[Highlight] The Detroit Pistons defeat the Oklahoma City Thunder 124-116. Detroit is now 19-7 against teams that are .500 or better this season, which leads the NBA.
On another note, I am sick and tired of these western conference teams having random guys off the bench hitting 3s when we can barely find a starter that can.
That’s that dang o’ blasted Presti. Tell ya hu’whut.
To be fair that was us too before the all star break, had multiple games shooting like 20% as a team
I still have nightmares about Alex Caruso in that Christmas game against the Spurs.
2-for-12 that man made my Christmas so sad lmao
That’s just OKC. They have like 15 rotation caliber players.
And they have 6 more first round picks coming up in the next 2 drafts.
At least the clippers aren’t a bottom 3 team like they started the year on.
I really hope that clippers pick is out of the top 7
Presti will somehow find another JDub at 12th
Ehhh we won’t get the Jazz pick sadly. So only the Clippers and the 76ers this draft. We really are poor…
There is still a chance that 76ers may choke. Clippers seems much more unlikely, unfortunately.
Plus hopefully adding Sorber next year to the rotation.
I am tired of these people making fun of my giant hand. The first such incident occured in 1976
In OKCs case that’s because Presti own half the first round and they got McCain for essentially a ham sandwich. Idk how they hang his name in the rafters (like do you list wins like they do for coaches), but it will be more than well earned.
they should list the sga trade details on the banner (ofc it’ll never happen but i wish)
That and drafting 3 MVPs in consecutive drafts
Crazy but the foundation of the championship doesn’t come from any trades involving the big 3… it’s from the serge trade lol
Ibaka > Oladipo/Sabonis > Paul George > SGA&JDub
KD > nothing lol
Westbrook > Chris Paul / picks > Nicola Topic
Harden > Steven Adams > Kenrich Williams
Damn, KD really left no legacy in OKC.
Well, you guys didn’t really go get a shooter at the deadline when it was your biggest weakness. I mean, you got Huerter in the worst shooting season of his career at the deadline and (checks notes) haven’t played him since the all-star break. So there’s that?
My question is what’s going to happen in the playoffs when a shooting-weak team tries to play Ausar big minutes? Holland played huge in the loss to the Spurs the other night, but can he be the nightly spark plug?
Chile, Huert Dawg literally played two weeks against the Raptors!
what about Duncan Robinson?
None of your white shooters doing the job?
WTH happened to Malik Beasley?
I bet hes saying the same thing
Y’all could have gone for the likes of Naji Marshall/Sadiq Bey or hell even Lauri or Giannis at 4 with coby white/monk kind of scorer st 2. But yall didn’t. This year was your shot to create the window with some big move but I’m sorry, y’all still can’t compete with the team coming out of the west.
We def dont way saddiq bey back lmao. Dude refused to play his role of shooting 3s.
Neither can we
Just don’t look at the Thunder’s lineup for tonight
Yea imagine if they lost to an injured thunder team. God that would be so embarrassing.
Yeah haha. That’s gotta be real embarrassing……
(I’m trying to forget the last game Spurs vs Thunder)
why? the Spurs won
barely and the thunder sat almost everyone
I mean injuries are part of the game. Thunder fans should know first hand its the reason you won in the finals.
Still lost 4 times
We still beat them by more than Detroit did lol
To be fair the Cavs had to face Holmgremlin and Hartreboundinstein.
Can only beat whoever is in front of you
Cya Friday
My issue here is because I think the stats kind of disingenuous, I have no issue with the Pistons feeling good winning this game
I said this to someone else in this thread already, but if you take away this win the pistons are still 18-7 against >.500 teams, so I’d disagree that it’s disingenuous. The point is the pistons beat good teams
The Knicks shouldn’t count either 💀💀💀
No true Scotsman winning opponent
chip on the shoulder just getting bigger and bigger…
Just starting my comment by saying im a pistons fan. But the guy has a point and ive been watching a lot of the games closely this year. A lot of the good teams we played so far this year were often missing or sitting key players. Im worried Our record may be slightly inflated due to that
Ultimately, this doesn’t really matter in the big picture. Every team in the league plays an 82 game schedule. Injuries happen. Every team has played games where their opponents were hurt.
