Breaking down Will Bynum's incredible defensive effort

Josh Smith may have been the man benched during the Detroit Pistons Saturday loss to the Washington Wizards, but perhaps the blame should have been spread around.

As SB Nation's Mike Prada pointed out in a Vine, Will Bynum had one of the all-time worst defensive efforts you can find on a play on Saturday. This is Andrea Bargnani help-defense kinda bad.

Let's have a look at the play frame by frame (Courtesy: CSN).

As the Wizards bring the ball up the floor, Bynum is on his man in the near corner. Nothing wrong here.

John Wall then dribbles to his right and swings the ball up top to Marcin Gortat after a quick ball screen. Wall heads towards the corner and Bynum's man (Bradley Beal) heads towards what appears to be a screen.

But hey, Beal's not using the screen at all. He's faked up to the screen and cut baseline. Bynum, meanwhile, is playing zone defense and making sure anyone who comes into that big space at the right elbow is taken care of (...or something).

Now, getting fooled when a guy slips a downscreen to cut baseline is fine, but what happens next is a bit strange. The baseline screener stays with Bynum, but because Bynum still hasn't changed his line of vision, he must just assume his man is still with him (now, why Beal would be guarding Bynum when the Wizards have the ball is something you'd have to ask Bynum).

The ball is back up top but Bynum doesn't appear to be helping there, either. Even if he thought he had switched onto the big, he's not really guarding him.

Eventually, Bynum notices that Beal is long gone, nobody has switched onto him, and there's now a WIDE OPEN man shooting 47.1 percent on threes, getting the ball at the break.

Except that Bynum then jogs over rather than sprinting, and nobody else bothers to help. Seriously, he "closes" or "recovers" about as fast as Rasheed Wallace would if he were still playing. Splash.

That's probably not gonna cut it, Pistons.