we send our regards.

unlike you guys, we’re proud to be in the club lol

1-2

I think our starters played like 10 games together all season lol. We got healthy at the right time.

I guess getting healthy at the right time really mattered!

But yeah baffled how this is the same team that lost to the Celtics and the first play in game.

Most bipolar team I’ve ever witnessed

When you have players with such high ceilings, you can upset teams like this. The Magic don’t have a great 82 game roster obviously, but their players have the abilities to play well enough to be the best team on any given night.

It’s literally just injuries. We just didn’t get painted as a boogeyman who the top seed was unlucky to be facing because we’ve had constant injuries for two years.

Nothing really confusing about this Magic team. They’re finally healthy and playing well at the right time. They’re exactly who we thought they were with everyone healthy.

They’re finally healthy plus this is the worst possible matchup for the Pistons.

They rely too much on Cade and his main scoring weapon is size & skill over mismatches on smaller guards since he lacks a quick first step. If you think about it, literally every playoff team in the East has at least one small guard to attack on switches. (Brunson & McBride, Donovan Mitchell, CJ, Maxey, PP, Quickley)…..

…EXCEPT the Magic. Their shortest rotation piece is 6’5 Suggs (who’s a great defender anyway) and everybody else is 6’6-6’11. So, you’re seeing a bunch of tall ass dudes throwing his shots off & they simply don’t have the on-ball creation elsewhere to compensate. On top of starting 2 non-shooters too, so Cade has even less space to work with and is lost in the trees 🌲

We were hurt for 50 of those games

All it took was a Baylor Scheierman 30 piece

You can never count anyone out against this magic team. We can easily come out and shoot 15% from 3 on Monday night. I don’t think our bench disappears on the road. We can’t lose home court. Game 4 will be massive. If we blow that, I think we lose.

83? heat fans are livid rn

I like Duren but Detroit has the exact same problem the Rockets have. You CAN NOT have a non-shooting center in a lineup with a Thompson twin. Their entire offense is nonfunctional and requires Cade to do literally everything by himself. Make all the plays, find all the reads, do all the ball handling, do most of the shooting, he has to generate EVERYTHING.

With every passing year the necessity for every player on the floor to be able to shoot the ball is increasing exponentially. Scheming around one non-shooter on offense is hard enough, doing it with two, let alone THREE is fucking impossible. Giannis might be the only dude left who can get away with a bad jumpshot and still be a superstar.

All non shooters besides Cade lol

It’s more of a match-up nightmare than anything. Duren & the rest of Detroit’s bigs/forwards are typically so physically imposing/dominant that they can clean up a barrage of misses off the glass for easy 2nd opportunity shots. They’re used to playing teams that are soft compared to them, which is most teams. The Magic are a lot of things, but they’re the rare team that is not soft/small relative to Detroit.

Detroit’s size and physicality usually - and somewhat counterintuitively - turns Cade’s relatively inefficient shooting into a huge net positive. Cade “simply” needs to put up shots, fight alongside his bigs/forwards for offensive rebounds when he misses, and shoot the occasional 3 for spacing, and that’s generally enough for the Pistons to be dominate.* With Duren/Stewart/Thompson/Holland/Cunningham cleaning up a high proportion of misses off the glass, Detroit’s median shot is of much higher expected value than most would think. And this is accomplished without exposure to 3pt variance, which is a problem that Boston has. The strategy is great.

But Detroit is vulnerable to the few teams that do have very physical bigs and wings. The teams that can & will put up a real fight for boards. And the (healthy) Magic are one such team. They have all the answers to Detroit’s defining strategy, and Detroit doesn’t really have any other (efficient) offensive schemes to counter. Maybe they can get lucky with spray and pray from the perimeter with Cade and Robinson, but that’s really not a great option.

Detroit could (should?) escape this series and go really deep in the playoffs.** But unless Detroit can win a championship this year, they’ll likely need to sign a shooting guard who can shoot the ball well at all 3 levels and who has point guard skills. Such a player would take a huge burden off Cade AND open up so many more offensive strategies for Detroit than what they currently have. They need a Nembhard to the Pacers’ Haliburton or a Kyrie to the Mavs’ Luka.

___

*Make no mistake, Cade is an elite player. Cade’s duties in Detroit’s scheme are really difficult and he makes them look very easy. Cade is obviously an elite player in this game. He’s the type of star player who can do nearly anything he’s asked to do and make it look trivial. Please don’t misinterpret my description of his roles in Detroit’s scheme to think that I am shitting on him. I absolutely am not. If anything, I am shitting on Bickerstaff for being kind of inflexible. Although roster construction is contributing to this inflexibility. They need another guard to expand the number of effective strategies that Detroit can whip out.

**This series has been somewhat reminiscent of the 1-seed Pacers’ 1st round match-up against Atlanta in 2014. Instead of Hibbert and David West getting neutralized by excessive small ball (for the era), Duren and Detroit’s frontcourt has been neutralized by one of the only teams that can match Detroit’s physicality.