This is kind of like what happened in the NFL this past season when people said the Patriots played a super weak schedule. Yeah, that’s true, but they still have to win the games and can only play who they’re scheduled against.
I’m a Thunder fan, but I would assume after the last few years, the goal for the Pistons coming into this year was to improve and have an excellent season (which they’ve done so far) and make a deeper playoff run to hopefully at least the conference finals, which they are also favored to do.
The goal is to continue to win and build, which the Pistons are doing.
It does matter in the big picture… these teams are sitting these players so they can ensure they are healthy in the games that matter come playoff time…in the playoffs the pistons wont be playing the nuggets without Jokic, the knicks without hart or without Anunoby and KAT. The celtics will have Tatum back. Not to mention this win over the Thunder they were missing 5 of 6 of their top scorers. All of a sudden… its looking like most of the pistons ‘big’ wins came over incomplete rosters. And when they play the full roster like monday against Wemby they lose
Im not trying to hate im just saying we should temper our expectations back to reality a little bit. Like im seeing pistons fans going around commenting ‘ECF runs through Detroit’ and that we are gonna win the whole thing this year, and we havent even won a playoff series since like 2008. Lets focus on winning a playoff series first before everyone goes all willy nilly and sets ourselves up to get clowned on
The Pistons have also won multiple games without Harris, Duren, Cade, Robinson, Stew and Holland who are all very important players to different degrees obviously. My point is, it all evens out in the end, a win is a win.
Okay but the Pistons winning against, for example, the Nuggets when Jokic didnt play in their first meeting of the year isnt quite the same thing as the pistons winning against shit teams without Ron holland or Tobias. Knicks were missing multiple key pieces in multiple matchups, Thunder only had 20% of its starting roster. Just a pattern ive been noticing that a lot of our games against massive opponents with winning records, we have had the advantage a lot of the time due to them missing superstar caliber players
Right but didn’t we beat them with Jokic a week or two later? And most recently we beat a healthy Knicks team without Duren or Stewart. It seems like you’re noticing bad things without acknowledging the good things…the season has natural ebbs and flows. This season doesn’t seem particularly lucky or unlucky to me, just a normal up and down.
Im not saying its been lucky or unlucky either. I am simply stating that a lot of our wins against ‘top tier’ teams have been with those teams missing all star caliber players while we are basically full strength or missing a rotation guy. We havent won a playoff series since 2008 and yet i see people saying we are gonna win the chip or that ECF runs thru Detroit.. uhhh lets win a playoff series first?
Okay so theres 2 good wins against full strength squads and the rest have been when they are missing their all stars
And we beat the nuggets by 1 point when they had Jokic
Every team is gonna get a few weird games when you look at stats like this
Unless you point to the pistons being a huge outlier (which obviously this 1 game doesn’t show) in terms of playing 500+ teams missing a lot of guys.
So the stat is real even if this game isn’t fully “reflective” of that
Well then I’d probably pick a different game to exemplify it. Like if you’re talking about beating .500 teams I wouldn’t show that with a game where the other team only played 1 starter
Why? are they not over .500 anymore?
ah I see youre new to this game. wins only count when they say they count.
I mean if they were like that all year probably not
Tired of people acting like these players aren’t all professional basketball players. In the 3 point era even injured teams have a chance. Especially when they’re the deepest team in the NBA
I mean, Brooks Barnhizer probably shouldn’t be, and he got 22 mins tonight.
Found the Pats fan
[deleted]
look at your username
Goddamn bro relax. You got so pressed that you made the least original joke of all time. That’s crazy
i’m just a dumb okie, but aren’t jokes supposed to be funny?
Lmao you are so angry. Wouldn’t expect less from a nuggets and pats fan
But you’re the one that couldn’t understand the original joke?
I kid. The ‘these are all professional players’ reminded me of the epic r/nfl showdown between pats and rams fans this season lol. Your username also kinda fit lol
Pats? I’m from NC
Yeah, no connection there.
Lol, lmao even.
