After a rough first game and a half, the Detroit Pistons are finally showing the Magic what got them the top seed in the first place. They dropped Game 1 of their series to Orlando. The first half of Game 2 looked about as bad. But in the second half, the Pistons stepped on the court and took it to their first round opponents. Detroit fans breathed a sigh of relief.<\/p>\n
When a team finishes first in their conference, there’s an expectation that goes with it. Their fans quite reasonably assume that their crew is going to do well in the playoffs. At the very least, they should be able to take down an eighth-seeded play-in team.<\/p>\n
That’s the exact situation Detroit is in. The Pistons went into these playoffs as the number one seed in the Eastern Conference<\/a>. Their opponents are the Magic, who fought their way through the Play-In Tournament to get the eighth seed. The problem is that the series didn’t exactly start the way the Pistons or their fans would have wanted.<\/p>\n Orlando showed up to play in Game 1, defeating the Pistons 112-101. The No. 1 seed losing the first game of the series on their home court doesn’t set a great tone for the playoffs. Well, it did for the Magic, at least.<\/p>\n Two things happened in that loss. A big one was the Magic playing solid basketball with a more complete team. Injuries played a huge role in Orlando’s season. Franz Wagner<\/a> was hurt way back in December and spent a huge chunk of the season on the bench. His absence made the campaign harder for the Magic, but his return made them a bigger threat in the playoffs.<\/p>\n More than that, the Pistons played with absolutely zero urgency to begin the series. It almost seemed like they were taking victory over the Magic for granted<\/a>. That’s a dangerous mindset at any time, particularly in the postseason.<\/p>\n That finally seemed to change in the second half of Game 2. To be fair to the Pistons, it seemed like they were trying to do better in the first as well. It just wasn’t coming together for some reason. Frankly, the Magic weren’t playing all that well in the first half, either. After the break, the Pistons turned things around and proved what made them number one.<\/p>\n By the end of the first half, the game was tied. Neither team was playing well and couldn’t find an advantage. Then, the Pistons stepped on the court for the third quarter and took the game over. Detroit won the third by a score of 38-16, then went on to win the game 98-83.<\/p>\n Using modern NBA standards, it was a low-scoring affair. Still, it was a better look for Detroit. Unlike the first game, the entire team came to play. Cade Cunningham<\/a> scored a team-high 27 points, but five other Pistons finished in double figures. Both Cunningham and Tobias Harris<\/a> had double-doubles, with Jalen Duren<\/a> one rebound off a double-double of his own.<\/p>\n These are the Pistons fans expected to see in the playoffs, the team that owned the East. How they lost to the Magic in Game 1 remains a mystery. Maybe it was overconfidence. Maybe it was first-game butterflies. All that matters now is that they keep their winning ways.<\/p>\n \u00a9 Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a rough first game and a half, the Detroit Pistons are finally showing the Magic what got them the top seed in the first place. They dropped Game 1 of their series to Orlando. The first half of Game 2 looked about as bad. But in the second half, the Pistons stepped on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5789,"featured_media":192283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,10,62],"tags":[3965,4127,4432,343],"class_list":["post-192261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-pistons","category-nba","tag-cade-cunningham","tag-franz-wagner","tag-jalen-duren","tag-tobias-harris"],"modified_by":"Jordan Pagkalinawan","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5789"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192261"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192287,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192261\/revisions\/192287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Detroit Took the Series For Granted<\/h3>\n
The Pistons Took the Magic to School<\/h3>\n