Detroit Pistons travel to Portland to face red hot Trail Blazers

The Detroit Pistons will have their hands full as they face the Portland Trail Blazers on the road, who are currently riding one of the biggest hot streaks in the NBA.

While the Detroit Pistons are going through one of their worst stretches of play at the moment, having a dismal 2-8 record in their last 10 games, the Portland Trail Blazers are rolling on an 11-game winning streak.

These two teams are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum right now.

On one hand, the Trail Blazers are looking to break away from the Oklahoma City Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves and cement their spot as the team with the third-best record in the Western Conference.

Meanwhile, the Pistons are seven wins below the eight placed Miami Heat and are in danger of falling below the Charlotte Hornets in the standings.

They are currently in the middle of a six-game Western Conference road trip, which is one of the worst places to be when your team isn’t clicking.

The Pistons have been defensively horrendous recently, which could lead to disaster against the Trail Blazers if the trend continues

More from PistonPowered

They’re conceding an average of 109 points per game in their last 10 outings and only twice have they kept teams from scoring over 100 points.

It’ll come as no surprise that the two games where they managed to keep teams from reaching triple-digits were the two games they managed to come away with a win.

Turning around the team’s defence will need to start with the Pistons finding a way to limit Damian Lillard’s impact.

So far in March Lillard is averaging 30.7 points, 6.4 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 43.2 percent shooting from the three-point line per game.

Lillard is showing no signs of slowing down as the season rolls on and it remains to be seen if the Pistons have a defender who can adequately guard him.

However, we do know that with Reggie Jackson still on the sidelines they don’t have the firepower at point guard to keep up with Lillard.

Ish Smith has been struggling majorly with being the number one option at point guard, and while Dwight Buycks did score a career-high 22 points last game it’s still questionable whether he can give the Pistons a strong enough output to be a starter.

If the Pistons are going to snap the Trail Blazers’ winning streak they’re going to need massive performances from both Andre Drummond and Blake Griffin.

Drummond brings it every night on the defensive and offensive glass, but that alone is not going to be enough to upset the Trail Blazers.

A solid performance on offence like the one we saw against the Denver Nuggets last game will be vital to the team’s overall chances.

Similarly, they’ll need the good version of Griffin to show up.

After having a mini form slump to end February and start March, Blake Griffin has been back to playing some solid basketball.

In his last six games, he has scored less than 25 points only once and is averaging 25.2 points, 5.7 assists, 5.2 rebounds and shooting 48.6 percent from three.

While much has been made of Griffin’s insistence on shooting threes, sometimes to the detriment of his own game and the entire team, if he’s able to shoot at even 40 percent from behind the arc then he has a license to let it fly.

When a guy with the skillset of Griffin is shooting almost 50 percent on threes he becomes close to unstoppable and gives you a serious shot at beating a ridiculously hot team like the Portland Trail Blazers.

While a win seems unlikely, and it’s actually much more favourable if they lose seeing as they need to land in the top 3 of the lottery to not lose their draft pick, don’t be surprised if the Pistons pull off an upset.

Somehow defeating the hottest team in the NBA on the road whilst they themselves are in the midst of one of the worst stretches of the season would be an incredibly 2017-18 Detroit Pistons thing to do.

Home/Pistons News