Disregard the teams we beat with all the starters out earlier in the year.
Beat the okc blue in a tight game wow
Nah, these dude’s play tough. 😭
I’m not saying that, big dawg. Just that they aren’t a G League team. Learn to take a compliment.
It was a compliment to our bench bud
Nobody said that at all, holy insecurity
While having Tobias Harris in the roster
To buy a series is a good player. Y’all need to stop disrespecting him. He’s not a superstar, but he is definitely a good player. Y’all act like he’s complete trash
No dishrespek to the Pistons but this iteration of the Thunder ain’t a .500 team.
You’re probably not wrong but take away that win and we are still 18-7 against >.500 teams
tbf, since Shai sat out with the abdomen injury, OKC is 5-4 including this loss.
Fair, but I don’t think we’ve been out both Chet and IHart. Then our Big Mormon was injured in game. I think we had two guys total over 6’5”
Rip the Super Soaker. He’s with Elohim now (in physio).
I feel like they could be.
In the East probably, in the West we would be lucky to beat the Jazz consistently. And those dude are actively trying to throw games lol
The Jazz are worse than most eastern teams, I’m not quite sure the point you’re trying to make, here
Well if you don’t understand the concept of a joke then I can’t help you. Just poking a little fun at the Eastern conference being weaker than the west. Which is actually supported by the Jazz’s win percentage being better against eastern conference teams this season compared to the west.
Might want to try getting healthier then
Stellar observation. I don’t know what we would do without you, captain.
Its pretty remarkable how unlucky you’ve been with health.
I always think that great coaching and good depth with at least 1 high-level starting player is generally enough to be competitive on the average night. That’s why Boston has remained afloat.
OKC is obviously the top-tier of the NBA, so it doesn’t surprise me at all you guys are competitive with nearly any set of players.
/r/nba is one of the last places I’d ever expect a /r/thanksimcured moment
Definitely, yesterday and today showed me that OKC without its stars is easily top 5 in the east
Dropoff from the top 3 is pretty steep tbh.
I think if we had Stew this game wouldn’t have been as close, but yeah, OKC in any configuration is elite.
Yea Detroit is nice, you guys, Cleveland, and still New York are my top 3.
top 8 in the eastern conference :/
They’ll take it, but the narrative doesn’t match what the title is pushing. We’ll in a couple months.
The game was over the moment Wiggins fouled Duncan Robinson
Huge momentum killer
Wiggins fouling him on a three was such a backbreaker, completely shifted the momentum.
How does one look up results for this sort of query? Specifically I would like to know what OKC, Spurs, Denver, Rockets, Wolves, Celtics records are against the >.500 teams.
ESPN has a stat page called NBA Standings - 2025-26 Expanded
You can see that kind of stuff.
Pistons: 19-7
OKC: 19-11
Spurs: 21-11
Denver: 13-13
Rockets: 15-10
TWolves: 12-14
Celtics: 18-12
Reporting this for hate speech
Nah. This is better than I thought. We started 0-7 against .500+ teams iirc.
Thank you very much!
Detroit playing in the east helps them so much😭 just look at the amount of games they’ve played against “top” competition vs the 1 & 2 in the west
Yeah there’s no doubt being in the east helps right now.
It does paint a certain picture at that level of volume though.
That’s a weird conclusion to draw from that stat lol. Celtics (#2 in the East) and Thunder have the same exact number of games, so pretty obvious it’s not an East vs. West issue.
You can look up the team records vs whatever conference you want
vs Western teams:
Spurs: 26-13
OKC: 32-9
Pistons: 14-7
vs Eastern Teams:
Spurs: 15-3
OKC: 13-5
Pistons: 28-7
You can look it up on ESPN, standings, and expanded and it will show you records against >.500 and <.500 teams.
Thank you!
No problem!
NBA has it in their standings under Margins.
Incidentally the NBA says they are 21-8, not 19-7.
Even if we don’t count this game because of the injuries OKC suffered there still 18-7 against winning teams
do we also remove losses where pistons players were injured to get true parity?
