NBA Playoffs Round 1. (3) New York Knicks vs. (6) Detroit Pistons

[Motor City Sonics]

First of all.    Congratulations to the Pistons for one of the most impressive single-season turnarounds in Detroit history.   Maybe the most impressive (certainly in my lifetime).     They went from being an afterthought to stealing the spotlight from the much-loved Red Wings.    Cade Cunningham is perhaps the biggest sports star in Detroit now.  You can make arguments for St. Brown, Skubal and Hutch too.  

The Pistons have not played their best ball lately.  Maybe they were resting guys (like the last game), and maybe they were strategically making sure they got the Knicks in the first round, but the last couple weeks were the iffiest in a long time, but this is a series they can absolutely win.  But be ready - the NBA is not about crowning the best team as the champion, the NBA is about building ratings.   Teams that face the Celtics, Knicks, Lakers and Warriors are going to a the court slightly tilted against them.   The best two teams all season were Cleveland and Oklahoma City and that's a nightmare final for the NBA.  They want the big markets in it.  They want the superstars.    For the Pistons to beat the Knicks or Celtics, they will have to outplay them, by a fairly wide margin because close games are not going to go their way.  They're going to have to play just about as perfect as they can

J.B. Bickerstaff is Coach Of The Year.    He won't win it, but he should.   

 

Anyway, this is exciting.  

[buddha]

kenny atkinson or mark daigneault should win coach of the year.

okc won 68 games!!!!  how is their coach not coach of the year?

[Deleterious]

I wonder if we are forgetting basketball is played on the court and not on paper.

Cade will be the best player in the series.  After that you can go down the rosters and NYK will have more talent almost all the way down.  But for whatever reason it never clicked for them this season.  You can't tell me when they made that Bridge's trade, they would be happy with only 50 wins.  They legit had a shot to drop to the 4th seed on the final weekend of the season.  They were 0-8 against Cleveland and Boston. 

The Knicks are beatable. 

[Deleterious]

DK has Detroit as 7 point dogs in game 1.

Series price is still:

NYK -425

DET +330

[Deleterious]

Game 1 set for Saturday at 6PM.

[buddha]

39 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Game 1 set for Saturday at 6PM.

so game 2 will be in late may?

 

[Deleterious]

How each team did against other playoff teams.  I included the play-in teams.

[RatkoVarda]

they got a real shot. if they can steal Game 1, I actually think they will advance. 2 regular season wins in MSG hopefully means something. Brunson did what he wanted first 3 match-ups.

Game 1: loss in Detroit; early season rout before Piston figured who they were https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401704700

Game 2: win in NY; Cade triple double, no KAT, Pistons shoot 50% on 3s https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401704909

Game 3: win in NY; Cade 36; NYK full strength, one of the better wins this season https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401705115

Game 4: win in Detroit; Cade 36; Pistons shoot 58% from the field, already could see this playoff pairing https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401705733

[NYLion]

14 hours ago, buddha said:

kenny atkinson or mark daigneault should win coach of the year.

okc won 68 games!!!!  how is their coach not coach of the year?

They were a 57 win team the season prior. Bickerstaff led a 14 win team to 44 wins and that's without their 2nd best offensive player the entire second half of the season. How that doesn't warrant coach of the year is beyond me.

[Deleterious]

A little shocked by how much credit OG is getting on defense against Cade this series.

I think Cade is going to cook OG.  Especially if they single cover him. 

 

[Hongbit]

Cade needs to stay out of foul trouble.   They can’t have him guard Brunson in the first half.    

I am also terrified of playoff Schröder.  He can get so careless with the ball at times.  

Series comes down to Beasley being hot and the Knicks bench not getting hot.   We also need the good Tobias to show up.  

 

[buddha]

47 minutes ago, NYLion said:

They were a 57 win team the season prior. Bickerstaff led a 14 win team to 44 wins and that's without their 2nd best offensive player the entire second half of the season. How that doesn't warrant coach of the year is beyond me.

because they won 68 games.  that's a lot.  they had the highest point differential in league history.

rewars excellence, not the rise to mediocre.

i would put JB 3rd behind daigneault and kenny.

