It seems like every team has played at least one game since the All Star break, but this will be the Pistons first game.
The Pistons last played a game on February 12, a win over the Chicago Bulls, they have now had to wait nine days to play again. The only hope is that the positive momentum the Pistons carried into the All Star break didn’t go away from going so long without playing.
The teams the Pistons faced heading into the All Star Break were not very good, had at least a 20 point lead at some point during the game for every game except the Bulls on Wednesday. As a result, they sport a four game winning streak and will face a short-handed Spurs team who just got the devastating news that Victor Wembanyama is out for the season due to blood clots.
Wemby being out is bad for the sport of basketball, but also for fans of the Pistons who now will not get to see one of the most exciting young players in basketball in this game or the next game against the Spurs. It will make the task of beating the Spurs and extending the winning streak easier, but nobody wants to have their job made a little easier in this way.
Game Vitals
Where: Moody Center in San Antonio, TX
When: Friday, Feb. 21 at 8:30 pm EST
Watch: Fan Duel Sports Network Detroit
Odds; Pistons (-4.5)
Analysis
The Spurs are coming off of a solid win last night against the Phoenix Suns after finding out the devastating news on Victor Wembanyama earlier in the day. Obviously, the Spurs are being built around Victor Wembanyama and are still in the early stages of putting together the ideal roster, but it goes to show that this will not be a cakewalk game coming out of the All Star Break.
The Spurs still have De’Aaron Fox, who they acquired at the trade deadline, and the veteran leadership of Chris Paul. Having Chris Paul alone makes your team more competitive night-to-night even at his older age, but also having a high-end scorer like Fox will still allow you to keep the team afloat.
Outside of those two, the Spurs still do have solid pieces like Devin Vassell and rookie of the year contender, Stephon Castle. It likely isn’t enough to make it into the playoffs in the highly-competitive Western Conference, but the Spurs already had a bit of an uphill battle even with Wemby healthy.
I would say they are ahead of schedule as long as everything is ok with Wemby long term. From all the early reports, it sounds like that should be the case, but the Pistons know all too well how scary a blood clot situation can be since they are just now getting Ausar Thompson back into the swing of things after he suffered blood clots.
Speaking of health, the long layoff was a great opportunity for the Pistons to get everybody recovered from some of the bruises from the first half of the season. The Pistons will still be without Jaden Ivey, who is still likely to miss the rest of the seaosn, but giving Cade Cunningham some time to rest will be huge for the closing stretch of the season.
Obviously, Cade participated in All Star weekend, but I wouldn’t call one round of the 3-point Contest and 5 minutes of basketball in the All Star game that straining on the body. With the load he has to take on every night on offense, getting a few days off can hopefully get his rolled ankle he suffered a few days before the break fully healed up and not hurt the momentum he and the team were building too much.
That is the key for the Pistons, as they have seemed to be a bit more sluggish this year when they get more than a day or two off. It rarely happens with the modern NBA schedule, but when it has happened the Pistons always seem to start the games off slow and then have an uphill battle the rest of the night.
The Pistons are not just riding a four game winning streak, but it has arguably been their most dominant stretch of basketball all year. Beating teams currently out of the playoff race is not all that impressive, but when you do it by double digits in every single game, it makes it a little more impressive and in some of those games the Pistons even had leads upwards of 30 points.
Winning games against teams that you are favored against is the next step in the development of a young team, so hopefully the Pistons can keep things going against a short-handed Spurs team in which they are favored against.
Lineups
Detroit Pistons (29-26): Cade Cunningham, Tim Hardaway Jr, Ausar Thompson, Tobias Harris, Jalen Duren
San Antonio Spurs (24-29): Chris Paul, De’Aaron Fox, Devin Vassell, Harrison Barnes, Sandro Mamukelashvili
Question of the Day
Given the poor reception to the new All Star Game format, how would you fix All Star Weekend?