Rule No. 1 of the NBA is that young teams take their lumps. And Rule No. 2 is coaches can’t wave a magic wand to change Rule No. 1.
But in a wild one-point loss to the reigning Eastern Conference champions in the season opener – one where they kept spotting adversity a head start, then running it down from behind – the Pistons showed they might be creating some legitimate magic in their not-too-distant future.
All losses are not created equal. Put an asterisk by this one, the 103-102 loss to Miami in which the Pistons almost fully erased a 19-point deficit in less than 10 minutes, and come back to it in a few months when we have a better idea of where this young team might be on its growth chart.
“Stewie came in and said, ‘Do not hang your head. We’re going to be a really good team,’ ” Monty Williams said after his Pistons debut, meaning Isaiah Stewart, the 22-year-old he referred to this week as “the heart and soul” of the team. “And I had him say it again when I came in (the locker room). Cade said the same thing. You feel bad when you lose a game, but you can see what we can be – and we’re not close.”
Not close to being what they can be, but close to having the pieces in place to become what their talent and their will and, yes, their resilience make possible. Williams has volunteered that word, resilience, several times in the three-plus weeks since training camp. He’s talked about the competitiveness of practice. He likes the vibe of this team. And he’s the coach who’s traveled this road, taking a 19-win Phoenix team he inherited to the NBA Finals two seasons later.
The optimism that shone through the opening loss starts with Cade Cunningham. In his first NBA game after missing the final 70 last season and having a steel rod put in place to fortify his left shin, Cunningham was brilliant with 30 points and nine assists. The 30 points is the stuff of highlight reels and it’s a huge part of why Cunningham has been long thought to be bound for stardom.
But what elevates him to basketball savant are the intangibles – the ability to enhance the talents of teammates, the charisma to win over a locker room, the aura to take over games in the lonely moments when every possession is fraught with tension.
“Coach has been talking about resiliency and that’s something I feel like each individual on our team is naturally resilient and tough-minded,” he said. “I think we’ve got a great group in that way. That’s why it’s so fun to be around those guys. The way our second group picked us up and the way our team as a whole competed throughout, that’s something we can build on, for sure.”
If there was any lingering fear those things would be buried by losing a year to injury, it was dispelled in Game 1 of his return.
Then there’s the guy commanding their sideline. The Pistons made it impossible for Williams to say no to them last spring when they went looking for a coach on the belief that he was precisely the right fit for a young team bristling with talent and in need of a clearly enunciated vision. Williams is a supernaturally gifted communicator. At all the stress points of the season opener, when the Pistons could have imploded, they kept coming, making one of the NBA’s most battle-tested teams’ knees buckle. If you want an early sign of how a team responds to and reflects its coach, their response to adversity in the season opener is about as good as it gets.
In addition to the 30 and nine Cunningham gave them, the Pistons also got double-doubles from Stewart (14 points, 14 boards) and Jalen Duren (17 points, 14 boards). They got five blocked shots from electric rookie Ausar Thompson, who gave future Hall of Famer Jimmy Butler fits. The other rookie, Marcus Sasser, scored eight points in 10 minutes off the bench and was at the heart of a third-quarter comeback to keep the Pistons within reach.
The Pistons were without three key rotation pieces – Bojan Bogdanovic, Monte Morris and Isaiah Livers – and they didn’t get the type of production from the only other two players on the roster who qualify as real veterans, Alec Burks and Joe Harris, that they’re likely to give most other nights. Killian Hayes and Jaden Ivey struggled to knock down shots.
There were a lot of things the Pistons can do a lot better, in other words, including taking care of the basketball. It was a minor miracle the Pistons weren’t run out of the building in the first quarter, when they committed nine of their 17 turnovers. Instead, they led by three. It’s what Williams meant when he said, “We’re not close.”
He’s right. They are a young team – so very young to expect them to thrive in a grown-man’s world. They can’t wave a magic wand to make an end run on the NBA’s immutable rule about the travails of youth. But the signs that they’ve embarked on the journey to what they firmly believe they can become – a good team, eventually a team that wins games like the one in Miami they lost this time – were unmistakeable.
“There were a lot of controllable mistakes and self-inflicted wounds we had out there that took us out of the game for a second,” Cunningham said. “We’ve just got to stay together. There’s a lot of things we can learn from this game and build on.”