ORLANDO – There are moments and there are moments, and then there are moments, and Paul Reed welcomes them all. He’s ready for them all. Has to be. He’s not in the regular script.
He’s a backup’s backup, as he might go games, plural, without logging a minute. Then his coach looks down the bench and nods, and he’s got to rip off his warmups and head to the scorer’s table and get ready to make a difference.
Whether it’s a mid-February blowout on a Tuesday or a May elimination game on a Friday night in the playoffs, when his Detroit Pistons are down a couple dozen, the season is slipping away, the naysayers are gathering ammo and the opposing shooting guard is smirking.
Then staring.
Then laughing.
And coach J.B. Bickerstaff is looking for something to change the course of a game.
That’s a moment, too – a humbling one, a humiliating one – and for the Pistons there wasn’t much choice but to show a little pride and avoid a 30-point loss (or worse) to end their season.
But win?
Deliver a comeback rare in the annals of NBA history?
They had to stack possessions first, and that doesn’t happen without the third-string center, who’d played just once in this series entering Game 6 on Friday, May 1. The guy who never knows when he’ll play or for how long he’ll play or who might be on the court when he steps on it.
Somehow, it doesn’t seem to matter. He’s always ready for the moment.
No matter the stakes.
No matter the moment.
He met it again at Kia Center on Friday.
More than that: He saved the season.
Just ask Cade Cunningham.
“Tonight,” the Pistons All-Star, All-NBA guard said, “he got us back in that game, and we won a big game because of him.”
No argument, except for this: The Pistons also won because they are finally starting to play like themselves, and no one embodies that more than Reed, the 6-foot-9 (that’s generous), 210-pound (that’s not), forward/center/reorganizer of atoms who is the best third-string big in the Association.
That’s what his teammates say, anyway, and his coaches. And that’s what we’ll say here in this space, hardly an out-there observation when you watch Reed redirect the flow and direction of a game with an unusual-yet-satisfying bag of … well, not tricks – that’d be a disservice to his practice habits and his skill.
Talents?
Yeah, that’s it. Talents.
Unorthodox marshmallows
Reed can finish with either hand and often does, through and around traffic. He can dribble, and Euro-step. He can hit a 3, no matter how long it takes him to load up before he launches.
He can spin and fade and wrong-foot himself and wrong-foot defenders and still, in the end, toss “marshmallows at the rim,” as teammate Duncan Robinson describes it.
And those marshmallows plop up there, sometimes on the back iron, hang out for a sec, and softly plop into the basket.
“He works at it, man,” said Robinson. “It might look a little unorthodox at times, but he has this … [those shots] just find their way in.”
And if that were it, he’d be valuable and a nice change of pace for any coach – a human knuckleball, as it were. But that’s a long way from the only thing Reed offers to the Pistons, or what he has given the Pistons this season.
“He’s just so active,” Robinson said. “The shot-blocking, deflecting, rebounding, and on offense, he’s so good at getting to that second situation over and over again. He’s just fun to play with.”
And fun to watch. And more than a just a novelty to be serenaded by the home fans, as he was during Game 2 at Little Caesars Arena, when the game was in hand and the crowd wanted a dose of “Bball Paul,” as he’s known.
‘He’s ready to go’
It’s a moniker that also says: hooper. Or: liberator. Which is what he helped do Friday night in Orlando, when his team was listing and struggling to meet the competitive moment the Magic had laid down.
“Anytime his number is called,” Cunningham said, “he’s ready to go, comes right out there and imposes himself on the game. I don’t think there is any situation in basketball where you bring him in, and he’s not going to bring some type of productivity to the floor. … He’s like a safety blanket for us. He’s won us so many games with his intensity.”
Bickerstaff turned to him for that intensity in the third quarter, after the Pistons had cut Orlando’s 24-point lead to 10 before letting it slip back to 17. That was a moment, too. Maybe the last one of the season, if the Magic got the lead back past 20 again.
In came Reed with 3:55 left in the third. He cut. He caught a pass from Cunningham. He laid it in. Then he hit two free throws. And blocked Goga Bitadze, who’d outplayed Isaiah Stewart in the first half. Then he grabbed an offensive rebound. And blocked Desmond Bane. And, well, missed a 3-pointer.
But so what. The third quarter was over. The lead was down to nine. He’d done his job and more, and Bickerstaff ran him back out to start the fourth, and he kept plugging and fighting and sparking as the Pistons kept coming, and the Magic began withering.
Credit Bickerstaff for leaving him out there. It’s not easy to go away from the script. But then there is this script, too: The Pistons are more than the sum of their parts because they have a lot of parts, and the parts never complain.
As Bickerstaff said after the comeback was complete Friday: “He’s one of those guys that personifies our spirit.”
That spirit – along with a superstar turn in the second half from Cunningham and an all-world defensive effort from Ausar Thompson – is why the Pistons aren’t done just yet. The buy into “something greater than themselves,” as Bickerstaff likes to say.
No one exemplifies that like Reed. He is a symbol of who they’ve been this season.
He is also a difference-maker, something he showed once again Friday, this time in the wobbliest moment of the season.
He never knows when he might be called upon to make a difference, just as he didn’t Friday night.
“I try to stay in the right spots, stay good spiritually and emotionally so I can go out there and make an impact,” he said. “[My teammates] all know what I’m bringing to the table. They believe in me. That makes a big difference, too.”
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Paul Reed the most unlikely playoff hero for Detroit Pistons in Game 6
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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