The Detroit Pistons roster a bunch of rowdy youths fresh to a playoff atmosphere, with all that entails—good and bad. They don't know what they don't know, which is often a successful mindset: Many a game has been lost by knowing you're supposed to lose it, and many a game won by the weightlessness of happy ignorance. Expectations, too, can be a burden. But gravity-free hoopage only lasts so long. Eventually, especially on the road, the noise builds and the pressure increases and more seasoned opponents are braced against wilting, and suddenly, unawareness of "what's supposed to happen" stops working, because the thing starts happening anyway. Over a 21-0 fourth-quarter run that led to a 123-112 New York victory, the Knicks offered the Pistons a corrective for the first three quarters, a demonstration of postseason basketball's unpredictability, and a lesson that not all 48 minutes are created equal.
The Knicks' defensive strategy was obvious from the get-go: make life difficult for Cade Cunningham. The Pistons have a dearth of ways to beat teams, and the Knicks were intent with shutting down their 26-ppg primary weapon, with OG Anunoby getting frequent help from Karl-Anthony Towns whenever Cunningham broke through on a screen. But Cunningham was generally content with passing out of pressure, because his mates were hitting their shots. Tobias Harris, Tim Hardaway Jr., and Malik Beasley—the veterans on the team, probably not coincidentally—were 20-of-33 from the field after three quarters, and hitting better than 50 percent of their threes.
Detroit carried an eight-point lead into the fourth, when the pressure began to tell—the Knicks' pressure defensively, and perhaps the nerves of closing out a playoff game. The quarter started badly for the Pistons, if you believe in omens: a five-second violation on the inbounds. On the next possession, a shot-clock violation. Two possessions later, Ausar Thompson missed a wide-open dunk. These were no longer the cool, collected Pistons of the first three quarters, taking advantage of every opportunity. These looked like—well, like kids finally bending under the weight of the moment. "For the majority of it, we did a really good job staying composed out there," Harris said afterward, leaving unsaid what happened in the rest.
But the score still reflected a Pistons lead, which was eight points with 9:16 to go. That evaporated like isopropyl alcohol. In the ensuing four and a half minutes, the Knicks scored 21 unanswered points to put away the upstart Detroiters.
They did it with a two-point-guard lineup, Jalen Brunson shaking off his early cold shooting to finish with a game-high 34, and Cam Payne having the quarter of his life, scoring nine during the run en route to 14 points in his 15 minutes of action. The two alternated buckets, mixed in with a couple Josh Hart layups, and before the Pistons knew it, their 98-90 lead had become 111-98, Knicks.
"Defensively is where we made that run,” Hart insisted, and he's right. The Knicks' continued commitment to forcing the ball away from Cunningham finally paid off, with the Harris-Hardaway-Beasley trio combining to hit just two shots in the fourth. Cunningham did start to get his counting numbers, which perhaps hints that J.B. Bickerstaff may have some tricks up his sleeve. A series is about counter-moves, and counter-punches. "Playoff basketball is about how you respond," said Harris, one of the Pistons with firsthand experience. How the Pistons come out in Game 2 will go a long way toward determining if they find the stage lights too hot, or just right.
