The Detroit Pistons travel to Miami to take on the Miami Heat in a crucial tie-breaker game for potential playoff seeding.
The Detroit Pistons fly to Miami to take on the Heat after an ugly blowout loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Monday. The Pistons are looking to bounce back and continue their blazing play Wednesday night.
The Miami Heat on the other hand come off a loss against the Toronto Raptors on Sunday 125 to 104. They will also be looking to bounce back and put pressure on the Pistons in the playoff seeding.
For what it’s worth, and it’s definitely worth something — Pistons have now lost seeding tiebreaker with Celtics, Nets & Hornets.
— Austin Drake (@austin_drake) March 12, 2019
Notable Pistons tiebreakers still undecided: Heat, Magic, Pacers.
This is the fourth and final meeting between the Pistons and the Heat. The Pistons lost the first game in an overtime loss thanks to the dominant scoring night of Josh Richardson.
The Pistons would later get their revenge with a 98 to 93 victory at Detroit. They would be able to win that game without Andre Drummond; who had gone down with a concussion injury during the first quarter because of an arm hit to the nose from James Johnson.
The Pistons would follow-up that win versus Miami with another win against Miami in late February during their hot stretch. The bench came up huge in that game. Luke Kennard and Langston Galloway scored 17 points each. And Ish Smith was one assist shy of a double-double with 22 points and 9 assists.
Since their late February lost to the Pistons, The Heat have won 5 of their last 8 games including a game winning shot by Dwyane Wade against the Golden State Warriors.
The Heat have been starting Bam Adebayo in their recent stretch of games. It’s unknown whether Miami will start him against Andre Drummond. But since being inserted as the starter he has averaged 12.1 PPG, 7.6 RPG, 3.6 APG, and 1.3 BPG on 64 percent shooting.
Keys to the game
Bruce Brown will have a lot on his table. He will go up against Josh Richardson; an amazing scoring guard that has seen a breakout-type season.
Blake Griffin will look to bounce back after arguably one of his worst games of the season against the Nets on Monday.
Andre Drummond versus Hassan Whiteside is always an interesting match-up.
Kelly Olynyk, a Pistons killer, will look to continue his attack on Detroit.
Wade’s final appearance versus Detroit. For his career against the Pistons Wade has averaged 20.3 PPG, 4.8 RPG, and 5.4 APG on 48.8 percent shooting. Who will get to jersey swap with him?