Detroit Weekly News sports desk
Detroit won 110-94 at Barclays Center on Friday night after losing the first quarter by seven. The second and third went 71-38 to the Pistons, built on 23 Brooklyn turnovers and 14 Detroit steals, and by the time the Nets found their shooting again in the fourth the margin was past saving. It was Detroit’s opening game of NBA Cup group play.
How Detroit won it
Brooklyn’s first quarter was its best basketball of the night. The Nets put up 28 points, got Moritz Wagner going inside, and led a Detroit side that was missing from outside and settling for it. Then the handling went.
Across the second and third quarters Detroit forced turnover after turnover and ran. Ron Holland II scored 12 of his 18 points in the third alone, Cade Cunningham got to the free throw line and stayed there, and a 35-point second quarter became a 36-point third. Brooklyn managed 21 and then 17 against it.
What makes the win unusual is that Detroit did not shoot well. The Pistons made 42 per cent of their field goals and 12 of 41 from three, a shade under 30 per cent, and they lost the rebounding 50 to 41 while having ten shots blocked. The 23 turnovers covered all of it. Brooklyn’s 28-point fourth quarter was played against a lead that had already been built out of the other team’s mistakes.
J.B. Bickerstaff kept his main rotation on the floor until inside the last three minutes, which in a tournament group stage decided partly on points difference is a decision with a reason behind it rather than a scoreline being rubbed in.
Individual performances
Holland was the story. His 18 points came from six of ten shooting in 22 minutes off the bench, with a game-high four steals, a block and a plus-14 that was the best figure among Detroit’s reserves. That arrives after a start to his third season in which he had made 28.6 per cent of his shots and none of his six attempts from three across five games. Asked about it afterwards he said he does not let one, two or three games define him. Duncan Robinson put it more plainly: when Holland plays with confidence, he is a different player.
Cunningham led the scoring with 20 points in 28 minutes and went seven for seven from the line, adding five rebounds and four assists. Robinson himself had 17 on five of eleven shooting, Paul Reed 12 on six of twelve in a 31-minute shift, and Ausar Thompson filled in around them with 11 points, eight rebounds and six assists on five of nine. John Collins shot two of six for four points and still pulled nine rebounds.
Brooklyn had the better individual shooting night and lost anyway. Wagner made seven of ten for 16 points, Julius Randle scored 15 with eight rebounds, Michael Porter Jr. added 13, and Mikel Brown Jr. got to 10 while handing out four assists. The Nets took 13 fewer shots than Detroit, which is what 23 turnovers does to a possession count.
What this changes
Detroit is 5-1 and 3-1 away from home, on a second straight win and the best opening stretch the club has put together since the 2015-16 season. Brooklyn stays winless at 0-5 and 0-3 at Barclays Center.
The group stage figure matters more than the record does. NBA Cup groups are separated on points difference when teams finish level, so a comfortable first result is a buffer the Pistons may not have to spend. Holland’s emergence is the other thing banked here: a bench that produces a season-high scoring night from a player who had been shooting under 30 per cent gives Bickerstaff a rotation option he did not have a week ago.
What’s next
Detroit plays at the Charlotte Hornets on Monday 2 November, tipping off at 7:30pm Eastern. No television listing had been published for the game at the time of writing.
The two sides met at Little Caesars Arena five days earlier, a 97-89 Detroit win, so Charlotte arrives at the rematch having already seen what it is up against and having lost to it once. Cunningham against the Hornets’ guards is the matchup that decides it: he went seven for seven from the line in Brooklyn and Detroit’s offence has been at its most reliable when he is drawing fouls rather than taking jump shots, which is a pattern Charlotte will be planning to break on its own floor.
Sources
- ESPN, box score, team statistics and records.
- NBC Sports, confirmation of Ron Holland’s minutes and steals.
- Sports Illustrated, Holland’s shooting figures for the opening five games, his plus-minus, the quotes from Holland and Duncan Robinson, and the 2015-16 comparison.
- CBS Sports, schedule, tipoff time and season results.
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