Outhustled. Outphysicaled. Outplayed.
The New York Knicks fell to the Detroit Pistons on the road, 115-106.
April 11: Final
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Despite the Pistons being their most probable matchup in the first round of the postseason as things stand right now, Knicks fans shouldn’t have come into this game with expectations — three of New York’s top rotation players in OG Anunoby, Josh Hart, and Mitchell Robinson were all listed as OUT with phantom injuries well before tipoff.
Combine this with the fact that their opponent on the night is arguably the hungriest young team in the NBA at full strength, with everything to prove after having the worst season in their franchise’s history last year, and one could see how the two sides might tackle this game differently. And they did.
Yet, Knicks fans came into this game with hope. Hope that their team would set the tone, send a message, and most importantly, secure their seeding for the playoff picture, which is currently still up in the air.
The Knicks failed at all three. Instead, they let the Pistons rip away the possibility of splitting the season series while further ingraining in the young squad’s heads that, regardless of a lack of postseason experience, they might just be capable of taking down New York in a seven-game postseason series.
New York looked primed to win this matchup through the first frame, due largely to one of Precious Achiuwa’s strongest offensive halves of the season.
The Knicks’ impromptu starting power forward entered halftime as their leading scorer, tallying 13 points on 6-9 shooting, including a rare made three-pointer and a potent fastbreak poster on Detroit’s Isaiah Stewart.
Jalen Brunson (4-7 FG, 2-3 3PT) and Deuce McBride (5-8 FG, 2-5 3PT) added 12 more points apiece to New York’s total, bringing the lead to 62-56 after two.
And that’s when things started to go south. Or Midwest, for that matter.
Detroit responded in the second half like a team that had been there before, with young star point guard and budding New York nemesis Cade Cunningham leading the charge.
Cunningham scored 20 points in the second half, twice as much as any other Piston, with 14 coming immediately out of the break. He finished the game with 32 points (16-24 FG, 2-5 3PT, 2-4 FT), eight assists, two rebounds, a block, and a steal. The cherry on top of an impressive list of statlines dropped on the Knicks by him this season.
After just a six-point performance in the first half, New York’s game plan ran through Karl-Anthony Towns in the second. Towns finished the game as the Knicks’ leading scorer with 25 points to go along with 10 rebounds and five assists. However, he was once again responsible for half of the team’s turnovers in the game, totaling seven.
Jalen Brunson finished the outing with just 15 points (5-15 FG, 3-9 3PT, 2-5 FTA) and 5 assists after his dozen points through the first two dozen minutes.
Detroit’s own personal Jalen and prospective center of the future, Jalen Duren, posted a double-double with 18 points and 13 rebounds on a perfect 9-9 FG, finishing as their second-leading scorer.
The two most merciless of those points were also Detroit’s last of the game, with the clock running down and the outcome already determined; talk about sending a message.
After scoring 13 points in the opening two quarters, Achiuwa notched only five more in the closing two, finishing with 18 points (8-13 FG, 1-3 3PT, 1-1 FT), 10 rebounds, three assists, three blocks, and two steals in a game-leading 40 minutes played.
The highest recorded number on the aforementioned dunkee Isaiah Stewart’s statsheet was six hard fouls. Another memo by the Pistons that “DEEETROIT BASKETBALL” is not only back, but in full swing ahead of the postseason.
“They just out-toughed us. They did. The whole fourth quarter,” said PJ Tucker, the now not-so-new Knick veteran who saw his most extended floor time this season in the game.
“We kept it close, but they just out-toughed us. That’s something we’ve got to address. Obviously, not having OG [Anunoby], not having Josh [Hart], getting those guys back will help a lot.”
With just two games left to play in the regular season, the fate of the Knicks’ playoff seeding now hangs in the balance of a few outcomes, per James L. Edwards III:
The decision by Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau to sit three of his top rotational pieces in a potential first-round prelude, however, could have been predicated on any number of ideas. Maybe he didn’t want to show all their cards ahead of the games that matter most. Maybe New York doesn’t actually care about a top-three seed in the East as much as some people believe they do.
All the Knicks can do at this point is control what they can control. They had multiple chances to lock up the third seed on their own accord already—they didn’t. Perhaps in a conscious effort to drop in the standings, they should avoid Detroit and instead play the 8th-seeded Milwaukee Bucks, whom they’ve played to a perfect 3-0 record this season, in the first round.
