The Pistons will go into the summer feeling pretty good about the trail they’ve blazed over the season’s final two months and better than that about their future. The defending NBA champions closed out the home portion of the 2021-22 season making sure the Pistons wouldn’t suffer any delusions about how far they still have to go.
“That is a well-oiled machine. They played like a championship team,” Dwane Casey said after Milwaukee’s businesslike 131-101 win. “They’re hitting on all cylinders. You make one little mistake and they make you pay for it. That’s what a champion does.”
Milwaukee held the Pistons to a season-worst eight points in a first quarter that saw the Bucks lead by 22 on their way to a wire-to-wire win that leaves the Pistons with only a Sunday finale at Philadelphia before embarking on what they hope will be a transformative off-season.
The Pistons know there are at least a few intermediary steps to be taken before they’re ready to entertain the idea of competing for NBA titles, but the disposition Milwaukee – in playoff mode and intent on seizing the No. 2 seed in the East to ensure home-court advantage for at least the first two rounds – carried into the game is one they’ll have to emulate to get there.
“You go into the locker room, that’s all the young guys were saying,” Rodney McGruder said after a career night for him. “They didn’t miss any assignments, offensively or defensively. A guy was open, they got the ball – on time, on target. That’s the level we want to get to. Playing a championship-contending team like that, you learn so much.”
The Pistons have posted an 11-13 record since mid-February despite playing without key players for much of the past two weeks and been competitive in almost every loss. Wednesday’s 18-point defeat at the hands of Dallas was one of only two losses by double digits and the 12-game average margin of defeat before Friday was 6.5 points.
So Casey doesn’t want the Pistons to forget the ruthlessness with which Milwaukee went about its business on Friday, but also doesn’t want his team to dismiss everything else they’ve done over the past few months.
“It’s not about winning and losing right now. We’re playing 10-day guys we’re trying to get a good look at,” he said. “It’s about our spirit. Don’t lose our confidence, don’t let this game tonight beat us down. We could play that game 10 times and it would be tough. The way they’re playing right now, I want to be realistic and real with our players. The main thing is our spirit.”
The Pistons were without Jerami Grant, Cory Joseph, Marvin Bagley III and Hamidou Diallo and gave big minutes to recently signed Braxton Key and Carsen Edwards. They matched their season high with 48 3-point shots but made only 10 of them. McGruder scored 14 first-half points, leading a rally that saw the Pistons cut the early 22-point deficit to eight, and he finished with a career-high 26 points in 24 minutes, hitting 9 of 11 shots and 4 of 5 3-pointers. McGruder’s teammates shot 6 of 43 from the arc.
“We missed a lot of open shots,” Casey said. “Their defense sped us up a little bit. That’s a championship-caliber team we’re playing.”
The Pistons understood they weren’t in that class before Friday’s game, but getting a glimpse of it up close was an eye opener.
“That was a great measuring stick for us,” Casey said. “That was one of the first stinkers we’ve had since the All-Star break. We understand where we are and who they are. We just want to finish with the right spirit and not let these last two games distort what we’ve done and who we are.”