NEW YORK — There the Pistons were again: in the heat of a postseason fight, up three scores with nine minutes to go, looking to put the hammer down and close out a playoff win in Madison Square Garden.
On Saturday, Detroit wilted in that heat, with a hail of turnovers and ugly shots fueling a 21-0 New York run that gave the Knicks a 1-0 lead in their first-round series. On Monday, though, the Pistons got a second chance to make a first postseason impression — and they were intent on making the most of it.
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“We talked about it,” Detroit star guard Cade Cunningham said after the game. “You know, it was something that we wanted to celebrate. I thought it was a great opportunity for us to be able to respond and have a better outcome tonight.”
The Knicks chipped away at the lead Detroit had held for most of Game 2, getting into the bonus midway through the final frame and grinding their way to the free-throw line to close the gap. When Jalen Brunson found Josh Hart lurking in the dunker spot behind Pistons big man Jalen Duren for a game-tying dunk with 1:15 to go, it seemed like the visitors might once again find themselves on the short end of the stick — having largely controlled another game in New York, only to come away with nothing to show for it.
Dennis Schröder, though, had other plans:
Inside the final minute, Detroit stuck with its gameplan, trying to drag Brunson into action in the pick-and-roll, with Tobias Harris setting the screen. His defender, Josh Hart, jumped out to pick up Schröder. But instead of re-screening, Harris slipped out; when Hart dropped back to Harris, Brunson wasn’t close enough to jump back out to Schröder, leaving an acre of space in the switch pocket.
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“It’s something that shouldn’t happen,” Brunson said. “Especially between me and [Hart]. We’ve known each other too long to mess that up.”
The German point guard took full advantage, firing a wide-open pull-up 3 that splashed through the net, giving him 19 points — he’d finish with 20 on 6-for-10 shooting, part of a 35-8 Detroit edge in bench points — and giving the Pistons back a lead that they’d hold on to this time.
Would-be game-tying triples by Brunson and Mikal Bridges came up empty. A few free throws later, Detroit had finished off a 100-94 Game 2 win to knot the series at one game apiece, steal home-court advantage from the favored Knicks — and end a staggeringly long postseason drought for a once-proud NBA franchise that has suffered through an awfully rough couple of decades:
“We did what we were supposed to do,” Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “That was it. To win a game on the road, to get home-court, is what we came here for.”
Pistons prove they can ‘out-dog’ Knicks
As the scene shifts to Detroit for Thursday’s Game 3, it’s become clear that the Pistons are eminently capable of doing what they believe they’re supposed to: namely, imposing their will on a third-seeded Knicks team that won 51 games and finished tied for the fifth-best net rating in the NBA during the regular season, but that had looked shaky over the season’s final couple of months, playing just-above-.500 ball with a barely positive point differential after the trade deadline.
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In Game 1, the Knicks overcame three shaky quarters with a miraculous finish. In Game 2, though, there were no miracles to be found.
“It was a similar game, right?” All-Star center Karl-Anthony Towns said. “It’s not every day you’re going to get a 21-0 run. We can’t be expecting stuff like that. You just can’t expect to flip a switch and all of a sudden, we’re the team that we worked so hard all year to be. We’ve got to bring that kind of execution and discipline all game.”
Seeding lines aside, Detroit had a better record and better point differential than New York from February on; the Pistons entered this series with reason to believe they were every ounce as good as the Knicks, if not better. The final nine minutes of Game 1 could’ve shaken that belief. Instead, Bickerstaff’s team heads home with renewed faith, having outplayed their more experienced and higher-billed opponents for more than seven of the first eight quarters of this matchup — and having proven on Monday that they can win even when the breaks don’t go their way.
The Pistons won Game 2 despite going just 6-for-27 (22.2%) from 3-point land, and despite wings Malik Beasley, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Ausar Thompson shooting a combined 4-for-24 from the floor. They won despite being without backup center Isaiah Stewart, who was ruled out with right knee inflammation, forcing lightly used reserve Paul Reed into the fold; the former 76ers big finished with six points, a rebound, a block, a steal and two turnovers in 11 eventful minutes, during which Detroit outscored the Knicks by 13 points.
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They won despite Thompson, their primary defensive option on Brunson, fouling out with 5:34 to go with the Knicks in the bonus, setting the stage for their efforts to march to the free-throw line late. (Efforts that ultimately still ended with New York taking 15 fewer freebies than the Pistons — a disparity that head coach Tom Thibodeau noted after the game.) They won despite not playing a clean game, committing 16 turnovers leading to 19 New York points; they won despite once again watching the Knicks walk them down late, giving them the opportunity to fold.
