Detroit Pistons' first-ever NBA Cup win delivers a playoff lesson in November

Detroit Pistons’ first-ever NBA Cup win delivers a playoff lesson in November

Posted by Admin November 13, 2024 NBA

The Detroit Pistons’ first Emirates NBA Cup game of the 2024-25 season was a rare opportunity for a young team to receive high-stakes reps outside of a playoff environment.

Before the opening tip on Wednesday, head-coach J.B. Bickerstaff expressed excitement for the team to be able to learn lessons from such an atmosphere — the closest a regular-season game can get to emulating the postseason.

“(It’s) understanding possessions matter more, turnovers matter more, rebounds, execution, all those things matter more in meaningful basketball games,” Bickerstaff said. “So this is a great opportunity for our guys to experience that against a really good basketball team who’s been through a lot of those games.  So it’ll be a great test for us to see where we are and how we learned from what happened versus Houston (on Sunday) to tonight, because you’ll see a similar style.”

The game — a thrilling, messy and bizarre 123-121 overtime win over the Miami Heat — provided plenty of lessons and ultimately was another sign that the Pistons, now 5-7 overall, are figuring some things out.

They led by 18 in the first half and by nine with just under two minutes left in the fourth. Tyler Herro proceeded to send the game into overtime, knocking down three 3-pointers en route to a 40-point night. Both sides committed mistakes in the extra period, but the Pistons did two things they’ve long struggled to do — stay more composed than the opposing team and, well, win the game.

“As a whole group, we deserved to get that win,” Tobias Harris said. “We kinda gave it away there in the fourth quarter, the end of it, but that’s something that we have to learn from, with the leads that we’ve been having, how to sustain those leads and take care of the basketball and be able to come out with a clean victory. You take any win in this league and that was a big one for us.

The Pistons opened overtime with three consecutive turnovers and trailed by three, 119-116, before Malik Beasley tied the game with a 3 with 40.9 seconds left. Herro made Miami’s final shot of the night, a hook over Beasley, with 1.9 seconds left. The Pistons tied the game at 121 in the final second, when Cunningham tossed Duren an inbounds lob for an alley-oop dunk — executing the set exactly how the coaching staff drew it up.

As mistake-prone as the Pistons were late, the biggest blunder of the night belonged to the Heat. Head coach Erik Spoelstra called a timeout they didn’t have following Duren’s dunk, leading to a technical foul and a one-point Pistons lead after Beasley knocked down the ensuing free throw. The Heat also briefly had six players on the floor, turning the ball — and the game — over to the Pistons.

Bickerstaff’s pregame words were prophetic. Turnovers mattered more, and nearly cost them the game. But the Pistons recovered with clutch shot-making and defense, holding the Heat to 4-for-11 shooting in overtime. And they got their first NBA Cup tournament win after going 0-4 last year amid a 28-game losing streak.

“That’s what it was going to take and that’s how you win in this league,” Bickerstaff said. “We impressed upon our guys the importance of this game. We wanted it to be meaningful for them. To give us experience in what things may hold in the future, to make sure that we understand what it takes to win those types of meaningful basketball games, and to get stops is the only way you’re going to be able to do it and do it consistently.

“We won, so we passed the test,” he continued. “We figured out a way, sometimes around ourselves, but we did enough to come away with the win. I’ll give our effort an ‘A,’ execution and things like that we can always improve on. But I thought we made enough plays down the stretch to help us win.”

The Pistons committed eight turnovers through the first three quarters, but outdid themselves with 11 in the fourth quarter and overtime combined. Cade Cunningham was responsible for five of the 11, including one with 21 seconds left in the fourth that gave the Heat the final possession of the period, and four more in overtime.

Still, they managed to do just enough to win. Cunningham’s final turnover of the night with 17 seconds left set up Herro’s almost-winner on the other end, but the Pistons guard’s assist to Duren ended up saving the night.

“The physicality went up, they started denying everything,” Cunningham said of the turnovers. “That was the main thing. We stopped spacing the floor as well, we clogged it up and allowed them to be physical and allowed them to crowd the ball, and we gave the ball away, and yeah.

“It was hectic. We feel great about that one. That’s a huge win. It’s a really good team, great coach over there. He always has them prepared and stuff. To come out with that win, Tim went down, to be able to grind that one out means a lot to everyone.”

Following the win, the Pistons are tied for seventh in the Eastern Conference and have the same number of wins as the No. 4 seed Indiana Pacers, who are 5-5. There’s a lot of season remaining, but they Pistons are on pace to win 34 games — a significant jump from the franchise-worst 14 wins they finished with last season.

“It’s been fun, that’s all I can really say,” Duren said. “It’s been super fun since the start, since preseason. Getting to know these guys, growing with these guys, even the guys that have been here, growing with them and continuing to get better and learn each other, it’s been great. We’ve been through a lot. For us to get some momentum is huge.”

Contact Omari Sankofa II at osankofa@freepress.com. Follow him @omarisankofa.

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