National Basketball Association

Detroit Pistons' Kentavious Caldwell-Pope needs to step up

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Detroit Pistons’ shooting guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is in a contract year. The Pistons are playing without their best offensive player in Reggie Jackson until mid-December. Bottom line, Caldwell-Pope needs to be better.

It was a disappointing start for the Detroit Pistons, losing to the Toronto Raptors 109-91 behind 40 points from DeMar DeRozan.

The Raptors were the second best team in the East last season. They haven’t gotten any worse, so a loss on the road when the Pistons are down their best playmaker in Reggie Jackson is nothing to hang your head about.

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But what’s concerning is what happened at shooting guard for the Pistons.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope decided to do his best ghost impression in the spirit of Halloween and boy was it convincing.

In 38.49 minutes, Caldwell-Pope put up a measly four points on nine shots going 0-3 from beyond the arc.

Normally when Caldwell-Pope’s shot is missing, you can at least rely on him playing solid defense. I’ll give him credit, he worked his butt off on the defensive end, but allowing DeRozan to put on the show that he did isn’t good enough.

In fairness, defense is a team effort and not one Pistons’ player could stop DeRozan.

While we expect much more from Caldwell-Pope defensively, his offensive output was equally disappointing.

In a contract year, with Reggie Jackson out, there are no excuses for this type of performance.

Now that we’ve dished out some tough love, it’s time to put this game in perspective.

Here it is–it’s just ONE GAME.

Disappointing, inexcusable, discouraging? Yes, yes, and yes–but it’s too early to pass judgement other than by saying that this was just a really bad game.

If Caldwell-Pope wants to earn his next pay day, he needs to be just as good–if not better–defensively, and he needs to be a consistent presence on offense.

Hopefully this was an outlier for Caldwell-Pope. This Pistons really need him to be even better than last year.

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