“At the end of the day, I trust our system. I trust the guys,” Cunningham said. “We knew that we dropped that game, so it was just about coming out today and being aggressive, and trying to out-dog them.”
Despite all that, they still won, in large part because Cunningham — whose breakthrough All-Star campaign fueled Detroit’s remarkable, historic single-season turnaround — looked like the best player on the court.
‘Elite’ Cunningham leads the way
The 23-year-old bounced back from the Game 1 meltdown in a major way, starting the game off aggressive — a hard drive on OG Anunoby that turned into an offensive rebound and putback, a rebound and end-to-end push that created a corner 3 — and never letting up. Cunningham finished with 33 points on 11-for-21 shooting from the floor and a 10-for-12 mark at the free-throw line — his second 30-point game against the Knicks in the past two weeks, and one that the Pistons sorely needed.
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“He was elite,” Bickerstaff said. “He is a superstar, and he played the game tonight as a superstar, and he did what he needed to do to help this team win. He understood how aggressive he needed to be on the offensive end of the floor, so he was going to go out and he was going to be aggressive. He also understood how important finishing possessions was, and he had 11 defensive rebounds. That’s knowing and understanding how to manipulate the game — how to make winning plays.”
Cunningham joined Harris and Duren (13 rebounds each) in controlling the glass, staking Detroit to a 53-44 edge on the boards — including 12 offensive rebounds, leading to 13 second-chance points — that Thibodeau said “was probably the difference in the game.” (Asked later why backup center Mitchell Robinson closed the first half at the 5 over Towns, Thibodeau quickly responded, “Well, Mitch was the one guy rebounding.”)
Detroit used those defensive rebounds as springboards for early offense, repeatedly pushing the pace — not just off of Knick misses or turnovers, but even off of made shots — in search of good looks against a backtracking and scrambled New York defense. More than 20% of the Pistons’ offensive plays in Game 2 came in transition, according to Cleaning the Glass.
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While they weren’t particularly efficient on those plays — just 1.056 points per transition possession, which would’ve ranked dead last in the league during the regular season — hitting the gas was clearly a point of emphasis for Bickerstaff, who delicately sidestepped a question about what prompted the Pistons’ elevated pace at the end of his press conference.
“I mean … we saw something,” Bickerstaff said.
‘We want to be who we are’
The Pistons saw a lot during their time in New York. They saw their length, physicality and game plan — including the decision to cross-match Duren onto the non-shooting Hart and put the veteran Harris on Towns — pay dividends, completely taking New York out of its offensive flow.
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“I think it just helps me be able to kind of roam a little more, be that second helper for other guys on drives,” said Duren, who controlled the paint to the tune of 12 points, 13 rebounds, three blocks and a steal in 37 minutes. “Being on that weak side, it just puts me in a better spot to kind of change shots and challenge shots.”
It also gives Towns a different look — one that he can attack, but one from which the Knicks as a team often looked away.
After starring in Game 1, Towns was effectively rendered a non-factor in Game 2, finishing with just 10 points on 11 shots without an assist in 33 minutes. The All-NBA scorer was held scoreless after intermission, and his final field-goal attempt of the night came with 5:20 to go in the third quarter.
Both Towns and Thibodeau said that his second-half goose-egg came because he was trying to make the right play and not force the issue, and that they liked the shots the Knicks got in the fourth. But the end result of Detroit’s gambit was paring a New York offense that had been one of the NBA’s most explosive and varied during the regular season into just one blunt-force instrument: Brunson fighting through thickets of limbs just to get the ball, before isolating on whichever Pistons defender he drew and trying to chisel his way to points.
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Blunt instruments can work: Brunson scored a game-high 37 points with seven assists in his 44 minutes. It makes the Knicks simpler, though; Towns, Anunoby and Hart all finished with just 10 points, and rarely seemed to have much of a rhythm. It’s tough sledding, too: Brunson needed 27 shots and turned it over six times; his usage rate in Game 2 was 39.2%, which would’ve led the NBA in the regular season by a mile.
“Whether it’s Ausar, whether it’s Dennis, we feel like we’ve got bodies to just keep throwing at him,” Bickerstaff said. “And if the game is a physical game, and we keep bumping, we keep bruising, our aim is just to try to continue to wear guys down. We don’t want to be on our heels because we’re worried about foul calls. We want to be who we are.”
This is who the Pistons are, warts and all: physical, athletic and intense; a little rough around the edges, but good enough to come into your gym and take you down, with their superstar leading the way.
“All of this, for us, is learning,” Bickerstaff said. “These moments for us — as a group, myself, as a staff, with this team — we haven’t done this before. So any test, any challenge that’s put in front of us is a great test and a great challenge for us.”