Pistons are legit
Is there any reason I should believe in them? To me this team is screaming 2025 cavs/2021 jazz/2018 raptors
Believe in the Pistons in what sense? Two seasons ago, the Pistons won 14 games. Last season, they made the playoffs and lost a tough first round series to the Knicks. This year, they currently have the best record in the league. The growth and improvement has been impressive to watch.
Yes, you should believe in them, and they’re legit a good team. Does that mean they’re going to win the championship? Maybe not, but if the goal is to keep improving, the Pistons have certainly done that and should be applauded.
Hmm, sounds familiar… Where have I seen this before? 🤔
Regular season ball is way different than playoff ball. So many teams are great in regular season and absolutely fizzle before even they make it to the ship. The thunder 2 years ago had a better team than the pistons this year and they fizzled in round 2. They need experience
I mean last year was the OKC core’s 2nd year in the playoffs, and this will be the Pistons’s core’s 2nd year in the playoffs
Sure but okcs core is a step above pistons core plus the surrounding cast in okc was much better than Detroit rn
They are, but also look at whom we rolled out.
Feel bad for fans that bought tickets weeks ago to see the #1 seeds go at it.
I still enjoyed it
Getting downvoted for fact
Every single one of you who acted like Cade is sum bum because of one game can go the nearest 7-11 and buy the grosset beverage possible
Castle is a dog and the Spurs are a title contender but to act like Himotthy sucks is genuinely embarrassing
Also shout out to/ fuck the people who somehow tired to denigrate Luka by comparing him to Cade? And every single person who got offended by Luka being compared to be 3rd place in the MVP vote
Detroit vs Everybody
Here’s hoping we meet in the playoffs.
I’m a Luka hater and anyone that compares cade to Luka is dumb. There is a decent sized gap between Luka and cade. Also cade is only 3rd in MVP right now because of injuries to other people lol.
Cade clears 🤷🏾♂️ turns out in basketball there’s something called defense thats pretty important to winning games.
why isnt Luka 3rd in MVP
Mvp voting hasn’t happened yet lol. Luka averaging 7 more points on somehow better shooting splits while grabbing 2 more rebounds and only 1 less assist per game. Luka is the better player and I’m not even a fan of his
you just said Cade was 3rd in MVP
why isnt it Luka
Oh wait so offense is all that matters? So wemby is trash right?
Winning teams merchants
Detroit vs San Antonio final would be fun.
good shit
Wow. Pistons are no joke
As long as the lack of shooting doesn’t catch up to us in the playoffs (it probably will) it’s gonna be a very fun finals this year. I’m not looking forward to dealing with either Chet or Wemby’s big asses locking down the paint either way.
Bro looking past the East two months before the playoffs even start is crazy.
The Celtics could be a problem if Tatum comes back.
The Knicks could be a problem if they actually flip that playoff switch.
The Cavs could be a problem with their new look.
And don’t sleep on the Hornets, we’ve been playing good ball lately, we’ve got one of the best starting fives in the league, and we just added Coby White to the bench.
I could definitely see us stealing a series if a team slips up for a game or two.
Man I literally said the shooting is probably gonna come back to bite us.
I think it’s pretty clear that I meant if we can overcome the poor shooting and get there anyways, it will be a fun series
I understand that now but it comes off like you assume you’re just gonna be there come June.
Anything can happen, teams can play better, injuries can happen, or your team just underperforms. Right now it looks like you can make the ECF but then again, last year I thought it would’ve been Celtics vs Cavs.
you had me until you said Hornets
Since January, we’ve been a top team on both ends of the floor. You can call it a hot streak, but we’ve beaten good teams while not even playing our best, pulling off wins with disciplined defense even when the offense isn’t working. If anything, that 3–14 start looks like the outlier. We’re still not at full strength yet, Colby White is finally healthy after we traded for him and he’s still trying to find his rhythm within our offense. We could have a very good end to the season, and barring any injuries, we should finish above .500.
I think if we end up going against teams like the Celtics(without Tatum), raptors, or sixers, we look at those matchups and see very winnable series.
