The first round of the Eastern Conference could end tonight, with the conference semifinals beginning as soon as Thursday. The Cleveland Cavaliers already punched their ticket to the second round yesterday with a 138-83 demolition of the Miami Heat, but the Indiana Pacers, New York Knicks, and Boston Celtics all have a chance to close out their series at home tonight.
It’s a shame for the Detroit Pistons, really, who have put up the best fight of any lower-seeded team in the East. The four games have been decided by a total of 20 points, and each of the two games in Michigan ended up within a single possession. The Knicks have been winning ugly, but a win is a win is a win, and they’ll have a good shot at closing it out at Madison Square Garden at 7:30 p.m. ET tonight.
New York is a 5.5-point favorite (-225 Moneyline) at DraftKings Sportsbook, with the point total set for 214.5. Meanwhile, Detroit is +185 on the Moneyline.
Pistons at Knicks Game 5 preview, prediction
Detroit’s Game 2 victory — in which the Knicks trio of OG Anunoby, Josh Hart, and Karl-Anthony Towns scored just 10 points each — was its first postseason win in 17 years. Then, the Pistons very nearly picked up another one in Game 4, when Tim Hardaway Jr. rose for a corner triple with 0.3 seconds remaining and New York leading by one point. Hart bumped him and the shot missed short and right, sounding the buzzer and ending the game. The NBA later admitted that there should have been a foul called on the play and that Hardaway — an 85.5% free throw shooter this season — should’ve had three tries from the charity stripe to potentially take the lead. Regardless, Detroit is now on the brink.
In some sense, the Pistons can take solace in the likelihood that the series would be tied had the referee blown his whistle on Sunday night. Detroit came so close to stealing the game even with Cade Cunningham coughing up seven turnovers and the Knicks’ dynamic duo of Jalen Brunson and Towns combining for 59 points and nine made triples. New York made eight more threes than the Pistons did and still nearly lost.
But at the same time, only 13 teams have ever come back from 3-1 down to win a playoff series — representing just 2.1% of teams that found themselves in that hole — and the two most recent rosters to do so had LeBron James and Nikola Jokić. Although Cunningham resembles both players in some facets, as a jumbo-sized playmaker, he’s still nowhere near the quality of the two all-time greats. Plus, the Knicks still have four of the best five players in the series and a raucous home arena in Madison Square Garden where they went 27-14 during the regular season.
Pistons at Knicks pick, best bet
Last season was Brunson’s coronation as one of the most notable playoff risers in NBA history, and this season has been a continuation of that trend. He’s recorded at least 30 points and five assists in each of the first four games of the series, joining Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and Kobe Bryant as the only players ever to do that in NBA history. And while it’s partially a product of high usage — he has the third-highest usage rate of any player in this postseason so far — but his efficiency has still been fairly solid, as he’s shooting 46.0% from the field, 35.5% from deep, and 83.3% from the free-throw line.
You can see where I’m going with this. No player on Detroit’s roster has been able to slow Brunson down much. Dennis Schröder has been the best among them on high volume, holding him to 12-for-30 shooting, although he’s still scored 31 points against him. Other than that, he’s two-for-13 on Cunningham, but J.B. Bickerstaff has only put his big point guard on New York’s small one for four total minutes in this series. Brunson is shooting 50% or better from the field against Ausar Thompson, Tim Hardaway Jr., and Malik Beasley, and he’s even held his own defensively against Hardaway. Thompson’s minutes have dipped slightly from 22.5 per game in the regular season to 21.0 so far this series, in part because Brunson has forced him into consistent foul trouble.
So Brunson’s going to get his, but he can’t quite win the game for his team alone. So it’ll come down to each team’s role players, and the Pistons simply haven’t proven themselves trustworthy. Thompson’s effective field goal percentage has dipped by nearly 10 percentage points from the regular season, and since a hot start in Game 1, Hardaway has shot just 32.4% from the field. Ditto for Tobias Harris, whose two-for-nine, five-point, five-foul performance in Game 3 proved a critical reason for the team’s loss. Malik Beasley isn’t very useful if he isn’t hitting his three-pointers, and in the last three games, he’s just six-for-27 from deep. It’s not entirely a matter of fluky shooting luck, though; the Knicks are hustling, ranking above-average in contested shots and leading all postseason participants in deflections.
The biggest weak link in Detroit’s starting lineup is Jalen Duren, who has allowed Hart and Towns to score a combined 49 points while shooting 19-for-40 from the field and eight-for-14 from beyond the arc, and Towns has also forced him to commit five turnovers against five assists in 30 minutes guarding him. Sure, he’s good for the occasional monster performance on the boards — he had 17 rebounds (six offensive) in Game 4 — but he’s had the worst plus-minus on the team in three of the four games. Towns has now put together two straight huge games and is playing with confidence after hitting the game-sealing triple late in Game 4.
I trust OG Anunoby to bounce back after a rough Game 4, and come crunch time, the Clutch Player of the Year will prove to be too much.
