ORLANDO – They weren’t ready. Again.
And if there’s a single, troubling pattern four games into the Detroit Pistons’ NBA playoff series against the Orlando Magic, that was it.
They. Weren’t. Ready.
Not by sight. Not by numbers.
Not by scoreboard or body language or sweat – not that anyone’s counting beads dripping down foreheads, not that anyone needs to. The effort and focus and intensity to begin these four first-round games has been there for Orlando. It hasn’t for Detroit.
“We’re a little too casual,” Tobias Harris admitted after the Pistons lost Game 4, 94-88, at Kia Center on Monday, April 27, to trail the Magic, 3-1. “Everybody knows that in our locker room.”
Wait, did he just say that the hardest working team this season has been a little too casual at the start of their playoff games?
Yes, he did, and his star teammate said the same.
“I agree with Tobias,” Cade Cunningham said.
He didn’t want to elaborate. Isaiah Stewart did.
“You look at it like a war mentality,” he explained. “We at war. You’ve got guys coming to chop your necks off. You’ve got to be ready. You’ve got to bring it.”
They haven’t. Not anywhere consistently enough. Stewart isn’t sure why. He just knows what he sees and feels. Harris isn’t sure why either, and leaned on the usual bromides when he began to talk about what had to change.
“We’ve got to take care of the basketball, we got to win the rebounding battle,” he said.
The he paused, almost sighed, and got serious – the veteran laying it out for the youngsters:
“We’ve just got to be in the moment of what this is. This is playoff basketball. We’ve got to be more … more ready to just go out and there and scrap like we need it.”
Too casual? More scrapping?
What is happening? Who are these guys? And what have they done with the Pistons?
And don’t make this all about shooting. That has been an issue for most of the season. But now?
Now, the Pistons are getting outmuscled and outflanked. Worse, they’re getting out-competed. That’s the inexcusable part.
Too casual?
That’s a step back from a year ago, when they played the New York Knicks with their hair on fire. Inexperience cost them in that series, a six-game loss as an underdog. But in this one, as the top seed in the East? That narrative doesn’t fly. Nor should it. They know, at least to a degree, what the postseason is about.
What they don’t know is what this time of year feels like with expectation. And maybe that too-casual attitude, that not-quite-ready-to-scrap countenance is the result of pressure, of weight.
Whatever it is, the Pistons get one more chance to find it, and fix it, and rediscover the ingredient that’s made them so compelling to watch all year.
Monday stung, just as most of this series has. And should. For all the obvious reasons, of course, but most notably this one:
The Pistons are the No. 1 seed. The Magic are the No. 8 seed. What has happened so far isn’t supposed to happen.
Oh, it does.
If the Pistons lose this series – and the odds say they will – they won’t be the first No. 1 seed to go down to a No. 8. This performance isn’t making history.
And yet, that’s hardly solace, because the Pistons were the best story in basketball this season – from 14 wins two years ago (and the NBA’s single-season record for consecutive losses) to here, to this place, to this stage, the way the best teams in Detroit sports so often do.
By representing Detroit.
Now it’s a game from being over, and the Magic look like the better team. They are playing like the better team, the tougher team, the more talented team.
Only 13 teams have come back from a 3-1 deficit. Yes, the Pistons were one of those teams, and they did it against the Magic. But those Pistons had a talent advantage over those Magic. In fact, it was kind of the reverse of this series, back in 2003.
Orlando had the best player in Tracy McGrady; Detroit had the best team. Eventually, that talent difference won out.
That talent difference favors Orlando this time, even while the Pistons have the best player in Cade Cunningham.
Just consider the final five-plus minutes, when the Pistons scored three points: A Cunningham free throw, a Stewart putback layup as the clock ran out.
What happened during the drought was the story of the series. Too many missed shots. Too many missed free throws. Too many missed 3-pointers (24 in all, on 30 tries). Too many turnovers.
Way too many turnovers.
That starts with Cunningham, who, again, was too loose with the ball. Or too indecisive. Or too generous when he needed to be selfish, trying to dump off passes to Jalen Duren a couple times when he had a clear path to a layup, or a dunk.
The timing of the turnovers was killer. They either stopped the Pistons’ momentum or furthered Orlando’s.
Almost all of the turnovers were unforced.
At one point, after a steal, Cunningham led a three-on-one break and bounced the ball at Javonte Green … and hit his legs. The ball rolled out of bounds.
Blame spacing, certainly. It’s not ideal. But that’s not all of it either. Cunningham took responsibility after nine turnovers in Game 3 and vowed to be better. He was, but only barely on Monday – he finished with eight giveaways.
He also shot just 7-for-23 and looked frustrated, tired, even deflated down the stretch. The roster construction isn’t his doing, and he needs help, but he has to be better, too.
So does coach J.B. Bickerstaff, who struggled to find combinations that could get stops and get buckets. Considering the roster, this isn’t an easy task, and in the end he had almost nowhere to go, as Orlando controlled most of the night.
Still, he didn’t have to sit Stewart in the second quarter after he’d helped the Pistons dig out of another terrible start. He could try two bigs. He could use Paul Reed with Stewart, or Stewart with Duren. He has to get creative, because his lineup choices so far difficult as they are, haven’t worked.
Wendell Carter Jr. may be outplaying Duren, but he isn’t outplaying Stewart. After Carter opened with a 3-pointer, and Desmond Bane followed with another and their “fire start” – as Cunningham called it (helped by the Pistons’ seven turnovers in their first 10 possessions) – quickly grew into a 12-point lead, Stewart entered the game, and it went like this:
Block. Block. Avoid driving the lane for fear of a block. Block. Smile.
Grin, actually. And why not? Stewart anchored a 35-13 run that flipped the early 12-point deficit into a 10-point lead. Then he sat. When he got to the bench, the in-house camera panned to him as he grinned and flashed his protective mouthgear. It read: “BEEF.”
The crowd booed.
It was the highlight of the night for the Pistons. It should not have been.
The start of the second mirrored the first, though not as severe, and it unfolded in glue, as the Magic drained the shot clock, sought out mismatches (usually Duncan Robinson) and lived at the free throw line.
Meanwhile, the Pistons had few places to attack Orlando’s defense. So they settled for 3-pointers, especially in the first part of the third quarter. They missed three on one trip down the floor.
Cunningham hunted too many – his shots consistently front-rimming – and finished 3-for-11. Harris, one of the only spots of offense, went 0-for-5 beyond the arc. Robinson went 1-for-6.
But don’t blame them; blame everyone – a collective effort of futility, a team in search of an identity.
And a season is on the brink because of it.
Too casual? Too something, for sure.
“That’s something that we have to figure out,” Harris said. “We just have to figure out how to get our flow, get our momentum. There were too many times in (Monday’s ) game where we (were) battling back. In the playoffs, that’s territory where you don’t want to be too much.”
It’s exhausting, debilitating, paralysing even.
Look at Cunningham down the stretch. His legs were gone. Frankly, a bit of his will looked gone, too. So, too, did the Pistons.
“We’ll be ready for the next game,” Harris said.
It sounded like a promise. We’ll see it if is.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Pistons vow, ‘We’ll be ready’ for Game 5. Why believe them now?
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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