Charlie Villanueva can’t catch a break.
Friday’s loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder certainly wasn’t his best game as a Piston, but after establishing himself as a physical presence on the offensive glass, after battling on defense and after getting crunch time minutes — a rarity for him last season — for the second straight game, Villanueva spotted up in the corner, caught a nice feed from Ben Gordon and calmly knocked down what looked like the game-winning three-pointer to put the Pistons up 104-103 with less than 10 seconds left against the Thunder.
Then, for the second straight game, a defensive breakdown cost the Pistons a game. Against New Jersey, it was three players getting beat to a loose ball by Devin Harris that resulted in a game-winning shot. Against OKC, it was Jason Maxiell getting beat off the dribble by Jeff Green while Ben Wallace, who was supposed to be the weakside help on the play, got caught in no-man’s land and was late getting to Green because Wallace was cheating towards Kevin Durant. Green got the basket unscathed and Detroit couldn’t get off a final shot as they had no timeouts remaining.
A lot went right for the Pistons, and I’ll get into those positives below. But my immediate take away was simply feeling bad for Villanueva. I’ve made no secret of my intrigue with Charlie V. I think he’s tougher than he gets credit for and I think he genuinely wants to get better, wants to live up to his contract and wants to be successful in Detroit. He desperately needed a moment like the one he almost had tonight, not that the Pistons losing necessarily erased the positive strides he made in other areas during the game, but we all know that memories from losses tend to fade quickly while game-winning shots tend to hang around all season. Villanueva, through two games, has the appearance of a better, more disciplined player than he was last season and that’s a good thing.
In fact, there were many good things that happened in this game. The Pistons shot a very good 47 percent. They held Oklahoma City to sub-40 percent shooting. The 47-43 rebounding disparity favored the Thunder, but not significantly. And most importantly, for the second straight game the Pistons were fun to watch, played cohesively and showed that there is no reason they can’t compete and have a chance to win games against good teams.
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