[Motown Bombers]

Coach of the year always goes to the team that most surpassed expectations. It's like that in every league. No way OKC surpassed expectations as much as the Pistons surpassed expectations. 

[NYLion]

2 hours ago, buddha said:

because they won 68 games.  that's a lot.  they had the highest point differential in league history.

rewars excellence, not the rise to mediocre.

i would put JB 3rd behind daigneault and kenny.

Again, it was an 11 win jump. OKC was already a Championship contender last year, they just happened to be even better this season.

Do you remember how bad the Pistons were last year? Maybe not because I do, they won 14 games last season and were solidly in the playoffs this season, one of the biggest one season jumps in league history. I don't know why you're diminishing that accomplishment a team, btw, that was missing their 2nd best player most of the season. I'm not saying that the other two aren't worthy candidates but what Bickerstaff has accomplished is a miracle quite frankly, those other guys had very good teams going into this season.

[buddha]

59 minutes ago, NYLion said:

Again, it was an 11 win jump. OKC was already a Championship contender last year, they just happened to be even better this season.

Do you remember how bad the Pistons were last year? Maybe not because I do, they won 14 games last season and were solidly in the playoffs this season, one of the biggest one season jumps in league history. I don't know why you're diminishing that accomplishment a team, btw, that was missing their 2nd best player most of the season. I'm not saying that the other two aren't worthy candidates but what Bickerstaff has accomplished is a miracle quite frankly, those other guys had very good teams going into this season.

do i remember last year?  yes.

competent coaching, a healthy cade, an out of his mind malik beasley, and jumps from young players combined to take the pistons from horrifically bad to slightly above average.

that's a wonderful thing.  i love it.  i am not discounting it.

but i'm also not discounting the coaching job it takes to come within 2 games of setting the league record for wins in a season and having the highest scoring difference in nba history.  that's amazing.

perhaps it comes down to the fact that i find the criteria of "coach whose team wasnt regarded highly enough" wins coach of the year to be faulty.  i'd rather reward excellence.  or perhaps some folks just really pay attention to their own team and not the rest of the league, and consequently overrate them.  im guilty of that all the time.

i would put JB third.  that's awesome.

[Deleterious]

 

[Motor City Sonics]

I don't think JB wins Coach Of The Year, but he should.     It's not the final number as much as it's where they were coming from.   But there's a lot of lazy records that'll just look at most wins and not consider where they were last year.      

And I think they left 4-5 wins on the table too.   They lost some heartbreakers early on and then lost a few where their seeding was already decided late.      And, as mentioned early,  Ivey was becoming a really good player.  It's like JB freed him to just play and he responded before the injury.     But, if Ivey doesn't go down, maybe Malik doesn't do his thing.   It was just one hell of a job by JB.    If they narrow it down to 3  it's going to be Atkinson, Daigneault and Bickerstaff.  If Udoka beats out Bickerstaff as a finalist, it would be an insult, but I think that would actually HELP the Pistons motivation-wise.  

 

Quite honestly, if this team has bolted for Las Vegas or Seattle or anywhere else after last year, I don't think people would have cared all that much.  That's how bad they'd become.  

Edited Monday at 10:24 PM by Motor City Sonics

[Betrayer]

The Season and CotY

This was an incredible season that nobody expected. Over/under was around 24.5 and they beat that by about 20 games while being the first team in league history to triple its win total. They did that without adding a single All-Star and with their 2nd best scorer out of the lineup. Every other team that has improved this much in one season has added a hall of fame player.

If you told anyone before the season that the Pistons would top 40 wins they'd have laughed you out the room. That's why JB gets my vote for CotY. You could have told me OKC or Cleveland's record and I might have raised an eyebrow but I wouldn't have thought you were crazy. What those teams accomplished was great, but nobody did the unfathomable like Detroit.

