Riding high on their second three-game winning streak of the season, the San Antonio Spurs came into to Detroit to face a vastly improved Pistons squad that beat them pretty soundly in Austin a month ago. It seemed like they’d have a chance with no Cade Cunningham and if their league-leading March offense continued to shine, but unfortunately, they came back down to earth with a horrible second quarter in which they only hit two field goals, and that ended up being too big of a hole to dig out of on the way to a 96-122 loss.

The Pistons hit their first three shots, but the Spurs kept pace early thanks to Devin Vassell hitting three early threes. In fact, the Spurs first four field goals were threes as they led 12-11 five minutes in. Overall, he had 11 of their first 14 points, but everyone else struggled to score, and the Spurs found themselves behind 20-14 a few minutes later while struggling to keep the Pistons off the free throw line. Blake Wesley came in off the bench to briefly break the ice with five straight points, but otherwise they just couldn’t keep up and were down 22-30 at the end of the first quarter.

Sandro Mamukelashvili hit a three to open the second quarter, but that would be the Spurs’ only field goal for the next 11 minutes until a Vassell lay-up with 31 seconds left in the half, in large part due to struggling to find good looks against the Pistons’ smothering defense and often having to settle for desperation threes at the end of the shot clock. Their only other points in between came from the free throw line (six for Harrison Barnes, one from Stephon Castle), and they found themselves down 34-60 after a nightmarish first half.

Detroit scored the first four points of the second half to stretch the lead to 30 before the Spurs’ offense finally woke up, led by 15 points from Castle in the quarter after he failed to hit a shot in the first half. His effort and lack of fear attacking the Pistons’ interior defense helped lift up the rest of the team’s effort on both ends. They kept on chipping away, getting as close as 15, but the Pistons, especially Marcus Sasser, always had just enough of an answer to prevent any big runs, and the Spurs were still down by 19, 69-88 heading into the final frame.

For perhaps the first time all night, both teams were fully engaged at the same time to start the fourth quarter, but of course that meant they mostly played even, so the Spurs couldn’t put any more of dent in the Pistons’ lead to truly threaten a comeback. It was a much more physical quarter with both teams in the bonus by midway through. With both teams mostly trading points, Coach Johnson waved the white flag at the four-minute Mark and began emptying the bench. The Spurs offense was bound to come back to earth someday, and Detroit had the defense to make it happen.

Game Notes

• Usually if a team has more made threes than twos, that would mean they’re red hot and would be a good thing, but not when it’s the opposite. The Spurs only hit 10-45 shots (22.2%) in the first half, 6-25 of which were from three. As previously mentioned, a lot of that was credit to the Pistons’ stiffing defense, but the Spurs themselves allowed them to get in their heads and actually passed up some decent chances in the paint for three-pointers. The Spurs were better in the second half but still finished the game with putrid shooting percentages of 36.3% from the field, 31.8% from three.
• Bench production was another big difference in this game. Sasser was the Pistons’ leading scorer with 27 points off the bench, and overall, Detroit got 60 points from its second unit. Meanwhile, the Spurs only got 37 points from the bench, led by Mamu’s 11 and Keldon Johnson’s 10. Jeremy Sochan only had 2 points in just 15 minutes, and it’s not clear if his ineffectiveness is this game is why his minutes were so low, if it was one of Coach Johnson’s rotation quirks that just happens sometimes, or if he was going with more size by playing Mamu and Bismack Biyombo more. Regardless, nothing worked well for a usually strong second unit tonight.
• The starters weren’t much better than the bench. No one outside of Vassell (26 points, 6-12 from three) and Castle (19 points, 7-15 from the field) had anything going all night. Chris Paul was basically a no-show with 3 points and 3 assists in 21 minutes, and the outside stroke just wasn’t there for Barnes as he finished just 1-9 from the field (but still had 9 points thanks to those six free throws that helped save the Spurs from a an even bigger disaster in the second quarter). Somewhat surprisingly, Barnes actually seemed a little intimidated out there, passing up several driving lay-up attempts back out for threes instead of finishing the play. He just wasn’t his usual self in this one.

Play of the Game

Vassell and Castle (and to a lesser extent, Mamu) were the only Spurs who played well tonight, so here’s the former feeding the latter in transition as they attempted to make it a game in the third quarter.

Up next: Thursday at Cleveland Cavaliers

The Spurs will end their Eastern Conference road trip against a Cavs team that has struggled a bit in recent weeks but is still leading their conference by a nearly insurmountable five games this late in the season,