Last time a Pistons team won six in a row was directly after releasing Josh Smith
The Detroit Pistons will visit the Atlanta Hawks , seeking their sixth consecutive win this season. Granted, those five previous wins didn’t exactly come against the league’s best and brightest, but the Pistons are beating the teams they are supposed to beat. Would the Hawks also fit into that category?
Game Vitals
When: 6 p.m. ET
Where: State Farm Arena, Atlanta, Georgia
Watch: Fan Duel Sports Network Detroit
Odds: Pistons -2.5
Analysis
The Hawks beat the Pistons on Feb. 3 on a miracle three from Trae Young. That kicked off a spurt of four wins in five games for the Hawks. It also was just prior to the team trading rotation mainstays DeAndre Hunter and Bogdan Bogdanovic at the NBA Trade Deadline . Those trades would seemingly have signaled the end of the Hawks wanting to remain competitive, but they have remained feisty. Atlanta beat the Bucks, Wizards, and Magic. They then took the Knicks to overtime before falling 149-148. They followed that up with a close loss to the Orlando Magic. Young scored 38 points in each of those losses, 19 in a win over the Magic and 35 in a win over the Wizards. The Hawks have relied pretty exclusively on offense from their star guard since the trade deadline, and Young is happy to oblige.
It doesn’t mean the Hawks are unbeatable if Young gets his, as the consecutive losses while scoring 38 points indicate. But it does mean that if the Pistons manage to find a way to solve the Trae Young problem, Atlanta doesn’t really have anywhere else to turn for ofense.
The Pistons should be up to that challenge with the team overall playing some of their best basketball and young wing Ausar Thompson coming into his own as one of the game’s premier versatile defenders.
It took a while for Thompson to find his sea legs after an extended absence because of a blood clot issue. Thompson made his season debut on Nov. 25 and took about a month to play up to game speed consistently on both ends of the floor.
Thompson is still attempting to figure out how to positively impact the floor on offense while he’s still trying to build a jump shot. On some nights, he aces that assignment with a mix of passing, cutting, running the floor, and fighting for offensive rebounds. On other nights, he can disappear. On defense, though, his presence is always felt. In limited minutes, he is constantly finding himself deflecting the ball, matching up on the toughest assignment.
Since Dec. 21, the Pistons are 10 games over .500 and Thompson is a huge reason why. He is one of only three players in the NBA in that span to play 500 minutes and compile a steal percentage of at least. .30 and a defensive rebound percentage of at least .150. The other two are Draymond Green and Dejounte Murray.
Projected Lineups
Detroit Pistons (30-26)
Cade Cunningham, Tim Hardaway, Ausar Thompson, Tobias Harris, Jalen Duren
Atlanta Hawks (26-30)
Trae Young, Dyson Daniels, Zaccharie Risacher, Mohammed Gueye, Onyeka Okongwu
Question of the Game
Will the Hawks make the play-in tournament in the Eastern Conference?