For their second preseason game, the Detroit Pistons had a fresh challenge in facing the Washington Wizards last night on the road without their All-Star duo of Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren. 

While the big man is still ramping up his activity after signing a five-year deal, Cunningham was held out strictly for rest purposes, so there is no cause for concern there. But without that dynamic pair, the Pistons fell into a similar trap against the Wizards by virtue of another slow start on Saturday night that plagued the squad.

By the time the second quarter began, Washington had already built a 20-point advantage, so Daniss Jenkins worked to engineer a comeback in what little time he had before his ejection early in the second half. Later on, Ausar Thompson and then Paul Reed were bounced from the exhibition contest due to foul trouble, so the Pistons were short-handed on several fronts against the Wizards, but Detroit responded well to even force overtime given their thinned-out depth chart. 

Alas, the Pistons were outmanned in the final frame and fell to the Wizards in overtime, 114-108, and dropped to .500 during the preseason, but there were several informative aspects of the game regardless of the result.

During Detroit’s preseason opener, Thompson was assertive as a ball handler and helped take the pressure off Cunningham against the Phoenix Suns as a lead creator, but that tactic was less effective against the Wizards. Naturally, Cunningham was inactive last night, which allowed Washington to key in closer on Thompson throughout the game and nullified a bit of his impact. 

As a shooter, Thompson went just 1-for-7 from the floor for two points and looked far less comfortable deploying his mid-range jumper in the lane after finding success with that move against the Suns. Using Thompson as a secondary playmaker was always a plan that would take some time to integrate, and Saturday’s game was an example of how it could falter without Cunningham or Duren on the floor to absorb some defensive pressure.

For as much as the Pistons want this wrinkle to work, it still needs a bit more refinement. 

From an offensive standpoint, several key Pistons had particularly rough shooting nights against the Wizards. The three-man combination of Thompson, John Collins and Isaiah Joe went just 4-for-23 as a whole, so that trio couldn’t even buy a bucket for a significant portion of the game and struggled to produce in the preseason format. 

Now, that level of inconsistency is the exception as opposed to the rule, but it will be difficult for the Pistons to win games when shooting like that without either Cunningham or Duren in the lineup. Joe and Collins still need to bed in and build a rhythm with their new team, so chalk it up to preseason rust. 

Even with a new supply of three-point shooters in the Motor City, the Pistons performed in a very familiar fashion last night. Detroit started slow with the Wizards building a double-digit lead early in the first quarter, but the Pistons forced turnovers and crashed the offensive glass hard in order to generate much-needed extra possessions. 

Although the Pistons won those two battles, the team eventually ran out of gas in overtime as the Motor City Cruise-centric lineup turned in a six-point loss in OT. 

Moving forward, Detroit has a few days to rest up and regroup before facing the Minnesota Timberwolves on the road at 8 pm on Wednesday, Oct. 14.