With 90 seconds left on a milestone night, Cade Cunningham had the ball, and the Pistons were feeling the comeback. After trailing most of the contest, they had pulled within three and the sellout crowd was on its feet, going bananas. Cade dribbled, spun and completely lost his defender, OG Anunoby, who hit the deck as if thrown out of a bus.
Cade went up, destiny in his hands … but lost the ball in a bang against New York’s Karl Anthony Towns. The rock came the other way, and Jalen Brunson, Cade’s parallel superstar in a Knicks uniform, drove between two Detroit defenders for a basket.
“Tough play,” Cunningham would say.
Destiny swings. The Pistons would still claw, still fight, right to the end, but the game, and the win, remained a hair out of reach after that. On a night of some great three-point shooting and some terrible three-point shooting, of gutsy blocks and too many turnovers, of hot and cold defense and endless energy and a second quarter collapse and a fourth quarter comeback, the Pistons, in their first home playoff game since the last time Donald Trump was president, fell just short of the rainbow.
Sometimes milestones go your way.
Sometimes they land on your head.
“It’s frustrating,” Cunningham would admit after the Pistons fell short 118-116 in their Motown return to the postseason, allowing the Knicks to steal Game 3 and a 2-1 lead in this series. “We didn’t want to drop this game. We didn’t want to drop Game 1. It’s the small things that are coming to bite us. But we’re learning from it.”
Yes, they are learning, this nascent bunch, as much from the pressure as from the excitement. Thursday night, in surrendering, amongst other things, a 21-6 run to end the first half, they learned a lot about the defense. Mostly, that they didn’t always have enough.
“(New York) scored, how many points, 118? In the playoffs?” lamented Ausur Thompson in the locker room. “I feel that’s unacceptable.”
Party, pooped.
A long wait
Now, remember, it had been six years since the Pistons staged a playoff game in our city. Thursday proved that muscle memory doesn’t forget. We still know how to do basketball in these parts.
The night began with a very Detroit rendition of the national anthem by KEM, who grew up around here. It continued with the familiar “Final Countdown” introductions and the equally familiar fire explosions. Fans yelled “DEE-TROIT BASKETBALL!” There was the thunderous “ahhs” on the arc of every Pistons’ early shot and the deafening boos whenever the opponent came up court. Ben Wallace was in the house.
If you didn’t know better, it could have been the Palace of Auburn Hills, circa 2004.
But once the game started, it became clear: These Pistons are new, young, talented, gritty, emotional, inconsistent and a work in progress.
More veteran teams would know you have to grab the opponent by the throat in the first home playoff game of a series. But here in Game 3, the Pistons fell behind early, missing their first six shots and seeing a seventh shot blocked.
More veteran superstars know this is the moment you take things over. But the 23-year-old Cunningham, ripe with excellence, is still developing his dominance. Facing double-teams and tight defense, he was harassed into turnovers and wedged into passing more than scoring, relying on others to sink the ball.
More experienced playoff teams see golden opportunities and squeeze them tight. But Detroit clanked too many early 3-point chances to build a demoralizing lead. And in the closing moments, Jalen Duren swatted an easy jump ball out of bounds. And he threw a last chance opportunity away with an unreachable pass.
Meanwhile, the Knicks came out Thursday as if expecting to face Rick Mahorn and Bill Laimbeer. They were physical, defensive and aggressive, none more than Towns, the longtime 7-foot brickhouse for Minnesota who now swings his considerable size around for the Knicks.
He swung it heavy Thursday night. After a fourth quarter disappearance in Game 2, KAT seemed determined to register on the Richter scale in Game 3. I think I saw a few floorboards come loose on his drives.
“He’s a big time player,” Cunningham admitted. “He can shoot the three and he gets to the rim.”
Towns did both in Game 3, finishing with 31 points, eight rebounds and two blocks with four three-point buckets. He hit a huge jumper down the stretch to give the Knicks a seven-point lead and had that stop of Cunningham’s spin play with less than a minute and a half to go.
From there it was all Brunson, who faced chants of “(expletive) YOU BRUNSON” from start to finish. Didn’t faze him. The dogged guard, who would finish with 30, scored on consecutive drives in the final 80 seconds that left multiple Detroit defenders watching him. He registered eight of his team’s last 10 points.
He did what superstars do. He took things over when they needed taking over.
The Pistons had plenty of great moments Thursday night.
But they didn’t have that.
Party, pooped.
The young guns
This isn’t to say there wasn’t a lot to like about the newest playoff team in town. Anthony Hardaway had eye-blinking success with early 3-point shooting, and Dennis Schroder continued to hit long-range daggers to keep the game close. Paul Reed had some gritty play off the bench. Cunningham filled the stat sheet with 24 points, 11 assists and seven rebounds.
But Tobias Harris didn’t hit a shot until the closing minutes and Malik Beasly extinguished numerous possessions with missed 3-point attempts. If Cunningham is forced to pass, those guys must respond with great shooting. On this night, they didn’t. The Pistons were sloppy with the ball when they couldn’t afford to be. Fourteen turnovers. That’s too much.
And while they had a shot at winning, right until the end, it never felt like a game they had earned.
“This (loss) doesn’t change anything,” Thompson said. “We’re just as confident for the next one.”
Good to hear. But however this series turns out, the only thing you can be sure of with these Pistons is that you can’t be sure of anything. They have the raw talent and toughness to win this series. They also make the dewy mistakes that could lose it.
At times they play like a well-programmed video game. And at times they look like excited tourists on a Paris subway, enough energy to go all night, but needing a map to know where to get off.
Hey. That’s what young teams do.
For now, let’s say this. It was damn great to have playoff basketball back in this city. Honestly, it was surprising how natural and deafening the noise felt in Little Caesars Arena, as if this crowd had been frozen from the Chauncey-Rip-Ben days and defrosted just before tip-off. LCA is a terrific house for basketball, if, like so many NBA arenas, a bit overloaded with music over mood.
Party, pooped. But Detroit, Detroit, as Paul Simon once sang, is still a basketball town. It proved so Thursday night, maybe even a little too much for the players. Before he left the building, Cunningham was asked if perhaps the pent-up enthusiasm of six years without a postseason shook his young squad off their game.
“I thought it was great,” he said. “I thought it was a lot of energy in there. It’s amazing to have playoff basketball back in Detroit. You could tell everybody’s been waiting on it. …
“I wouldn’t say we were (too) geeked up. We knew it was gonna be a lot of energy in there. The (Madison Square) Garden has a lot of energy. All these games are gonna be high intensity − lots of fans, lots of noise.
“So that’s not what shook us up. The ball just didn’t go in the rim.”
Then he added, “it will on Sunday.”
Oh right. We get to do this again in a few days. Maybe more next week. And that, basketball friends, is a big win for Detroit, even if, on Thursday night, the scoreboard didn’t agree.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.
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