NEW YORK — In the time since the Detroit Pistons last won a playoff game, three teams — the Boston Celtics, Golden State Warriors and Miami Heat — had won more than 100.
It was May 26, 2008 when the Pistons tied the Eastern Conference finals at two games apiece, only to lose the next two games to the eventual champion Celtics. Three first-round sweeps and two five-year playoff droughts later, that Game 4 win was still the last postseason victory the franchise had enjoyed.
Detroit’s 17-year drought, spanning 15 straight losses, finally came to an end on Monday with a 100-94 victory in Game 2 of its first round series with New York at Madison Square Garden. The Pistons blew a second-half lead (a bigger one) for the second straight game, but got a go-ahead 3 from Dennis Schröder with 56.2 seconds left and held on for the victory.
Cade Cunningham led the way with 33 points and 12 rebounds, and the Pistons held the Knicks’ fifth-ranked offense to less than a point per possession.
Here are some notes, quotes, numbers and film as the Pistons evened the series and took home-court advantage away from the Knicks:
1. Pistons almost give another one away
After a fourth-quarter meltdown in Game 1, the Pistons saw another lead disappear on Monday. They led by 15 midway through the third quarter and by 13 with seven minutes left in the fourth. Then they had as many turnovers (two) as points (two) over their next eight possessions.
On the other end of the floor, they committed three bad fouls. Both Amen Thompson and Tobias Harris bit on Jalen Brunson pump fakes, and Cunningham committed a needless foul in the backcourt.
The Knicks came back again and the Garden was ready to explode for the second time in three days. But unlike Game 1, New York never took the lead in the fourth. And as soon as they tied the game, the Pistons responded.
While they blew that 15-point lead, it still matters that they had it. The Pistons provided some assistance with the bad fouls and turnovers, but the Knicks had to work for that comeback.
Big leads matter, and teams are now 841-113 (.882) in games they led by 15 points or more this season. Conversely, the Knicks are 1-18 after trailing by 15 points or more.
2. The Pistons are targeting Jalen Brunson
The two games in this series were the 25th and 26th playoff contests that Jalen Brunson has played with the Knicks. You would think, given his issues on defense and the way playoff basketball goes, that he would have been the target of countless ball screens over the past two years.
But, according to Second Spectrum tracking, only once (Game 5 of the conference semis vs. Miami in 2023) in those previous 24 games had Brunson been the screener’s defender on more than 12 ball screens. For whatever reason, New York opponents haven’t targeted Brunson as much as they could.
The Pistons, however, have decided to make him work. In Game 1, the player Brunson was guarding set 16 ball screens. And in Game 2, he set 14. The only players who’ve been the screener’s defender for more ball screens in this series are Jalen Duren and Karl-Anthony Towns, the two starting centers.
The strategy has paid off, with Detroit having scored 1.4 points per chance when they’ve put Brunson into the action. That was the highest such mark among 34 players who had defended at least 20 ball screens in these playoffs through the first game of Monday’s doubleheader.
Cunningham has been the ballhandler for 24 of those 30 ball screens. The Knicks’ game plan has been for Brunson to hedge those screens and recover back to his man. But he often hasn’t been able to hold Cunningham up at all, and the Pistons’ star has gotten some clean looks at the basket with that action.
In Game 2, there was an open pull-up from the right wing…
And a short floater in the lane…
3. Knicks break down in a big moment
Schröder has been the ballhandler for just four of those screens targeting Brunson, but one of those four was the one that freed him up for the game-winning shot on Monday.
The Knicks had come all the way back from 15 points down, tying the game on a Josh Hart dunk with 1:15 left. The Pistons got the ball up the floor quickly, but after Cunningham got rid of it, OG Anunoby denied a return pass.
Brunson switched off of Schröder when Tobias Harris got him the ball, so Harris came back with a ball screen. There was hardly any contact, but Hart decided to switch onto Harris, and Brunson was too slow to react, allowing Schröder to step into an open look …
It was a brutal miscommunication between Hart and Brunson.
“It’s both of us,” Brunson said afterward. “It’s something that shouldn’t happen, especially between me and him. We’ve known each other too long to mess that up.”
And it was a huge shot from the Pistons’ 12-year veteran, who finished with 20 points off the bench, shooting 6-for-10 overall and 3-for-5 on 3-pointers.
“He’s just fearless,” Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said of Schröder. “There’s no moment, there’s no crowd, there’s no noise that’s too big, that’s going to rattle him.
“A lot of people in that situation don’t have the courage. He’s got the courage to take big shots and make them.”
4. Two to the ball creates opportunities
When the bigs have screened in the series, both defenses have reacted by putting two on the ball in an effort to get it out of the hands of the opponents’ best player.
That strategy can create opportunities for the offense on the weak side of the floor and on the glass.
On the Pistons’ first possession of the game, Karl-Anthony Towns blitzed a pick-and-roll. That forced Cunningham to give up the ball, but also allowed Jalen Duren to get rebounding position for the first points of the night.
Duren getting rebounding position is a great thing. Duren handling the ball is less so. And at the end of the Knicks’ fourth-quarter comeback, he was the open man after setting a screen for Schröder. But he tried to put the ball on the floor and was immediately stripped of it.
It’s a dynamic that’s going to play out for the rest of this series. Both Brunson and Cunningham will sometimes wait out the double-team and then attack their initial defender, but more often a big possession will come down to what others do with the ball in their hands.
5. Towns goes quiet
Brunson was not at his best Game 2, sometimes making some bad/rushed decisions when he didn’t have clean shots or lanes to the basket. He still scored a game-high 37 points.
Towns had 10, with none of them coming in the second half.
Harris was again the Pistons’ primary defender on the Knicks big man. And Towns again took advantage of the size discrepancy, posting up Harris for a couple of buckets in the first half.
But he didn’t make a shot after halftime. He took only three of them, mostly because Brunson registered a second-half usage rate of 46%, his second highest second-half usage rate of the season.
It’s the issue with the Knicks’ offense, which scored less than a point per possession for just the third time this season. It can get Brunson-heavy, making it tough for a player like Towns, who doesn’t handle the ball or move off of it as much as Mikal Bridges, to find his shots.
Maybe he’ll find more in Game 3 on Thursday (7 p.m. ET, TNT).
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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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