PHILADELPHIA – The Philadelphia 76ers win everyone’s admiration for how hard they keep playing, but about the only way they actually win basketball games these days is when the opponents provide a little help. For nearly all of three quarters, the Pistons were too willing to oblige Saturday night.
It was less than a glorious win, but whatever you want to call it, the 125-111 decision the Pistons carried with them to Washington for a game critical in the playoff race sure beat the bejabbers out of a disastrous loss. And – no way around it – that’s what the Pistons were on the verge of swallowing until the dying seconds of the third quarter.
Trailing for nearly all of a stretch that began late in the first quarter and by as many as 10 points to a Philly team without rookie scoring star Jahlil Okafor plus three others injured in Friday’s win over Brooklyn, the Pistons outscored Philly 5-0 in the final 13 seconds of the quarter to take a 90-87 lead to the fourth.
“It was critical,” Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said. “We needed that push and that turnaround. That gave us momentum going into the fourth quarter.”
Credit him for not saying, “I gave us momentum …,” but that’s really what it was.
Caldwell-Pope tied the game at 87 with a 14-footer with 13 seconds left, then drained a 27-footer as the buzzer blared to capitalize off a Philadelphia turnover to put the Pistons ahead for good.
“I thought we played a good last 13 minutes,” Stan Van Gundy said.
Relief was the operative word of the night. Van Gundy fretted more about his defense than anything in his six-minute postgame press conference, but ultimately came around to this: “I’ll take it. It was a good win. I’m not caught up in that, in terms of the results. I just don’t like our defense.”
To be sure, there is plenty to furrow the brow when the team last in scoring gets to the end of the third quarter with 87 points already on the board. The 76ers shot a shade under 50 percent through three quarters and 40 percent from the 3-point line. But that’s where it circles back to the Pistons giving them help, mostly in the form of confidence and extra possessions by fueling their fast break with their own slipshod passes.
The Pistons coughed it up seven times in the first quarter alone – all on bad passes, six of them live-ball turnovers that fueled Philly transition scoring chances.
“They were disasters,” Van Gundy said. “They were terrible turnovers. We didn’t play very well and we didn’t guard again. And that’s what’s going to get us – the fact we’re not guarding anybody. That’s going to be tough to beat good teams not guarding anybody. We’ll see what happens over these last 16 games, but we’re not guarding anybody.”
“Verrry concerned,” Reggie Jackson said of the team’s recent defense after giving up 118 to Charlotte in Friday’s loss followed by Philly’s assault. “We continue to find ways to get wins at times, but we’re not who we were at the beginning of the season. To get to where we want to be, we’ve got to play defense. We’ve got to lock in and get stops.”
When the Pistons did that, however briefly, they put some distance between themselves and the 76ers. Buoyed by the Caldwell-Pope flurry to end the third quarter, the Pistons went on a 10-0 run early in the fourth quarter to establish control. Out there with him were Marcus Morris and the only three bench players Van Gundy used after halftime: Steve Blake, Aron Baynes and Reggie Bullock.
“Guys were really focusing on our defensive coverages,” Blake said. “Getting deflections and then making shots. Pope started to get hot, which was really nice. Marcus made some big shots for us. Total team effort in the second half.”
“KCP in there with Steve, Aron, those guys, I thought did a really, really good job,” Van Gundy said. “That’s what got us the lead and then we finished it out well.”
The win kept the Pistons in the No. 8 spot in the Eastern Conference at 34-32, a full game ahead of idle Chicago, at 32-32. They’ll end their four-game road trip with a chance to go 3-1 with that big Monday matchup at Washington looming.
“We stay in the eighth spot,” Jackson said of Saturday’s uneasy win. “I think it’s that simple. We wanted to come out here and make sure we got a win.”