The Detroit Pistons did more than force a Game 7 on the road in Cleveland. They tied a piece of NBA playoff history that had been gathering dust since 1960. Detroit's 115-94 demolition of the top-seeded Cavaliers on Friday matched the largest Game 6 road win by a team trailing 3-2 in a series — a record last set by the St. Louis Hawks in their 117-96 dismantling of the Minneapolis Lakers in the 1960 West Division Finals.
It was the kind of context Jalen Duren did not bother to acknowledge from the podium. What he did want to talk about, when reporters asked why his team keeps responding when its season is on the line, was the locker room around him.
"That's who we've been all season," Duren said. "Back against the wall, we keep swinging. The world's seen it in the last series. We just keep fighting, man. We don't lay down. The world probably doubts and probably thinks that it's over, but I mean, this locker room — we all believe in each other. We always think we got a chance."
The 21-year-old had his best game of the postseason, going 7-for-10 from the floor for 15 points, 11 rebounds and four assists. He was one of seven Detroit players in double figures. Caris LeVert, who arrived at the trade deadline and has been one of J.B. Bickerstaff's quiet stabilisers, scored 14 with five rebounds. Paul Reed, a healthy scratch in Games 1 and 2 of the series, went off for 17 and six off the bench. Duncan Robinson, returning after missing Game 5, hit four threes in 20 minutes. The bench outscored Cleveland's reserves by 29.
Bickerstaff had warned his locker room what the night would feel like before tip-off. "It's going to be the defense that carries us," he told the room. "We're going to legally, physically, be legally handsy." Detroit held Cleveland to 29 percent shooting in the second half, outscored the Cavs 61-43 after halftime, and turned 28 points off turnovers into the running gap. Donovan Mitchell was 6-of-20 for 18 points. James Harden had 23 but committed eight turnovers, several of them long ones that fed Pistons run-outs.
Cade Cunningham, who has been the headline name behind every Detroit fightback in this run, played 42 minutes and finished with 21 points and eight assists. His framing afterwards was the same as Duren's — accountable, untroubled, locked into the next 48 hours.
"Everything you want is on the other side of hard. Nothing good comes easy," Cunningham said. "We could sit here and dwell on this and carry that into Sunday. What's that going to do for us? So understand we have an opportunity. We missed it. Now we have another opportunity on Sunday, and that's the mindset."
Cunningham gave his teammates the credit Duren had just given his locker room. "Sasser was amazing. Bogdanovic obviously did it again. Burks been great all series. It's been a collective effort, having Dunk come back, he made some huge shots for us. It's been a collective effort."
Outside Detroit, the read on the Pistons has been steadily updating. Shannon Sharpe argued on his Nightcap podcast that the Pistons' run through the first-round series with Orlando, where Detroit rallied from 3-1 down, had hardened them in a way Cleveland could not match. Sharpe pointed to the Pistons' refusal to panic and their depth in the rotation, suggesting Detroit had been tried, tested and now no longer ran out of breath when the series got physical.
Duren's quote will travel further. Spoken in the moment, with another Game 7 on the horizon back in Detroit, it doubles as the Pistons' answer to every analyst still framing them as the lower seed. The world probably thinks it is over. The Pistons locker room, two months into a postseason that has already tied a record nobody had touched in 66 years, has decided to disagree.
