Climbing the proverbial mountain in the NBA comes with its fair share of challenges. The Toronto Raptors are currently embarking on this climb, and with two All-Stars at the helm, more wins than the entirety of last season, and a top NBA defense, they have climbed well thus far. More often than not in the NBA there will be a team who is higher on their climb than you are, a team who can make your climb look like a child scaling a jungle gym, and that is what the Detroit Pistons did to Toronto last night. Without their second best player Jalen Duren, or his backup in Isaiah Stewart, Detroit dominated Toronto and showed them that there are levels to this thing we call basketball.
The game didn’t begin as a blowout, and it looked as if Toronto would once again successfully punch above their weight class, but Detroit just outgunned them and played their brand of physical defense which overwhelmed Toronto. Jakob Poeltl made his long-awaited return last night, but Paul Reed had no intention of making it a celebratory night for the Raptors big man. Reed, who is third on the depth chart at center for Detroit had one of, if not his best game of the season last night as he finished with 22 points, which included a wing three-pointer which opened the game.
Toronto was very intent on containing Cade Cunningham in Detroit’s pick n’ roll actions, so they would have Poeltl or whoever the big defender was step up, which allowed Reed to slip behind his man, and have a free lane to the rim. Reed set some pretty solid screens, but Toronto’s low man help was nonexistent on a lot of his drives, and when the help was too late, he would just rise up over them.
Cunningham, who is not known for being an adept outside shooter, knocked down 6 threes last night. Once again, operating in the pick n’ roll he was just walking into three-pointers in the second quarter. The second quarter is where Cunningham caught fire and really extended Detroit’s lead. In order to combat the damage Detroit’s bigs were doing in the pick n’ roll, Toronto had Poeltl in a soft drop coverage, so Cunningham wouldn’t be able to just feed the bigs for easy rim looks time and time again. So Cunningham just began to launch pull-up jumpers after his man, Ja’Kobe Walter at this point would die on the screen. Anyone who was the on-ball defender against Cunningham in a pick n’ roll action met a similar fate, he was just in a rhythm on these pull-up looks. It was like watching the same play on repeat, and Toronto was seemingly utterly powerless to stop it.
Detroit’s lead grew to 15 headed into the second half, and they never quite let Toronto back into this one. The lead hovered in the early to mid teens for several minutes, but anytime Toronto would try to spark a comeback, Detroit would be there with an answer. Detroit’s defense was as advertised, they never let Scottie Barnes get comfortable in the mid-range, and they always showed him a large body when he ventured into the paint. Brandon Ingram only took 7 shots, which he made 5 of but Detroit was not content to just watch him score however he wanted so that was limited as well. All in all, last night was the Cunningham show. Whenever he had the ball in his hands good things followed, and he methodically broke down Toronto’s defense.Â
Detroit just dominated on the glass, and their defense was just stellar, they are like hyenas on a carcass when a player dares to drive against them. Even their weaker defenders like Ducan Robinson are super aggressive at the point-of-attack, and this was something that Toronto just could not overcome. This game followed a trend of Toronto losing to the top end teams more often than not, which goes to show you that even though they have grown so much this season, they still have plenty of room to grow and learn as a team.