I feel like the Celtics getting Tatum back and the the new look Cavs might give you a run for your money. Not to mention you don’t have a second offensive creator which unless you are LeBron I don’t see a path as clear in the post season
I would say Friday will be very telling, but it kinda comes back to the question of overcoming a lack of perimeter shooting in a playoff series.
If I turn my analytical brain on a little bit I think the pistons are probably still favorites against any team in the east without an elite defensive big, but who knows.
Hold your horses, How about we focus on winning a playoff series first man
“As long as the lack of shooting doesn’t catch up to us in the playoffs (it probably will)”
We were down four starters and we almost came back and won…
Tbf, every Pistons win involves a late comeback by the other team it feels like lmao.
*8 rotation players
We were down an actually good defensive player so, no excuses
We were down 4 starters including reigning MVP and fmvp and also an all NBA and all defensive type player and also down a guy who could have won mip this year and also an all defensive caliber big who’s our defensive anchor
You are beyond delusional.
Thunder Floppers lost. Fact.
fuck no please god no
Fine OKC for tanking. Don’t they know they can just medicate?
Wow pistons don’t suck anymore
just started watching again?
Pistons beat whatever is left from the Thunder.
Still, a good game, hopefully both teams will be able to reach the playoffs healthy.
East playoffs gonna be fun
Big deal. Thunder were missing their entire starting lineup.
Oh boys my bet for the Pistons to win it all is loooking good
The spurs are a bunch of frauds 😭
crazy win, i’ve gotta see the full highlights
Teams dapping up each other after games is lame. Bring back hatred
Dont yall think we have beef with enough teams already?
Honestly nothing either way to warrant hate tonight. The Pistons have had enough games where hatred is warranted and they aren’t getting chummy afterwards. Next matchup should be different between these two teams
The public sees 19-7 against winning teams and assumes Detroit is an elite powerhouse. The terminal sees a team that is barely hovering above .500 (26-23) in the First 3 Minutes. Their early offensive efficiency is entirely average. They win these games by grinding out 4th-quarter variance, not by executing dominant opening scripts. Don’t let a full-game headline trick you into overvaluing their early pace proxies.
I can’t prove it but this feels AI generated
Funny enough, we thought same thing with this post (procedural square bracket header is the new em dash?). To actually reach humans we are ironically finding the need to AB test things that we think are AI with more AI as an intermediary, not necessary the generation piece but the rote arrangement of what I would say are proprietary data that we obtained on our own (not copy pasting a video or other obvious source), inputs and editing before we officially post anything.
I mean - no shai, Jwill, Chet,the other big white dude. Team was gutted
Doesn’t matter without MVP SGA!
Why is it still fashionable to hate the Thunder? Alright, the Detroit Pistons surpassed OKC, so why do you still care about their place in the standings? Detroit is king now, so just be happy about that. It’s not like they’re going to win the championship again anyway. A team hasn’t won back-to-back championships since the 2017 and 2018 Warriors, so it’s unlikely that the Thunder will win again this year.
Other than SGA being a BIT of a foul merchant and Dort being a terrorist, the team is fine. It’s just that their fanbase is insufferable. All 40 of them that are literate show up here to remind everyone why they’re 50th in education.
Stilll not winning a championship LMFAO
Which fan are you?
I always see Pistons as a poverty franchise thats why I made this comment. They will choke on a high pressure situation. Thats for sure 10000000%
Thunder Floppers lost again. Good. Their fans will come up with 100 excuses but at the end of the day a loss is a loss.
Okc without SGA btw
Without 4 starters
And they only won by that much???
Yeah thats what im saying, OKC was running a skeleton crew
They were hitting hella threes. Pistons perimeter defense was super lacking tonight
*37% from 3 for the game btw.
We were out:
SGA
JDub
IHart
Chet
Caruso
Ajay
…and then injured in this game were:
Isaiah Joe
Brandon Carlson
Duren just feasted on us
without sga, jdub, ajay, chet, ihart or caruso
Celtics are 20-12.
That’s 73% vs 62%
That’s….. worse.
Holy shit Pistons fans actually think they are something 🤣 would be very surprised if they make it out of whatever the Easy is