Detroit Pistons handle business through first five games

While off to their best start since 2008, the Detroit Pistons’ 4-1 record could be the result of an easy schedule. However, they’d handled their business in the first two weeks of the season.

The Detroit Pistons are 4-1 through five games, which is their best start since Joe Dumars traded Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson in 2008.

However, as Rod Beard of the Detroit News has said, this doesn’t seem to be good enough for Pistons fans. And after their 109-89 blowout loss to the Boston Celtics, those fans feel even worse.

But, there’s one important reason to be happy and hopeful for these Pistons.

They’ve handled business.

Now, the Pistons are 4-1, but haven’t been really treated as a top team by those outside of Detroit; heck, even people inside of Detroit don’t think much of them.

It’s because their wins aren’t exactly high-quality wins.

They beat a Brooklyn Nets team on opening night that was playing without DeMarre Carroll, Allen Crabbe, and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. The Pistons won 103-100, only three points. Not exactly a point differential you’d expect from a team with Andre Drummond and Blake Griffin going up against a injury-ridden Nets team.

Their second win came against the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls started Cameron Payne in place of injured Kris Dunn, and are going to be without Lauri Markkanen for a large part of the season.

Drummond was going up against rookie center Wendell Carter, and Bobby Portis was going to be guarding Griffin.

What sounds like an easy victory for the Pistons was not one at all. The Pistons escaped with a 118-116 win, while allowing budding star Zach Lavine to score 33 points.

Through two games, the Pistons narrowly beat two bad and injury riddled teams.

However, with a game against the Philadelphia 76ers coming up, the Pistons were going to face their first real test.

They passed their test, with a 133-132 overtime victory. Griffin went off for 50 points, the first 50-point scorer in a Pistons uniform since Rip Hamilton did it in 2006 at Madison Square Garden.

Again though, there will be an asterisk next to this win due to Ben Simmons missing the game and some suggest we should’ve won.

The 76ers are still a pretty good team without Simmons there, so winning that game is still good for this team.

Their fourth game against the hapless Cleveland Cavaliers was their only win with a little bit of breathing room. Detroit won this game 110-103 and improved to 4-0 for the first time since 2008.

Not many were high on the Pistons, even after being 4-0.

They had outscored their opponents through four games by 13 points. Three of the wins were decided by one possession, and three came against pretty bad teams that were dealing with injuries. So you’d expect your point differential to be a bit more.

As mentioned earlier, after getting manhandled by the Celtics on Saturday there was plenty of ammo to say the Pistons just beat up on bad teams and aren’t on the Celtics level.

The thing is, that may be 100 percent true.

And it should still be a good thing.

The Pistons of the last few years under the Stan Van Gundy era would tend to lose to bad teams.

The Van Gundy teams would hang tough, and even beat some of the top teams in the league. This would have Pistons’ fans feeling great about the team, wondering what their ceiling was.

But, after beating a top team like Golden State, Boston, or Minnesota, the Pistons would then go on to lose to a Bulls and Nets team; zapping all life of whatever fan base there was.

The Pistons may not be as good as a top team like Boston right now. They may be much worse.

But, they don’t control their schedule.

And even though their wins have some question marks with them, they are wins nonetheless.

Every victory will be needed for this team, no matter how it comes. Dwane Casey and the Pistons have handled their business through five games.

That’s a nice and needed change from recent years.