This is Detroit. We know rust. The Pistons came out caked in it. They missed layups. They missed passes. They watched instead of moved, clanked five of their first six shots, and sagged on their normal gripping defense as Orlando started hot. Before you knew it, the home team was behind by 13 points, and the court had been tilted to a permanent uphill.
This is Detroit. We know larceny. (Sorry, but we do.) The Pistons specialize in stealing the ball, but they were out-robbed in this game. Orlando stripped, poked, and swiped away the rock 11 times; it was like watching a pinball change direction with every hard slap.
This is Detroit. We know physical. We invented physical! Heck, we had Ben Wallace and Rick Mahorn in the building. They are living museum pieces to physical! But Game 1 of these first-round NBA playoffs on Sunday, April 19, will be forever scored as a physical TKO by the Magic, who had nearly half their points in the paint. They imposed their will inside so often, the lane had black, blue and silver skidmarks.
Those are their uniform colors, in case you didn’t watch.
And maybe it’s best if you didn’t. This was not the opening gambit a No. 1 seed wants to lay down. If Game 1 were a chess move, it would be “pawn knocked off the table.”
“I would say they outphysical-ed us today,’’ Detroit Pistons wing Ausur Thompson admitted after the 112-101 loss. “One, because they got more rebounds than us. And they forced more turnovers. … And they won the game.”
Yep. That about covers it.
Thank you and good night.
Trying to hit a home run every time
“That was a big win for them,” said Cade Cunningham, the Pistons’ leader who did plenty of scoring – 39 points – to try and capture this one but was also culpable in the team’s lack of crisp playmaking, ball protection and assists. “They came in, they handled their business, stole one on the road. That’s what you want to do in a playoff series, so I’m sure they feel great about it.
“Obviously, we’re sick about losing this one.”
Understandable. Here was a perfect setup to prove this Detroit squad is for real. Home arena. Network TV. A rested No. 1 seed against a No. 8 seed that had to play twice in the previous five days and travel to the Motor City. Some were expecting a chopping block with Orlando’s head in the slot.
Instead, the Magic never trailed in this game. Never trailed? On the road? Against Detroit? A team that never had a game this season – even their defeats – in which they didn’t have the lead at least once?
Yep. That just happened. Having not played in a week, Detroit’s precision was off-kilter early. They fell into early holes of 9, 11 and 13 points. Every time the Pistons made some sort of run, the Magic answered with a a Jalen Suggs 3-pointer, or a Paulo Banchero jumper or a Franz Wagner muscle drive. Box scores don’t tell you everything, but this one said a lot: All five Orlando starters scored in double figures.
The Pistons had two.
That won’t do. The one constant criticism of these Pistons is their lack of a reliable second geyser on offense after Cunningham. When I asked coach J.B. Bickerstaff last week how he would reply to such critics, he said, “That Jalen Duren is pretty damn good. That would be my answer.”
A smart one, normally. But Sunday, Duren – who averages nearly 20 points a game – took just four shots and finished with eight points. You can start your postmortem there. Throw in a combined 6-for-22 night from Daniss Jenkins and Tobias Harris, 14 team turnovers and a rebounding deficit, and you can close the casket.
“There were times in the game where we got stagnant,” Bickerstaff said after the game. “I think that happened to us because we got down early and it felt like there was so much weight and so much pressure on each possession, that it felt like we were trying to … hit a home run every time.”
Or as Thompson put it, trying to score “10 points on one possession.”
Nice idea. Would’ve helped.
Can’t be done.
Time to get up off the canvas
Now, the first question fans want to know after a loss like this is always “Should we panic?” The answer is no. Never mind that, over the weekend, every other 1- and 2-seed in the NBA won its opener comfortably, some in blowout fashion.
We need to remember that this Pistons team, despite 60 muscular regular-season wins, is still growing into its playoff body. Sunday night was only the seventh career playoff game for starters such as Cunningham, Duren and Thompson. (Last year, the Pistons fell in the first round to the New York Knicks in six games, and the years before, well, we won’t talk about those.)
This franchise still hasn’t won a home playoff game since 2008. We need to stay calm and remember that. It doesn’t matter what you look like from October to April. It’s a new stage, new costumes and a whole new play in the postseason. And expectations of a No. 1 seed, like any crown, can weigh heavily on the head.
Meanwhile, Orlando is living in the opposite world. The Magic speak constantly about trying to “forget” the regular season, one which started with high expectation and was sunk by injuries, lackluster intensity and bad clutch play. They finished 45-37 and had to crawl under the play-in wire to be here at all.
“Everybody knows we’ve got a really talented team,” said Wagner, who put the stake in Detroit’s heart with 11 fourth-quarter points – almost all of them layups or dunks. “We didn’t have the regular season that we wanted. … But we showed today that we belong here.”
This, if you ask me, is the most dangerous part. The Pistons, unfortunately, drew an opponent with nothing to lose, able to throw off the yoke of a regular season with a feeling of being born again.
It’s clear they are physical. It’s clear they can play defense. It’s clear Banchero is a major talent and Suggs, Wagner and Desmond Bane cane be major pains.
“Those things that we do better than everybody,” Cunningham said, “they did tonight.”
Now it’s up to the Pistons to prove their identity is even stronger; that it hasn’t been a mirage. In other words, get up off the canvas and fight back hard.
Fortunately, this is Detroit. We know that, too.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates on his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow @mitchalbom on x.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mitch Albom: Pistons still growing but don’t have much time to learn
Reporting by Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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