Problem is, NBA narratives don't change easily (see Cade's rookie year) and everyone already anointed Atkinson before CLE fell off a bit and the national media started to recognize the Detroit story. Still, I'm fine if JB doesn't win the award because we don't have a great history with former CotY's and I like them having the chip on their shoulder anyway.

Either way, I really hope everyone enjoyed this season, because this was the "fun" season where they were playing with house money. Next year there will be a lot more expectations, criticism, and serious conversation around taking that big leap to contention. You won't be able to just watch a game and enjoy it as much as this.

As someone who's watched every Piston's game for over 20 years, this has been the most exciting season for me since the Going to Work era. I never believed in those Drummond teams and struggled to get too excited about a team that I knew was capped at the 8th seed. This feels way different.

The Playoffs

I'm definitely looking forward to the playoffs, even if all they do is just break that win drought.

As I've been saying for a while, it'll be 5 versus 9 (the 5 Knicks, the 3 refs, and Adam Silver), but they still have a good shot at getting 2 games. 3 games would be outstanding and winning the series would just be mind boggling after where they were last year.

Do I think they could do it? I don't think it's a high percentage chance and everything would have to click perfectly, but the fact that there's even the smallest chance makes this different than any playoff appearance we've seen here in almost 2 decades.

My prediction is 4-2 Knicks with Brunson living on the free throw line.

[Deleterious]

I don't really care about CotY.  But I would never use last season to judge it, since JB is not coaching last year's roster.

I would use the Vegas O/U predictions and how teams finished compared to those.

Now you see why so many think Atkinson should win it.  When picked to win 48 you are not improving on that by beating bad teams.  You have to go beat the good teams to get 50+ wins.  That is probably more impressive than Detroit beating up on bad teams.

OKC set records, so Daigneault gets consideration.

Lue might have the best argument for CotY.  Winning 50 in a tougher conference is impressive.  Can't use the Ivey excuse, since Leonard only played 7 more games than Ivey this year.

I think Houston gets some attention for securing the 2nd seed in the west.

I would probably go

Atkinson

Lue

Daigneault

JB

Udoka

 

[buddha]

"Winning 50 in a tougher conference is impressive."

how about winning 68 with the best scoring differential ever?

[Deleterious]

30 minutes ago, buddha said:

"Winning 50 in a tougher conference is impressive."

how about winning 68 with the best scoring differential ever?

Yeah, that is pretty cool.  But I think we acknowledge that when discussing their win total.  Kind of double-dipping.

I think a stronger argument for Daigneault is their injury problems.  Only 3 guys played more than 74 games.  Their 2 bigs missed 75 games combined.  Chet missed 50 alone. 

[buddha]

31 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Yeah, that is pretty cool.  But I think we acknowledge that when discussing their win total.  Kind of double-dipping.

I think a stronger argument for Daigneault is their injury problems.  Only 3 guys played more than 74 games.  Their 2 bigs missed 75 games combined.  Chet missed 50 alone. 

and they still won 68 games and should rightly be considered one of the best regular season teams in nba history.

the coach of that team should be the coach of the year.  imo we place too much consideration on "we thought they would be bad but instead theyre ok, what a coaching job."  

reward excellence.

[Deleterious]

40 minutes ago, buddha said:

and they still won 68 games and should rightly be considered one of the best regular season teams in nba history.

the coach of that team should be the coach of the year.  imo we place too much consideration on "we thought they would be bad but instead theyre ok, what a coaching job."  

reward excellence.

Then how is JB third for you? 

Blink twice if you just said that to shut up Pistons fans. 

[buddha]

59 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Then how is JB third for you? 

Blink twice if you just said that to shut up Pistons fans. 

i think we place too much consideration on it, not that it deserves no consideration.

as i said before, pistons fans think about the pistons and not the rest of the league.  jb did a nice job, but for me, others should be rewarded for the better jobs they did.

blink.

[Betrayer]

15 hours ago, Deleterious said:

But I would never use last season to judge it, since JB is not coaching last year's roster.

Interesting because that's exactly the reason I would use last year. The main thing that changed was the coach, illustrating his impact on what most people called "the same roster" at the start of the season, with no All-Stars added.