The Pistons would certainly vouch for the Clippers’ authenticity, losing by 32 after trailing by 43 when they met three weeks ago in Los Angeles.
So it was about as daunting a way to start the toughest stretch of schedule the Pistons are likely to face all season. And Stan Van Gundy couldn’t have scripted a better way to win than dominate from the start, absorb the full force of the Clippers’ fury to see an 18-point lead turn into a two-point deficit, then regroup and finish with a knockout punch to win 108-97.
“We approach every game like we did tonight, man, we’re going to be tough to beat,” Marcus Morris said.
The last time the Pistons beat the Clippers, Morris was at Kansas and Tobias Harris at Tennessee. Andre Drummond and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope were both in high school. It was November 2010. The Pistons had lost their last 11 meetings with the Clippers.
But the only one that really mattered to them was their humiliation at Staples Center in front of Pistons owner Tom Gores on Nov. 7.
“That was embarrassing for everybody,” Van Gundy said. “I know our guys wanted to put forth a lot better effort. What we talked about is, we’re going to win this game but that it was going to be very, very hard. There wasn’t going to be anything easy about it.”
“We got embarrassed out there in LA and we wanted to return the favor,” Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said. “So we came out aggressive and played aggressive throughout the whole game.”
The Pistons scored 35 points in the first quarter, but an 18-point lead was sliced to nine by halftime. Caldwell-Pope opened the second half with consecutive triples to push it back to 15 and the Pistons were up 73-56 with 6:25 left in the third quarter after an Andre Drummond lob dunk from Caldwell-Pope – one of his career-best 10 assists.
The Clippers called timeout and for the next six minutes unloaded all of their arsenal. They scored on 10 straight possessions, amassing 24 points, and J.J. Redick finished the quarter with 10 points in 1:27. The Pistons led by two after three quarters and suddenly trailed by two on Raymond Felton’s layup with 10 minutes left.
Missing three of their top 10 players – Reggie Jackson remains out, Reggie Bullock will miss significant time with a left knee meniscus tear and Stanley Johnson was suspended one game for a violation of team rules – and getting wobbled by a team playing with the Clippers’ boundless confidence … well, things looked bleak.
But Darrun Hilliard, in the rotation with Bullock and Johnson unavailable, tied the game at 84 and then put the Pistons ahead for good with a three-point play. That sparked a 15-2 run capped by Caldwell-Pope’s fourth triple of the game with 5:14 left.
Game, set, match.
“You know what you’re going to get from them. They’re going to keep fighting each and every possession. They’re going to keep coming after you,” Drummond said. “We stuck with it. We tried to force them to shoot tough shots and when we got the ball we tried to capitalize on misses.”
Drummond didn’t have the crushing win over DeAndre Jordan that he recorded two nights earlier in dominating Miami’s Hassan Whiteside, but his 16 points on 8 of 11 shooting plus 10 boards – accomplished in just 26 minutes due to being limited to eight first-half minutes with foul trouble – were a big component of the win. Six Pistons finished in double figures with all starters scoring between 15 (Harris) and 17 (Morris) and six players taking between 11 and 13 shots.
Against a team holding opponents to 97 points a game, the Pistons scored 25 or more in three of the four quarters and shot 52 percent with just 10 turnovers. Best offensive game of the season?
“Especially considering the quality of opponent, the number two defense in the league,” Van Gundy said. “I thought we did a really good job.”
Now comes a murderer’s row of road games – at Oklahoma City, Charlotte, Boston and Atlanta over the next seven days, all teams in playoff position as the night began. No better way to go into it than withstanding the charge of the NBA’s team of the season’s first month.
“That’s the kind of resilience we had a year ago and we haven’t necessarily had that all the time this year,” Van Gundy said. “Now the challenge is to bring that same mindset and effort on the road. Four games, seven days, against all teams over .500. It’s going to be difficult.”