After Win at Spurs, Onto Mavs for Pistons

Essentials

• Teams: Detroit Pistons (11-23) at Dallas Mavericks (26-10)
• Date: January 7
• Time: 8:30 p.m.
• Television: FSD

Get in the Game

Rome has been conquered…sort of. The Detroit Pistons, who face the Dallas Mavericks tonight, played the San Antonio Spurs on the road last night and did the unthinkable.

With the Spurs inbounding the ball up by a point late in the closing moments, the Pistons stole the ball and then the game. Indeed, Brandon Jennings did this:

Does this make Detroit world conquerors?

Of course not. But for one night, it got to be the king. The Pistons beat the defending champs in their house to earn a sixth consecutive victory. Detroit is still at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, but it’s climbing with this recent run.

It’s easy to point to the fact that the added wins have come since the organization waived Josh Smith, but there’s another catalyst at play here—Jodie Meeks.

Meeks is averaging a cool 17 points in 25.8 minutes per game over the last six games, per NBA.com. More impressively, he’s making a sizzling 53.6 percent o his shots and a scorching 58.6 percent of his threes.

The Pistons will need every bit of that hot shooting tonight against a Mavericks team that’s also won six straight thanks to their league-leading offense. Dallas bends the floor in a variety of ways by utilizing pick-and-rolls, pick-and-pops and isolations to break down defenses. It just constantly throws things at opponents during the entirety of the shot clock, and defenses typically struggle to adjust.

The Mavs force a series of rotations one after the other that ultimately lead to confusion and open shots. Detroit witnessed this first hand last month when Dirk Nowitzki and Co. rung up 117 points and 29 assists on 50.6 percent field-goal shooting at the Palace of Auburn Hills. Dallas also got the free-throw line 35 times.

On paper, the Mavericks are better than the Pistons. The offense is superior by a mile while the gap between their respective defenses isn’t as a big. Their records do speak to the disparity in talent, especially when one accounts for the fact Dallas plays in the Western Conference.

With that said, this Detroit team is playing a little differently than the one that faced Dallas on December 17. To be fair, the results tonight might not be any different, though. After all, the Pistons will be playing one of the toughest back-to-back sets in basketball by facing off against two Texas teams on the road. Furthermore, Detroit exerted a lot of energy to get back in the game against San Antonio after digging itself a 17-point hole at the end of the first quarter.

To their credit, the Pistons came back, but it’s fair to wonder if it will have any impact on tonight’s contest. Still, it should be interesting to see how Detroit’s offense and defense stack up this time around against the Mavs.

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