Worried? Who’s worried? Not the Pistons. Certainly not head coach JB Bickerstaff.
With Detroit’s defeat against the Heat in Miami on Sunday, the Pistons have dropped four in a row. Prior to this streak, they had not fallen in three straight games all season and had only lost back-to-back games twice. This is uncharted territory for a team that had been cruising — and it comes at the worst possible time, with the playoffs looming and the Celtics lurking. That might unnerve some people. Bickerstaff, at least publicly, attempted to project confidence.
“It’s the NBA, right? And you look at the season, it’s long,” Bickerstaff said after the Sunday’s loss. “Everybody goes through difficult times or goes through a little bit of a rut. And we just found ours right now. And again, we’ve got plenty of time left to do what we got to do. Boston, obviously, is a good team. But we’re not concerned about Boston.”
That’s exactly what you’d expect someone who’s concerned about Boston to say. The Pistons have been perched atop the Eastern Conference for much of the season, but the second-place Celtics have managed to narrow the gap to just 2 ½ games back with 18 left to play for Boston and 19 for Detroit. That margin does not leave the Pistons with much room for error.
But forget about Boston, there’s plenty to be concerned about in Detroit alone. These last four losses have exposed the vulnerabilities that the Pistons had otherwise been able to overcome. It’s no secret how the Pistons have stacked wins this season. They’re big and physical, and their second-ranked defense can be suffocating. They’re 11th in offensive rating, with a specific style that demands they dominate down low. They usually do. The Pistons are second in points in the paint and third in opponents points in the paint.
Of course you could look at that approach a different way: the Pistons are good in the paint because they have to be. On most nights, Detroit’s outside shooting falls somewhere between troublesome to non-existent. The Pistons are 27th in 3-point attempts and 24th in 3-point percentage. Among the mainstays in the rotation, only Duncan Robinson (39.2% from deep on 7.2 attempts per game) can be considered a consistent threat in terms of volume or accuracy.
Unsurprisingly, that offensive approach relies heavily on their two top scorers, Cade Cunningham (25.2 points per game) and Jalen Duren (18.5 PPG). After that, Tobias Harris — who has been limited to 47 games this season and has been uneven when available — is the next highest scorer at 13.3 PPG. That’s a big drop-off, and it puts a lot of pressure on the top two guys, and especially Cunningham, to produce. When they don’t — or when they’re unavailable — the Pistons can wobble, as they have during the last four losses.
Consider what happened in those defeats. The Pistons were basically even on points in the paint against the Heat, Cavs and Nets. And the Spurs dominated them down low. When they don’t win in the paint, winning the game becomes a struggle and the lack of shooting and secondary playmaking becomes glaring.
Against the Heat, Cunningham and Duren did their thing, going a combined 19-for-30 from the field. The problem was everyone else shot just 21-for-60. That’s ugly. The rest of the starters — Robinson, Harris and Marcus Sasser were almost invisible, finishing 4-for-16. Apart from Cunningham and Duren, bruiser Isaiah Stewart and third big Paul Reed were the only other Pistons in double figures.
When Cunningham isn’t at the controls, the offense tends to sputter. That can result in clunky possessions like this one where Harris tried to back his way into the paint for a bucket and failed.
It’s hard to blame the Pistons for being so Cunningham-dependent on the offensive end. He’s fourth in the MVP betting odds for a reason. He’s also their best (and often only) reliable shot creator when things get dicey. Here’s a question that Detroit hasn’t had to ask very often this season and would prefer not to if given the choice: who do you trust other than Cunningham when the Pistons absolutely need a bucket in a critical moment?
That very situation presented itself late in that loss to the Nets when Cunningham sat out with a quad injury. The Pistons couldn’t find their offense in the fourth quarter and went just 6 for 21 from the floor in that frame, allowing the Nets to rally from down 23. With time ticking away and Detroit down two at home to a vastly inferior opponent, the Pistons desperately needed someone to make a play. The best they could come up with was Daniss Jenkins over-dribbling into a baseline fadeaway airball.
That is concerning in the extreme. But it isn’t surprising. The Pistons strengths have been well known all season, as have their flaws. Despite a glaring need for shooting and playmaking, Detroit opted not to make any major moves at the trade deadline even though the Pistons had the draft capital available to cobble together an attractive package. (Apologies to Kevin Huerter who was swapped in for Jaden Ivey, which has netted out as a lose-lose for the Pistons to date.) That decision is justifiable — to a point. Just two seasons ago the Pistons had a league-worst 14 wins. Last season they became the first team in NBA history to more than triple their win total year-over-year. This season they’ve led the Eastern Conference almost the entire time. By any measure the Pistons are ahead of schedule and have exceeded almost everyone’s expectations. In that context, it’s understandable that president of basketball operations Trajan Langdon would want to see how this goes in the postseason before making major changes.
But — and this is a big all-caps caveat — nothing is promised for the Pistons and getting out of the East was never guaranteed. In a season where the Cavaliers got off to a slow start and dug themselves a hole in the standings, the front office in Cleveland realized the team wasn’t good enough and needed to make moves. In came James Harden, Dennis Schröder and Keon Ellis. The Knicks were limited by what they could do without detonating their core but still managed to nab a useful bench piece in Jose Alvarado. And the aforementioned Celtics — the franchise the Pistons supposedly aren’t concerned about — added Nikola Vučević to a team in need of frontcourt help.
Vučević fractured his ring finger against the Mavericks last week and is expected to miss 3-4 weeks, but no one in Boston seemed to be sweating it. That’s probably because Jayson Tatum is back after recovering from an Achilles injury that a lot of people thought would keep him out for the entire season. Instead, Tatum missed just 10 months. He nearly had a triple double in his season debut against Dallas and has averaged 27 minutes in two games so far. Of all the Eastern Conference contenders, no one added a player as good as Tatum, who slots into a Celtics team that was already playing exceedingly well without him and is top-five in both offensive and defensive rating.
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Point is, all the teams chasing the Pistons have upgraded since the deadline while Detroit opted to stay the course. The good news in their quest to stave off the Celtics and retain the No. 1 seed is that the Pistons are 25th in remaining strength of schedule while Boston is third. And the Pistons have no more games against the other top three teams in the East. The bad news is they still have games against OKC, the Wolves (twice), Lakers, Raptors, Magic and Sixers (lol just kidding about that last one, that doesn’t matter).
Even if they retain the one seed, the Pistons still have to make it through the playoffs. Right now, the oddsmakers don’t like their chances. FanDuel has the Celtics (+185) installed as the favorites to win the conference, followed by the Cavs (+280). After that, the Pistons and Knicks are both +450. The prediction models aren’t quite that sour on Detroit — but they aren’t overly bullish, either. Basketball-Reference gives the Pistons a slightly better than one-in-four shot to win the East, roughly the same probability assigned to the Celtics and only slightly better than the Knicks.
None of which means the Pistons can’t still win the conference. The East looks like a four-team race, and the Pistons — who are 6-1 against the Knicks and Celtics this season while splitting with the Cavs — could absolutely still advance to the Finals. But for much of the season, Detroit stood mostly alone, and now they most definitely have company. While we’re discussing all the things that ought to concern Bickerstaff and company, even if they pretend otherwise, add that to the list.
