MIAMI – The back-to-back road wins the Pistons racked up coming out of the All-Star break infuse their playoff hopes with life, but the positive signs woven through those wins hint at a sustainability that could mean more than merely a token playoff appearance.
They’ve now won seven of nine games to pull within two games of .500 at 28-30 and Saturday’s win over the most immediate threat to their playoff position, Miami, not only solidified their hold on a berth but vaulted them over Charlotte and into the No. 7 spot.
The start of their turnaround coincided with the clear uptick in production from Reggie Jackson, suggesting he’s getting back to his 2015-16 level after two seasons cut short by leg injuries. But in Saturday’s 119-96 win over the Heat, Jackson – a night after getting run hard in the comeback win at Atlanta – wasn’t his team’s best point guard.
Ish Smith was. And it’s easy to forget that Smith missed nearly two months with two bouts of a groin muscle injury and hasn’t really found his passing gear since returning – until Saturday.
Smith scored a season-high 22 points on 8 of 9 shooting and assisted on nine other baskets in 25 glorious minutes in which the Pistons bench – after a dreadful performance at Atlanta – was superb, outscoring Miami’s second unit 66-35.
“We took that personal,” Smith said. “(Dwane Casey) got on us. The first unit carried us last night. I don’t ever look at my plus/minus. Last night I looked. I was minus-19. So I had to be better. We had to be better.”
Were they ever.
Luke Kennard scored 17 points in 33 minutes and led everyone at plus-27. Smith was plus-20. Langston Galloway – who didn’t play in the first half and had been mired in a deep shooting slump, including 3 of 18 over his last five games – scored 17 points in 16 second-half minutes, hitting 6 of 7 shots and 4 of 5 3-pointers. All four triples came in a span of 3:26 of the fourth quarter in which Casey’s bench stretched an eight-point lead to 20 in the first five minutes.
“This was a playoff game,” Galloway said. “Both teams are fighting for it and we were trying to fight as much as we could and pull away. Miami’s a good team. We’re going to see them down the stretch, so we’ve got to take it one game at a time.”
The Pistons hold a commanding lead over the Heat for the tiebreaker now. Even if the Heat win the final game of the series – at Miami on March 13 – the Pistons’ 19-19 record in conference games is well ahead of Miami’s 14-21.
Getting a fully charged Smith back as the driving force of a second unit that’s getting improved play from Kennard would go a long way toward lengthening Casey’s bench and set the Pistons up for success over the final 24 games. Especially with Jackson hitting his stride over the past three weeks, as well.
“We hope so,” Casey said of the prospect of having a dynamic 1-2 punch at point guard. “Health is a wonderful thing when you have it. When you don’t have it, it’s a struggle. Ish is getting healthy. Reggie Jackson is getting healthy. We’ve got to carry Blake (Griffin); he’s carried us all year.”
Griffin, one night after bizarrely getting ejected with two third-quarter technical fouls at Atlanta, didn’t have to do a lot of heavy lifting again. He scored 20 points in 33 minutes and got to enjoy the end of the runaway win from the bench.
“It was great,” he said. “The theme of the past several weeks has been about us. The way we’ve played has been unbelievable. We just played with the right spirit. We got stops on the defensive end and got a couple of easy baskets and then once that happened you had guys hit shots and get hot.”
And as dazzling as the second unit was to start the fourth quarter, it might not have mattered if they hadn’t been equally as impressive to start the second. The Pistons looked spent to start the game, victims of the energy expended in the comeback win 24 hours earlier, falling behind by 11 while shooting 30 percent in the first quarter. Led by Smith and Kennard, the Pistons outscored Miami 34-17 in the second quarter.
“I thought they came in and gave us a spark,” Casey said. “Luke did a heck of a job defensively, getting steals. Ish did a good job of getting into the paint, creating havoc, getting the defense collapsed, kicking out and we made shots. The second unit did a heck of job. They did their job.”
Between the 13-7 start of the season for the Pistons and the 7-2 run over the last six weeks, there were too many nights the Pistons were wholly dependent on Griffin and Andre Drummond to carry them. Aside from the weight a win over their nearest pursuers carried, the best thing that came out of their win at Miami were the signs that they even more resounding wins could be in the offing over the final six weeks.
“The second unit, we wanted to bring a little more tonight,” Kennard said. “We struggled in the past starting quarters, ending third, first quarters. But tonight was a night where we wanted to bring a little more. I thought we did that from the jump. That’s what we have to do from here on out. Making this playoff push, it’s going to be big for the second unit to play that way.”