That 2014 Pacers team did just barely escape round 1 in 7 games before making it to G6 of the ECF. And Hibbert’s problems back then were much more problematic than Duren’s problems now.

He’s like 22 or 23 years old, he’ll be fine.

10 days ago everyone thought Orlando was going to lose to Charlotte in the play-in.

Here we are and they’re ahead 2-1 on the 1 seed. Crazy.

Maybe the Celtics G League team are the 2nd best team in the East?

What luka Garza does to a mf

League runs through Baylor Scheierman

Celtics g league team is a better supporting cast than what Cade has

Honestly props to the Magic for sandbagging vs. us. They were 2 steps ahead

Not that every team doesn’t deal with injuries, but I think we likely were a top 4 seed if we were 50 percent healthier this year. Even when Paolo came back he moved like a slug the next 30 games and Franz missed all that time + more

I feel like people keep saying this, but the Magic won 45 games this year while the Pistons won 60.

Like, if you fancy yourselves a contender, you can’t be complaining about bad matchups against an 8-seed.

The Pistons and Magic are almost mirror teams to each other. Both defensive first hustle teams that lack shooting and are bad HC offense.

I think it’s part the other team locking in and part exhaustion

On some level it just has to be running out of gas, having to expend so much energy to close the gap doesn’t leave you a ton to try and fight for the lead with.

It takes a lot to mount a comeback.

When it comes time to actually take the lead, you can run out of steam, which is what the Pistons did. They were even too tired to fight for boards, which is what they were doing all game.

https://xkcd.com/904/

The Pistons comeback was basically all Cade. He was gassed at the end and nobody else stepped up.

The other team hits a three and their spirit breaks completely.

I feel like part of it has to be the other team snapping out of “protect the lead” mode and into “win a close game” mode.

I agree that’s the difference in the series right now

If we had Wendell Carter instead of duren I think we would be up 2-1 right now

It doesn’t even matter about coaching because the Pistons are Rockets east. There’s so many nonshooters on the Pistons, and when you have multiple players that the opponent can help off of, it just hurts your offense entirely.

Classic case of getting regular season wins because you’re playing harder than other teams, until the playoffs when everyone is playing hard and you actually have to coach.

Funny thing is you can say the same exact thing about Jamahl Mosley

He’s not a playoff coach for sure, but this Pistons team won’t go very far with this roster no matter the coach. If your 2nd best offensive option is Tobias Harris (who to his credit was decent today), you’re fucked

If you are a rust belt team who wants to succeed in the regular season, JB is your guy. Otherwise…

In this case, the Pistons also have many defensive role players who can’t shoot and are anemic in the half court, which isn’t helping matters.

People rightfully dunking on Duren but Cade was fucking terrible today too

I hear KD looking for a new team

They need a #1

Thought it was great that the Knicks wouldn’t get to stomp Toronto like they planned but this is absolute chaos

All according to plan or something

The more I watch Orlando the more I’m convinced they lost those games on purpose.

paolo was getting called anything but a child of God after that philly game

Shocked they didn’t go for him or MPJ with that Tobias. Contract

Pistons might’ve won this series with a Lauri

they switched to 3 game series now?

What Detroit needed was even less playoff experience.

Detroit’s problems are that they are inexperienced and you think the solution is a guy who has never made the playoffs before?

KD going to another team with a Thompson twin and ass offense. Would be funny

You know what? If the Knicks get kicked out of the first round I’m perfectly okay with everyone else in the Top 4 of the East getting knocked out too

But whoever is the 4 can beat the 5 since it’s close idk 🤷🏻‍♂️

Are we sure the Magic are the inferior team though…?

Magic aren’t the inferior team when it comes to talent lmaoo

Magic is a more talented team that is finally healthy. Pistons getting a tough break.

Yeah, crazy overreaction on this one. We had a full court press with Suggs, Black, and Cain on Cade all game. He put them on his back and had it to 2 with 90 seconds to go. Just no help from his teammates or coach tonight. They need more Jenkins and Cade lineups.

Always have been. I didn’t think a lot of people saw them making it past the 2nd round, but them being down to the 8th seed is surprising

Reed scored a couple of quick baskets, but he also committed 3 fouls in about 3 min. Idk if that’s just being out of rhythm for him, but he was no obstacle for Franz or Paolo like Stew and Duren have been.

Hali bounce for Paolo. Nearly shit my jorts

what the hell is a pacer all i know is yes cer

Cade bricking a 3 then falling down on his own and turning it over at the end 💀

It’s still hard to coach around your best player committing nine turnovers, on an off shooting night that did not deter him.

Dude just wait until tonight 😂

I get the logic we had a young team and Trajan wanted to see what we could do with this group at the playoffs

We have a lot of flexibility going forward to get some better pieces around Cade