The NBA schedule certainly has some interesting quirks. Sometimes you go months without playing teams from your division, and sometimes you start your season with your first two games against division rivals and in one game your current head coach plays his former team.

After a tough opening night loss to the Indiana Pacers, the Detroit Pistons have a chance to redeem themselves and give their coach some redemption. The Pistons controlled the game against the Pacers for the first three quarters, but as we saw so many times last season, this team just can’t close out games against better teams.

There were some encouraging signs, and hopefully the Pistons can build on those encouraging signs against a Cavaliers team coming off a blowout win over the Toronto Raptors.

Game Vitals

When: Friday, October 25 at 7:30 PM EST
Where: Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, Ohio
Watch: Fan Duel Sports Network Detroit (will take some getting used to)
Chances: Pistons +10.5

Analysis

The Pistons and Cavs faced off during the preseason, with the Pistons coming out on top in a blowout victory. However, this is the regular season, which is a completely different animal.

Both teams have a rest day after opening night, but the Cavaliers pulled off an easy 30-point victory while the Pistons had to fight to the end before ultimately falling to the Pacers. Combine that with the fact that the Cavaliers were already the most talented team, and you have a recipe for a tough game.

I already talked about JB Bickerstaff’s revenge above, so I won’t focus too much on that. Hopefully, though, it can provide some extra motivation for a Pistons team that needs any kind of motivation they can get with their tough slate of games to start the season.

The Cavaliers return virtually the same roster as last season, in which they won their first-round series against the Orlando Magic before losing to the Boston Celtics in five games. They are led by their two-man backcourt, featuring the undersized but talented Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell. To counter the disparity in the size of their backcourt, they have an elite backcourt of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen. Mobley and Allen are no slouch on offense either, but aren’t as dynamic scorers as Garland and Mitchell.

The hope is that the Pistons can exploit Mitchell and Garland defensively with Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey to keep them in the game. Both players played well on opening night, but couldn’t make the shots they needed to, which was a major reason for the fourth quarter collapse. As difficult as it is to rely on a pair of players 23 and younger to run your 4th quarter offense, here’s what the expectation will be for these two this season as the team’s most dynamic offensive players.

The Pistons showed some promise defensively on opening night against the Pacers in the first half, but their defense in the second half left a lot to be desired. The Pistons missed a lot of shots in that game, but the Pacers were able to get back into the game as the Pistons failed to guard the shooters at the rim and didn’t provide much resistance around the rim.

Fortunately for the Pistons, Allen and Mobley aren’t the same kind of offensive bigs as Myles Turner and Pascal Siakam, so hopefully they can focus their defense more on stopping Mitchell and Garland.

Even with second half struggles, the defense was better than last season and they held a high-powered Pacers offense to just 115 points, but the bar for this team needs to be higher defensively than just being better than last year.

This will be a tough game, and I wouldn’t bet on the Pistons winning. But no matter how tough their early-season games are, they’ll need an unexpected win at some point if they want to keep their season from deteriorating before it even starts. Why not do it against JB Bickerstaff’s old team?

Projected lineups

Detroit Pistons (0-1)

Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Tim Hardaway Jr, Tobias Harris, Jalen Duren

Cleveland Cavaliers (1-0)

Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Dean Wade, Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen

Question of the day

What is your biggest achievement this season regarding the Pistons or any other NBA team?