Here’s the crazy thing about NBA basketball: for all that comes before the final seconds of a tight playoff game, all the hacking, clawing, headbutting, arms flailing, wild shots, incredible putbacks, eye-blinking drives and fallaway jumpers, all anyone remembers is who made the last shot.
Or who missed.
Cade Cunningham got the final shot he wanted – “A shot I love,” he would say – middle of the floor, 14 feet out. He let it fly uncontested, or at least “uncontested” by Game 4’s standards, when most shots seemed to come with the defender’s snot on them.
But Cade’s jumper missed. It clanged off the rim and the backboard. Tobias Harris tried to snag the rebound, lost it in a tussle, and the ball rolled to the corner where Tim Hardaway. Jr. picked it up and heaved it at the rim, just as New York’s Josh Hart banged his torso into Hardaway’s right side.
The shot was as fruitless as the referee’s whistle, which never sounded.
The buzzer did. And the Detroit Pistons’ postseason chances just took a New York knife to the stomach.
“That final shot (and the apparent foul), how did you see it?” someone asked Hardaway Jr. in the locker room, after the Pistons dropped this heartbreaker, 94-93, to fall in a 3-1 series hole with a return to New York on April 29.
“You guys saw it,” Hardaway snapped. “It was blatant…Thank you.”
And he walked out.
Doesn’t change the score
Now you can get indignant if you want. You can storm off. Say you were robbed. But the Pistons didn’t lose this game because a ref didn’t ring a guy up at the end, any more than they lost because the refs didn’t ring up a dozen other guys all game long, in a game more like a bunch of bighorn sheep butting horns than a super-sleek hoops contest.
There were hacks, holds, shoves and elbows. Don’t all those no-calls matter? Don’t the ones that go the Pistons’ way counter the ones that don’t?
What about the Pistons brutal early shooting? Or their continued lost dribbles and stolen passes?
This wasn’t just about Cade’s last shot. Or the last no-call on Hart. Was that a foul? Sure it was. The crew chief admitted so after the game.
“A foul should have been called,” David Guthrie confirmed.
Doesn’t change the result. Or the score. Or the best-of-seven series, which trudges on, no matter what calls, or shots, were missed.
“I can’t say I was surprised,” Cunningham admitted about the final play. Maybe because he is beginning to understand the truth of NBA playoff pedigrees:
You walk before you run.
You run before you fly.
You fly before you soar.
The Pistons are still learning to run. When they do, they won’t keep falling behind to start home playoff games, or blowing fourth-quarter leads.
And when they get to the flying part, they won’t, with 37 seconds left, commit their 17th turnover of the game, or surrender step back 3-pointers in the final minute to guys like Karl Anthony Towns, who was killing them all game with shots like that.
And one day, when they get to the soaring part, they will ride the crazy emotion that shook the rafters of Little Caesars Arena on April 27 and turn it into 15- and 20-point wins, not agonizing one-point losses.
But that is still to come. The smartest thing I heard was Cunningham’s response to the brutal education these first four playoff games of his career have brought him.
Here is what he said:
“It’s great, man. I feel like I’ve learned as much within this series as I have all season. There’s a lot to take away from it, not everything that I can share with you all. But I think it’s great.”
An education often is.
Pistons learning to fly
Now none of that makes a Pistons fan feel better this morning. Three out of the four games in this series, Detroit held fourth-quarter leads that slipped, dropped or clanged through their fingers.
And three out of four times, the Knicks’ fiery combo of Towns and Jalen Brunson played the bullies in the leather coats and brass knuckles.
Brunson, despite disappearing for a stretch with an ankle injury, rang up 32 points, many at clutch momentum moments.
And Towns, who is built like a stand-up version of that bull on Wall Street, added 27, including vision-defying 3-pointers from the corner, from out of bounds, and from halfcourt or Hamtramck, whichever is further.
“He shoots the ball like a guard,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau told the media.
Yeah. But he’s the size of two of them.
Brunson and Towns, who have years of playoff experience between them, have done this series what Cunningham has not yet been able to – take the game over when it most matters. Cunningham had a far-too-quiet first half, a superstar third quarter, and a final stat line that dazzled, 25 points, 10 assists, 10 rebounds, Detroit’s first playoff triple-double since Isiah Thomas did it in 1989.
But Isiah, who was in the house, eventually did things that Cade is still working his way up to. So did Chauncey Billups, who sat a few seats over. Both former Pistons stars grabbed games by the neck and wrangled them into a cage. They came to understand. Superstars don’t win playoff games. They own them.
“The burden is heavy on him,” J.B. Bickerstaff, the Pistons coach, said of Cunningham, his 23 year-old star.
He’ll get there.
For now, the Pistons, having missed their chances to grab this series, must stave off the challenge of losing it. That is a lesson unto itself.
If they can win April 29 in New York, they’ll have found something new within themselves. And while it now seems unlikely they will capture this series, finding who they are and what burns inside them will set their sails for the future.
And let’s be honest. For a team that won all of 14 games last year, to a team that’s a burned foul call away from tying its first playoff series in six years, the future is a lot more blue skies than gray. No matter how the whistle blows or doesn’t.
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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