Over a six-day period last week, the Pistons hosted and defeated four lottery-bound teams. It’s what franchises with playoff goals are expected to do. Had they lost one or – heaven forbid – two of those games, the skeptics would have been out in force.
But look what’s happened over the past four days to the three teams running to the wire with them in a race for the East’s last two playoff berths. Chicago has lost its last three games, two to New York and one to Orlando, both well out of the playoff chase. Washington lost at home to 24-win Minnesota. Indiana squandered a lead and fell Saturday to the 21-win Brooklyn Nets.
All three of those teams – Chicago, Indiana, Washington – are loaded with playoff experience. The Pistons – with one starter, Reggie Jackson, who’s ever appeared in the postseason, and his time largely served as Russell Westbrook’s backup – are figuring this out on the fly.
What they’re soaking up right now, in effect, is as close to a playoff experience as they’ve ever known. And that comes with its own reward, no matter what happens over the season’s final 17 days and eight games.
“Being in this race right now and playing games like tonight are critical to the development of our team,” Stan Van Gundy said after the Pistons had their five-game winning streak snapped by a team on an eight-year run of playoff appearances, Atlanta. “We want to get into the playoffs. That’s a huge goal. Every guy in that locker room wants in. I want in – badly. Tom (Gores, Pistons owner) wants in. We all want in. But we’ve got to stay focused: The way to get in is to play better. So you’ve got to stay focused on what you need to do to get there.”
Atlanta isn’t beyond the learning stage, either. The Hawks won 60 games last season and took the No. 1 seed into the playoffs. But they’d also left their best basketball behind. This year, they’ve geared up more methodically. And they came into The Palace with palpable intensity and unbreakable focus.
“That’s a playoff team. That’s a team trying to fight for something,” Marcus Morris said. “After a back to back, to have that much energy? Really opened my eyes. They were really playing like they didn’t play in a couple of days. It showed.”
The first great Pistons team, the Bad Boys, absorbed many such lessons on their ascent up the NBA ladder. Their lessons were much more painful than the one Van Gundy’s Pistons absorbed in Saturday’s loss to Atlanta. The searing games 5 and 7 losses to Boston in the 1987 Eastern Conference finals would have crushed and mangled the spirit of lesser men. But the Celtics had to put every fiber of their core into winning that series and, in doing so, revealed to the Bad Boys the commitment and sacrifice necessary.
“You’ve got to stay focused on what you need to do to get there and we got a big lesson in that tonight in terms of the things you have to do to play at this level,” Van Gundy said. “I want our guys to learn and grow and develop. That’s what I want to have happen. And I hope that they got some learning out of tonight.”
The Pistons, naturally, are tracking what Indiana, Chicago and Washington are doing. But as passionately as Van Gundy wants to put the Pistons into the playoffs – and their 39 wins would have been enough already in each of the last five years – he just as badly wants them to get in on their own merits, not because their competitors falter.
Playing well to get into the playoffs, and then finding a passing gear once you reach the postseason – those are the stepping stones that make for NBA title contenders, the ultimate goal Van Gundy and Gores had in mind when they formalized their union less than two years ago.
“Our guys didn’t blow anything tonight,” Van Gundy said. “They didn’t show up not ready to play. They got outplayed by a team who had a level that they could get to that we haven’t – at least until today – been able to get to. Hopefully, this game tonight will be a learning experience and help to bring us to a little bit higher level.”
