The Pistons have been really good in fourth quarters lately, going 6-2 over their past eight games with all of them decided by single digits. So go easy on the narrative that a young team caught a lesson in how to win by a playoff-bound team gearing up for the postseason a month before it tips off.
Then again, that’s pretty close to what was at the nut of Chicago’s 114-108 win that snapped a season-best Pistons win streak at three Wednesday night. Of greater relevance, it snapped a five-game Chicago losing streak. It wasn’t so much Chicago’s experience as it was the Bulls’ sense of the stakes. On a night they got All-Star center Nikola Vucevic back in the lineup, Chicago played with the edge of a team not long ago gunning for the East’s No. 1 seed and now clinging to the fourth and final spot for home-court advantage.
“They were playing with a level of desperation down the stretch,” Dwane Casey said after Chicago found its passing gear in the fourth quarter, outscoring the Pistons 30-17. “They were into us defensively. We didn’t match their intensity.”
The Pistons began the fourth quarter with a seven-point lead and still were up by three points with 6:34 remaining when Casey waved Cade Cunningham back in the game while Bulls coach Billy Donovan was waving DeMar DeRozan back off of Chicago’s bench after a quick breather. DeRozan scored 11 points down the stretch, 16 in the fourth quarter and 36 in the game. He’s no worse than a dark horse MVP candidate and looked every bit worthy of it to deny the Pistons a fourth straight win.
“He’s one of the best at the mid-range, but on top of that he hits the old-fashioned three – the hard way,” Casey said after pointing out DeRozan shot 13 free throws as Chicago held a 35-17 edge in foul shots. “That’s the equalizer. He’s great at it. That’s why he can get away with (shooting so many mid-range shots) and analytics are good to him because of that. … Hats off to him. He’s playing the best basketball he’s played.”
Here’s the thing with DeRozan and his mastery of the mid-range. As the rest of the NBA rushes to embrace the 3-point, DeRozan has become his own movement to exploit a market inefficiency – defenses no longer geared to defending in the mid-range.
“He’s very different,” said Pistons veteran Kelly Olynyk, who spent the early part of his career with Boston when DeRozan was the focal point of rival Toronto’s offense under Casey. “Usually, that’s where you’re trying to force guys to take shots. He’s doing it over and over and over again. It’s kind of like, you’re questioning what you’re doing. Obviously, he’s one of the best in the world at that mid-range area. He showed it tonight.”
Until he got away from the Pistons so completely down the stretch, though, it appeared another night that would belong to the surging rookie, Cunningham. After the Pistons overcame an early 20-12 deficit, they controlled the middle portion of the game with Cunningham dissecting Chicago’s defense. After three quarters, he had 22 points, four rebounds and six assists on 10 of 13 shooting. He went scoreless, missing his only two shots, in the fourth quarter – the time when he’s been so devastatingly good of late.
The Pistons had six other players in double figures, three of them (Saddiq Bey, Jerami Grant, Olynyk) scoring 12 points apiece and three others (Marvin Bagley III, Hamidou Diallo and Saben Lee) adding 10 each. Rodney McGruder came up one point shy of making it eight Pistons in double figures.
Bagley drew the start for Isaiah Stewart, who’ll miss at least a week after suffering a right knee bone bruise in Monday’s overtime win over Atlanta. Lee was playing for only the second time since January, assuming the minutes of Killian Hayes, who suffered a bruised hip in Monday’s game. Diallo, who missed Monday’s game due to a non-COVID illness, was bouncy in his 14 minutes but left in the first minute of the fourth quarter after jamming the index finger on his left hand. McGruder also left with a hamstring injury.
Until Diallo left, a second unit that hadn’t played together all season – Diallo, Olynyk, Lee, McGruder and rookie Isaiah Livers – was humming along admirably. The offense stalled at that point, though, as the Pistons opened the fourth quarter 4 of 17 after shooting 58 percent (36 of 62) through three quarters.
That’s about the time Chicago, a team acutely aware of the standings, turned things up a few notches.
“Overall, it was a solid effort,” Olynyk said. “We played whatever it was, 40 minutes, of really good basketball – and had a stretch where we were really cold at the wrong time.”