best production of his career, including the short post-trade deadline stint in Detroit last season.

He’s developed a nice on-court rapport with Drummond. More than half of Drummond’s assisted field goals have come on passes from Jackson, per NBA.com, many of those developing in a pick-and-roll attack that could become one of the scariest two-man games the NBA has to offer.

Van Gundy has built a roster that, in some ways, mimics what his teams in Orlando were able to do. They play a shooter at power forward, whether that’s Ersan Ilyasova or Anthony Tolliver or Marcus Morris, spread four guys on the three-point line and give the hyperathletic, ginormous man in the middle room to operate as both a pick-and-roll and post threat. 

"We’re younger than those teams were,” Van Gundy pointed out. “Lewis and Turkoglu were veterans by [the time Van Gundy arrived in Orlando]. Dwight and Jameer when I got them were in Year Four, already. Andre is in Year Four, but those guys had been together, too.”

So, Van Gundy has to teach and develop. So far, we’ve already seen signs of that happening.

Jackson’s tendencies, specifically, have become more instinctual. Even as recently as last year, Jackson was often antsy. He was a talented, long, athletic guard who looked to score in ball-screening scenarios more often than not. Now, though, he’s far more prodding as he runs an offense. Actually, we’ve seen it on both sides of the floor, considering he’s not the gambler he was on defense back in OKC, where point guards lunge for passes and ball swipes like beggars going after loose change. 

“There’s no gambling,” Van Gundy said of his defense. “It’s between your man and the basket, pushing everybody up to the ball…We don’t want to give up back cuts and layups.”

Though it’s shimmied back and forth from great to good to respectable to unacceptable and back throughout the season, the Pistons D has been quite effective with Drummond in the middle, ranking eighth in the league in points allowed per possession at the moment. Detroit closes out on shooters well, uses Kentavious Caldwell-Pope—who can’t shoot but can stop shooters—to keep perimeter aggressors in check and places Drummond mainly around the rim to protect the paint.

The problem is the inconsistency. When Drummond falls, so does the team.

Drummond’s capricious effort has caused trouble on more than one occasion this season, and that’s nothing new for an up-and-comer who fell to ninth in the 2012 draft in part because of questions regarding his “motor.”

He’s having an historic season, yet he's not receiving quite the attention he deserves due in part to that variable effort. When Drummond stops going all-out on every play—even if it means him merely failing to call out screens he’s in a position to defend—the team tends to follow, and then you end up with postgame quotes like this one from Van Gundy after the Pistons' loss to the Knicks last week.

“We bring nothing. Defensively, nothing,” Van Gundy said after the 108-96 defeat at Madison Square Garden. “I thought Marcus competed pretty hard against Carmelo Anthony, and I didn’t think anybody else did anything defensively at all.”

Or you end up with a frustrated Jackson.

“It doesn’t matter who it is. All five, get out…We’re putting effort in. We’re not doing it together,” Jackson said cryptically after the Knicks loss. “We’re trying to play individually. People are having individual pride at times. We’re just not protecting each other. There’s no communication on defense. We don’t know where any help is at, necessarily.”

Van Gundy even said at shootaround before the Knicks game that the team’s effort has been “spotty.” But it all comes back to Drummond. You’d think someone capable of putting up the numbers he has might experience a fall-off in energy every once in a while, but it’s been an unfortunate theme throughout the season.

“I didn’t think he brought much energy to the Milwaukee game, and I didn’t think he brought much energy tonight,” Van Gundy said of Drummond after a loss to the Thunder back in November, via Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press. “Why that is, I don’t know, but we need a lot more from him than we got tonight.”

All that said, there’s a reason we’ve seen such staggering improvement from a player who’s still just 22 years old. Effort and work ethic are two different animals. Drummond appears to be improving on the latter.

People inside the Pistons say they are encouraged with the way he’s hitting the court, working on his post game, even making an attempt to improve his 39 percent career free-throw shooting—which is at a career-low 37 percent this season—as he learns from legendary shooting guru and first-year Pistons assistant Dave Hopla. “The Shot Doctor,” as he’s known in basketball circles, has already made fundamental changes to Drummond’s form, like narrowing his feet a bit, but there are plenty more adjustments to come.

Still, that improved post-up game evolved from somewhere.

Drummond has a ways to go on the block, but he’s added a strong righty hook and a good enough one with the left hand. His low-post game remains somewhat monotonous in that sense—it’s just a couple of moves—but that’s a major improvement from last year, when his style was far closer to DeAndre Jordan’s than DeMarcus Cousins’. 

“He’s more confident in what he’s doing, and I think, like most big guys, he’s learned to slow down a little bit and be more patient in what he’s doing rather than rushing and forcing shots,” said Van Gundy.

He’s still far from the elite-on-the-block category. His passing from there needs to improve, and he could stand to add a few more moves. But he’s certainly progressed. 

As has Jackson. As has Caldwell-Pope, who at 22 years of age seems like he’s on track to becoming one of the NBA’s better perimeter defenders. As has a roster that’s added guys like Morris and Ilyasova to spread the floor around possibly the NBA’s best young big man. 

The Pistons are getting better, and if they continue to grow while adding a few more pieces in the coming years, the Eastern Conference best start to take notice.

Fred Katz covers the NBA for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter: @FredKatz.