CLEVELAND – No, the Detroit Pistons didn’t lose because of the refs. They lost because they didn’t play well enough. Or hard enough. Or with enough force.
Yeah, that’s the word. They lost because they didn’t bring it. To start the game. To start the second half. Or in between. Or in the end.
Well, maybe a tiny bit in the end. But by then it was too late, and Cleveland already had the game won.
The Pistons can tell themselves whatever they want about the free throw disparity in their 112-103 loss Monday, May 11, at Rocket Arena – it was 34-12, if you didn’t keep count – but it won’t matter.
Just like it didn’t matter when star Cleveland guard Donovan Mitchell complained about the officials and not getting fouled after Game 1, in which the Pistons bullied the Cavaliers and outshot them from the free throw line.
Remember what that sounded like? Like the lament of losers.
His complaint didn’t matter because his team didn’t play with any more spirit in Game 2. The Pistons played with more juice, and forced more Cleveland turnovers again – just like Game 1 – and made shots late in the game, and carried themselves like they had all season, like the Detroit Pistons, like it was their game.
That’s why they left Detroit for Cleveland leading two games to none. And feeling good. A little too good.
Now they know.
Not that they were overconfident. But now they know what it takes to compete on the road in the Eastern Conference semifinals against a talented offensive team desperate to get to its first conference finals in almost a decade, a team aching to change its narrative.
Now they know what it feels like to take a 2-0 lead and take to the road and not meet the moment. Officials are human. They read body language, even if they try not to. They are subject to the whims of the subconscious, and when one team is clearly playing with more force than the other, the benefit of the whistle goes to that side.
Coaches and players like to claim the home team gets the benefit of the doubt.
But, really, it’s the more forceful team that gets that benefit. The Pistons know this, and their coach, J.B. Bickerstaff, knows this, which is why they, and he, all stopped themselves when they started to show frustration with the way Game 4 was called.
Stagnant play, not fouls, the problem in Game 4
But still: 34 free throws to 12?
“It’s unacceptable,” Bickerstaff said when the subject came up in his postgame news conference.
He stopped himself. Briefly.
“We didn’t do enough obviously to help ourselves, and I’ll start there. But … ever since we came to Cleveland, the whistle has changed. There is no way that one guy on their team shoots more free throws than our team.”
He was talking about Mitchell, who shot 15 free throws, who dropped 43 points, and who got going because, well, Ausar Thompson played his worst defensive game of the season.
Bickerstaff knows that. He fussed at Thompson. He benched Thompson. He also knows how messaging works in the NBA. So, he kept going.
“We’re not a sell team, we’re not a jump-shooting team; we drive the ball, attack the paint, so what was done out there tonight, you know, it’s frustrating,” he said, before pulling back again. “We can’t allow that to be the reason why we didn’t play well enough, or play to the best of our capabilities.”
No, they can’t. They’ll keep losing if they do, and it’ll have nothing to do with what Mitchell tried to do after Game 1, or what Kenny Atkinson tried to do after Game 2, when the Cavaliers coach talked about the refs favoring Detroit.
Well, he didn’t use “favor,” but he implied it, and Bickerstaff took notice.
“It’s interesting since Kenny made his comments publicly about us,” Bickerstaff said late Monday night, “the whistles changed in this series.”
You know what else changed? Cleveland’s disposition, and Detroit’s focus.
That 22-0 run to start the third quarter? That wasn’t the officials’ fault. That was all Pistons: Their lack of ball movement, their lack of player movement, and their lack of patience on offense without either of the first two.
They were stagnant, as Bickerstaff acknowledged, and bogged down in too much one-on-one play. Beyond that?
“They came out and played with more force and tenacity than we did to start the quarter,” he said. “They came out very aggressive on both ends of the floor. We just didn’t match it.”
And there you have it: The truth that must change before Game 5 on Wednesday (8 p.m., ESPN). It’s that simple.
Yes, there are technical aspects to what the Pistons can do better: They can close out and keep their hands high and stay on their tippy toes as they slow down. They can keep their head on a swivel instead of losing their man. They can be early to help, as Bickerstaff likes to say.
They can stop ball-watching. And be physical without fouling. Be who they are.
Refs have little to do with any of that.
Yes, some calls aren’t going to be there, and that’s frustrating, and ask any athlete after a high-stakes loss, and they’ll sound frustrated when the refs seem to call it one way.
Time to set the tone
But ask the Pistons again and most will get back to the fundamental truth of basketball this time of year, like Jalen Duren did when asked about the way the game was called.
“It’s tough when we get in foul trouble early as a group to do kind of do what we want to Ido and play how we want to play,” he said. “But wouldn’t blame [the loss] on that. If we’d have set the tone of how we wanted to play and how the game was going to go, we wouldn’t have had to worry about the refs or the foul count.”
No, they would not have. And they know it.
And while it makes sense for Bickerstaff to try his best to work the officials through the media, just as Atkinson did after Game 2 – just as any NBA coach does after a playoff loss that looks tilted in the box score – this isn’t where this series will be won.
Or lost.
It’s in the details on the court and in the focus in the mind. It’s in the spirit in the belly, the gut, where one team played like its season was on the line, and the other played like it’s still learning.
It is.
“That’s not why we lost the game,” Cade Cunningham said of the foul calls.
Yeah, he’d acknowledged, the team didn’t get the whistle, and he didn’t get the whistle, and there are times when he’s fouled and should absolutely get the whistle. But then that’s basketball, and as he said, they’ve got to learn to play through it.
And he didn’t want to keep talking about it anyway.
“I’m not here to talk about the refs,” he said. “That’s not why we lost. I’m here to talk about the Pistons, control what we can control.”
Do that – find that control once again – and they’ll get the chance to close out the Cavs back in Cleveland for Game 6 on Friday.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Refs didn’t cost Pistons win. They did it themselves, and they know it
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
