With Arroyo last year the Pistons averaged 24.2 assists per game and without him 23.7 – a drop of about half an assist per game. Given that with Arroyo the team was still benefiting from the lights out shooting they displayed at the beginning of the season, the drop in FG%, from 0.459 to 0.448 (pre and post Arroyo) is amply enough to account for the half an assist drop per game.

Simply, the rest of the team made up for the assists that Arroyo took with him to Orlando long before the season was over – a drop of 0.5 assists per game is all that you can possibly attribute to Arroyo last year. If you want to understand why the team is lower this year, you need to look for differences across the players that are here. If you look at the numbers, Nazr and Murray’s incoming assists only match what we lost with Ben heading to Chicago.

I don’t see any reason to change anything I said. The Pistons started the season shooting a bit worse than last year and changed how they play to incorporate a lot more isolation and a lot more drives to the basket. Add that to the change in personnel versus what they finished last season with and that’s more than enough to account for the gap. Arroyo doesn’t figure in.

Finally, I didn’t say this team was better, but I could be persuaded to think that way depending on what happens next. I don’t think we give nearly enough credit to the disruption caused by switching out Ben for Nazr / Murray. As we all know, the old starting five had by and large only played together the past couple of seasons. To think that you can change all those old habits in a mere twenty games seems way wrong.

Concerning the next 20 games, the emergence of Blalock and Maxiell into the rotation will have a great impact.

Concerning the question of whether the team is better: No way we are better. Our starting lineup has a win % of a very ordinary unit. Nothing special. Go look at the win % of our starters last year. Mohammed, yes, dropped us that much. There goes all your point differential change right there.