Cade Cunningham scores 20 of his 24 points in the 2nd half to help the Pistons send the series back to Detroit for Game 6.
NEW YORK – It’s not a big surprise that the first-round series between the New York Knicks and Detroit Pistons is heading to a sixth game after the Pistons’ 106-103 victory in Game 5.
This series has been about as even as it gets over the last 11 days, either team can win any game, and Detroit is now 4-1 at Madison Square Garden this season, having come up clutch after losing a 10-point lead on Tuesday.
Cade Cunningham, as usual, was the star, tallying 24 points, eight rebounds and eight assists in a little more than 37 minutes. Four of the five games in this series have been within five points in the last five minutes, and Cunningham scored or assisted on 11 of his team’s 14 clutch points in Game 5.
Here are some notes, quotes, numbers and film as the Pistons sent this series back to Detroit for Game 6 on Thursday (7:30 p.m. ET, TNT) …
1. Pistons’ 4th-quarter offense picks on Towns and Brunson, comes up big
The Pistons have had a couple of rough fourth quarters in this series. They blew fourth-quarter leads of eight and 11 points, respectively, in Games 1 and 3. And with 10 minutes left on Tuesday, a 10-point, third-quarter lead had become a three-point deficit. They got a couple of stops to keep it close, but with a little more than 8 1/2 minutes left, they had scored just 81 points on 80 possessions.
And then they found a rhythm. On their final 18 possessions of the game, the Pistons scored 25 points, with the Knicks getting just five stops.
The run started with two straight scores when they put Karl-Anthony Towns into the pick-and-roll.
Both times, Towns hedged out and tried to recover back to Tobias Harris. On the first play, Harris flared to the right side of the lane and Towns was late to recover, committing a foul. On the second, Harris blew by him after a pump fake, drew help and tossed a lob to Jalen Duren …
Later in the fourth, it was Jalen Brunson’s turn. On four straight possessions, the guy Brunson was guarding set ball screens for Cunningham. The Pistons scored on three of those four trips down the floor …
- Finally, Brunson just stayed attached to Tim Hardaway Jr., creating an open lane for Cunningham. He drew help and Duren was left alone under the basket …
The Knicks may survive this series, but if they do, their next opponent the defending champion Boston Celtics – will be even more relentless at attacking Brunson and Towns.
2. Knicks lose precious possessions with Brunson off the floor
Brunson appeared to tweak his injured right ankle on that last play. And in helping on Cunningham’s drive, Josh Hart left his feet and injured his left hand trying to brace his fall. With Hart still on the floor, the Knicks called their second-to-last timeout with 2:57 left.
Brunson and Hart both went to the locker room for the briefest of visits, replaced on the floor by Miles McBride and Cam Payne. Both teams had made just one trip down the floor when both guys were back and walking to the scorer’s table to check in as Payne initiated a second offensive possession 2:20 left.
If he had two timeouts instead of one, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau surely would have used one to get Brunson and Hart back in the game. But he didn’t want to be left with none at that point, so he kept his final timeout in his pocket.
“Coach’s decision,” Thibodeau said about it afterward. “You look at time, score, penalty, timeouts, all of the above … There’s a lot that goes into it.”
Unfortunately, there was no ensuing dead ball allowing the Knicks to get their starters back in, and they had four more offensive possessions without the Clutch Player of the Year …
After the Pistons scored on the other end (targeting McBride this time), Thibodeau finally used his final timeout with 27.4 seconds left. It should be noted that the Pistons were smart, though this was a possession-by-possession battle down the stretch, not to use one of their two remaining timeouts in that stretch. They were just fine with McBride and Payne out there, apparently.
Those weren’t terrible shots that the Knicks got, but they scored just two points on those five possessions after Brunson hobbled off the floor. And through five games, they’ve scored an anemic 72 points on 86 possessions (83.7 per 100) in Brunson’s 42 total minutes off the floor.
3. Duren making smart decisions, deft passes
Cunningham leads the Pistons with 44 assists through five games in this series. Second on the team with 18 is Duren, who’s been tasked with making plays when the Knicks have blitzed Cunningham in the pick-and-roll.
He’s handled that task well. Duren had six assists and just one turnover on Tuesday, reading the floor well, either on the move or after offensive rebounds.
Two of those assists came (to Harris and Dennis Schröder) on second chances. The other four came with Duren rolling to the basket and reacting to the Knicks’ rotations.
One was an impressive, multi-read kick-out to Tim Hardaway Jr …
The other three were nearly identical plays, where Duren rolled to the middle of the paint, drew help and then found Thompson under the basket …
Duren isn’t any kind of a shooter. In 211 career games played (regular season and playoffs), he’s made just 14 shots from outside the paint. But he’s more than just a rebounder and finisher, and his passing skills have been critical in this series.
“They want to play the pick-and-roll a certain way,” Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said, “you got to have guys that can play make. Because they’re putting two on the ball, he’s the guy who receives it in the pocket, and he’s a really good passer and playmaker.
“He’s got great feel when the ball’s in his hands.”
4. Pistons’ starting lineup is dominating
The Knicks are the team with the starters that they rely on heavily. In the regular season, their starting lineup played 940 total minutes together, 226 more than any other five-man unit in the league. And through the first four games of this series, the Knicks’ starters had played 96 minutes together, while the Pistons’ starters had played just 50.
But the Pistons’ group had been better, outscoring the Knicks by 19.2 points per 100 possessions over those 50 minutes. And in Game 5, Bickerstaff finally gave his starting lineup some extended run together.
The Knicks actually made the first subs of the game, and the Pistons’ starters played 21.2 minutes together after playing no more than 14.6 minutes together through the first four games. The lineup’s dominance continued, with the Pistons outscoring the Knicks by 27 points (54-27) in those 21.1 minutes.
The Pistons’ starting lineup has now outscored the Knicks’ starters by 33.4 points per 100 possessions, by far the best mark among lineups that have played at least 50 playoff minutes through Tuesday. A differential that big comes with strong numbers on both ends of the floor, but the defense (84.6 allowed per 100) stands out.
5. Can the Pistons come back? Why not?
Teams that were down 3-1 in best-of-seven series are just 13-277 (.045) in NBA history, counting the two 3-1 series that ended on Tuesday.
It’s a tough task, but it’s not an impossible one. And the toughest game of the three that the Pistons need to win may have been the one they just endured.
Next is another game back at Little Caesars Arena, which has yet to see a playoff win for the home team.
If they can get that one, it’s a Game 7 in the historic building where they’re now 4-1. The Pistons have shown that they have advantages in this series, and their losses have been as much about their own mistakes (turnovers, silly fouls and other mental mistakes) as the advantages the Knicks have had.
Game 1 was in their hands. Game 4 would have gone their way if not for a couple of ridiculous shots from Towns and a bad non-call on the final play.
“The focus is just the game that’s in front of us,” Bickerstaff said. “And I do believe, why the way we’ve grown the way that we’ve grown, is because that’s the mentality we’ve had. We’re not a team that looks out five games.
“We’re a team that just looks and plays in the moment. And you don’t worry about the weight of all the other stuff that comes about if that’s the way you play.”
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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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