The Pistons won and that supersedes anything else with the playoff race making the turn for home. But the 88-82 decision over Oklahoma City perhaps came with residual benefits. They’d been winning games with offense over two weeks of a nine-game home stand, carrying a 5-2 record into Tuesday’s game with the Thunder. But this one they had to grind out and ultimately win with defense – and Stan Van Gundy knows that’s going to be a mandatory part of the arsenal to carry into the postseason, if the Pistons take care of business over the final seven games.
“I’m proud of them for what they did, fighting like that,” Van Gundy said. “And we’re going to need to continue to do that and at the same time play better.”
The Pistons won despite shooting 38 percent, despite turning the ball over 16 times and despite opening the fourth quarter by missing 11 of 12 shots to squander almost all of a 14-point lead. But with the game on the line, Reggie Jackson scored eight points in the last seven minutes without a turnover, Andre Drummond grabbed five huge rebounds in less than five minutes and blocked a Russell Westbrook layup attempt and the Pistons stopped Oklahoma City on four consecutive possessions after a Westbrook triple with 3:04 to play cut Detroit’s lead to 79-77.
When the Thunder scored next – on an Enes Kanter dunk off a Pistons turnover – only 16 seconds remained and the Pistons led by five.
“As a team, defensively, we played really well,” said Marcus Morris, who carried the offense with 24 points on 9 of 13 shooting. “We could definitely go back and watch the game and take some pointers from it moving forward.”
“We made it a point in shootaround today that we really need to pick up our defense,” Drummond said. “Tonight our main focus was to make Russell Westbrook make bad decisions and make him try to turn the ball over. The player that he is, he still got what he got tonight, but we came out with the win.”
What he got was 24 points, but what it took to produce them made Oklahoma City even less efficient offensively than the Pistons. The Thunder shot 38 percent, as well, but turned it over 19 times and were outscored 24-12 in points off of turnovers. And Westbrook’s 24 points required him to jack up 28 shots, making eight.
And, yes, it requires a team effort to squeeze that kind of line out of Westbrook, who might be Steph Curry’s primary challenger in the MVP race if he has one, and, yes, it helped the Pistons that Oklahoma City – all but assured of being the No. 3 seed in the West with no shot at moving up – rested both Kevin Durant and Serge Ibaka.
But the underlying cause of Westbrook’s subpar night was the fact Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was draped over him. So even with Caldwell-Pope suffering through a 3 of 16, eight-point night, well …
“He did his job,” Van Gundy said. “Took a lot out of him. We do need him to play better offensively, but he did his main job tonight.”
When the Pistons played at Oklahoma City in November, Caldwell-Pope forced Westbrook into 11 turnovers and helped get him fouled out of the game as his frustration bubbled over. Throw in the two games Caldwell-Pope blanketed Curry as well as humanly possible and his case for the All-Defense team should start and end right there.
But he had another hand in the win, too – hustle plays, too many to detail. A few stood out, including a diving save that gave the Pistons an extra possession that led to a Reggie Jackson runner and a seven-point first half lead. The biggest play of the game, though, might have been his knifing steal and end-to-end dunk that put the Pistons ahead 52-51 four minutes into what began as another ragged stretch of play to open the third quarter.
The Pistons would open the game up from that point, going from one point ahead to 15 over the next six minutes. They never trailed again after that play, as hairy as it got in a fourth quarter when Van Gundy said, “We literally could not make a shot.”
“It’s a playoff atmosphere. You’ve got to find a way to get stops,” Jackson said. “It’s all about defense. We really let our defense ignite our offense with KCP’s play.”
“He was struggling early on and I think that kind of got him going, got the crowd into it a little more and we turned the corner from there,” Morris said. “He’s been doing those types of plays all year. It’s nothing surprising. We’re happy to have him and he’s a guy that competes at both ends of the floor.”
“Right now, when it’s crunch time, he’s turned it up another notch,” Drummond said. “He’s our defensive guy and we look for him to do things like that.”
The win makes the Pistons 40-35 and – coupled with Indiana’s home loss to Chicago – puts them in seventh place, a half-game ahead of the Pacers. They remain 2½ up in the race for the final playoff spot with seven games to play.
“To go into seventh place is huge,” Morris said. “Got Dallas coming in on Friday, then we got a big back to back on Saturday vs. Chicago. Those are two big games, maybe two of the biggest games all year.”
If they can find another way to grind out wins, they’ll be on the verge of guaranteeing themselves even bigger games a few weeks from now.