Gameday: Pistons @ Raptors, Mar. 3

If ever there were a time to beat an inferior opponent… it’s now.

The Raptors face the Pistons for their third and final game of the year. They’re repping a nasty 0-2 record against Dwane Casey’s band of young players, and have underperformed on the whole. Pictures of Casey cooking up hairbrained schemes and villainous game plans can be conjured up for why the Raptors can’t seem to beat his teams with regularity, but there’s a simpler explanation: they’ve played really bad in both games.

So, can they break a curse that seems to be coming from a higher power, but is more than likely self-imposed? The battle at the back end of the East is contentious, and this game carries the extra weight of draft selection jockeying. The Raptors earliest pick in the 2022 draft will be courtesy of the Pistons in the 2nd round (barring any trades on draft night), and they bear the responsibility of killing two birds with one stone in tonight’s game.

You can no doubt expect some zone defense in this one. The Pistons have big wings and one jumbo guard, and those are the right type of tools to complicate entry passes to the middle of a zone. If OG Anunoby and Fred VanVleet are back in tow for this one (they’re both questionable) things get a lot easier in that respect, but we’ll see.

The shooting touch of Pascal Siakam is also of note coming into this one. The Pistons have a decent grouping of players to throw his way as far as deterring drives go, and his touch has been amiss these past few games. Of course, he’s fought through sickness, but the results are just that. It’d be meaningful if he could make his first step back toward All-NBA form in this one.

And of course, we can’t forget about budding superstar, Malachi Flynn. Too much? Yeah. It’s nice to see him deliver in his minutes recently, though. Some tidy playmaking, timely shooting, all mixed in with stout defense and some off the bounce flash is as good as anything one might expect from Flynn, and if VanVleet isn’t back for this one we might see him get after Cory Joseph. Should be fun.

These Pistons are a bad offensive team, a bad defensive team, and much worse (on average) at basketball than the Raptors. Is it time we finally see that play out in competition this season? I sure hope so.