They went from favorites to afterthought in a flash, and though the oddsmakers still favor your Detroit Pistons, a chunk of the NBA’s cognoscenti suddenly doesn’t. They’re worried about what they saw in Game 1, rightly so.
Yes, this is an overreaction to the Pistons’ loss to Orlando Sunday, April 19. Hey, it’s what we do in the playoffs.
This is also what we do when the No. 8 seed beats the No. 1 seed in wire-to-wire fashion. And when the “underdog” wins in a way that doesn’t look like a fluke?
Out comes the handwringing and the same old “I-told-you-so’s” about the trade deadline, which is one way to ignore recent NBA Finals history, but hey, it’s a free country.
You’ve got to go back seven years to find a team that took a big swing at the deadline and wound up with a parade. But then that’s a story for the offseason, and no one around here is ready for that. There’s a more immediate story at the moment, and it goes a bit like this:
These Pistons aren’t a championship team yet; but they’re darn sure good enough to beat Orlando, even if Orlando has a tad more talent and an extra year of experience in the postseason. No, that isn’t an excuse for the Game 1 loss, or a preemptive excuse if the Magic wins the series.
It’s simply a matter of fact.
List the best eight players in the series; five of them wear black and blue: Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, Desmond Bane, Jalen Suggs, Anthony Black.
The Pistons have the best player in Cade Cuningham. But Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson slot in at five and six in this pecking order, after Banchero, Wagner and Bane, before Suggs and Black.
Yeah, yeah, it’s debatable, and if someone wants to swap a name or two in the order, cool. What’s not debatable – or cool if you love the red, white and blue – is that Orlando has a couple more places to get a bucket.
That’s not how the 1-against-8 equation is supposed to go. This isn’t the NHL, where it’s far more common for an upstart to ride a hot goalie and some timely goals and send the regular season maestros packing.
Yet this is where we are. The Magic have more talent than a typical 8-seed.
A lot more talent.
Go back to the preseason and look at the projections before Wagner missed 50-plus games and Suggs missed time, and Black got hurt just as he’d put together a stretch that announced he was coming.
Orlando’s brass didn’t give up four first-round picks – and a pick swap – for Bane last summer because they thought they’d make the play-in. They thought they would be good enough to contend.
Foolish? Sure, maybe … in hindsight. But the move made sense at the time.
The Magic had a promising core. They needed a shooter and a swaggy veteran perimeter presence.
They got it. Now that they’re all available, and seem to be interested in playing together, they look like the team they thought they had in the first place, to paraphrase Dennis Green.
All of which is to say, the series is a tossup, which means no more sluggish starts, and no more casual passes, and no more hesitancy. It means leaning into who they are and finding the right groups to balance the floor.
It means checking, with a lot more intent and focus, because this is where the offense starts, too. The Pistons obviously need to make a few more shots. But offense isn’t why they lost.
They lost because they couldn’t get stops. And stops drive their offense.
A year ago, the Pistons learned what the playoffs were about. On Sunday night, they learned what the playoffs are about while carrying expectation. They weren’t ready.
They’ll have to be for Game 2, or the series will be effectively over. The Pistons understand this.
They understand this, too:
They may still be the favorite, but the Magic don’t see them that way, and probably never did.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Pistons-Magic playoff series is a toss up that must be won in the mud
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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