Dwane Casey talks often, amid the anguish of losing streaks and heartbreak, about searching for signs of growth. Sometimes he doesn’t see it himself until poring over videotape in the wee hours, often at 30,000 feet. But sometimes it’s obvious in real time and about as subtle as a Rick Mahorn forearm shiver to the solar plexus.
So it was in Wednesday’s overtime when Cade Cunningham, struggling to score for the first time in the last handful of games, figured it out on the fly. If the 3-pointers weren’t dropping and the mid-range was clanging off the rim and the floaters were getting swatted away, well, let’s figure something else out. And that’s what he did. Four drives, four buckets at the rim, each one more unique than the last and all of them critical in a comeback that almost got the Pistons a win to snap a nine-game losing streak.
“Cade’s shown me that since day one,” Hamidou Diallo said after Cunningham scored eight of his 21 points in a brilliant stretch of overtime amid a gutting 119-116 loss to Washington. “I believe in him. I know what type of player he is. We all believe in him. When he’s going, we’re all going. He had the mismatch and he did what he does.”
Over a span of five possessions, Cunningham went to the basket four times and came away with a bucket on each foray. Washington’s Daniel Gafford blocked six shots for the game, victimizing Cunningham in the fourth quarter, but the rookie sized him up and used change-of-pace dribbles to evade the block time and again. His mini-hook tied the game at 114 with 58 seconds to play and his knifing drive with 23 seconds to go tied it again at 116.
“It was great to see,” Dwane Casey said. “At the end of the game in the NBA, you’ve got to have somebody that can go create their own shot and I thought Cade did that.”
The Hollywood ending would have meant Flint native Kyle Kuzma didn’t hit a corner triple with six-tenths of a second left and the ball found its way to Cunningham for one win-or-go-home possession. But Hollywood is serving up a horror movie for the Pistons so far this season and, of course, Kuzma’s bucket dropped and gave the Pistons only time for Frank Jackson to catch and fling at the buzzer, his shot falling short.
“It’s tough to lose, especially these ones,” Jackson said after the Pistons came back from a 13-point deficit in the final six minutes, closing regulation on a 16-3 run and surviving a Bradley Beal jump shot at the regulation buzzer. “I felt like our effort was there. I’m super proud of our guys and our team. I thought we rallied together. It’s been a tough stretch of games.”
The Pistons took a 60-52 halftime lead and were the clear aggressors, rewarded with 23 first-half free throws. But as Casey has lamented as he guides a team with four first- or second-year starters, you shore up one area of vulnerability and another crops up. Washington had two offensive rebounds and zero second-chance points in the first half; the Wizards finished with 13 and 18.
“That broke our back,” Casey said. “I thought we did a good job defensively, but then Gafford and (Montrezl) Harrell and those guys kicked our behind in the paint. That was our undoing.”
The Pistons looked thoroughly undone by the midway point of the fourth quarter, going cold to start the period as Washington went on an 8-0 run to lead by nine and eventually stretched its lead to 103-90 with six minutes left. It’s going to show up as just another loss, but for a coach looking for glimmers of hope, a team on a nine-game losing streak bending momentum back its way to overcome a double-digit deficit in the last six minutes provided it.
“I thought we showed resiliency,” Casey said. “There’s no participation awards, I always say. I’m just proud of the way the guys competed and fought back, but at the end of the day it’s still on the bad side.”
“We have the fight in us, but we’ve got to keep building and keep stacking those chips,” said Diallo, who played well enough that he joined Jackson in the closing lineup with Cunningham, Isaiah Stewart and Jerami Grant, brilliant again with 28 points and 14 of 15 free throws, including two clutch ones with two seconds left to force overtime. “We keep showing it in spurts, but soon we’ve got to turn that chapter and be able to pull out those tough wins.”
With Grant and Cunningham striking a balance that benefits both and Cunningham continuing to show the clutch ability that’s defined his career from the AAU circuit to Oklahoma State and beyond, those Hollywood endings might not be so elusive going forward.
“He played with a lot of confidence, so we trust him down the stretch,” Jackson said. “He’s going to continue to make big-time plays throughout his whole career.”