At the outset of the year, most NBA analysts had the Knicks pegged as the favorites in the East. The reasons were obvious, as not only were the Knicks returning basically the full roster that made the conference finals the previous season, some of their top competitors, like the Pacers and Celtics, were far less than 100% due to devastating playoff injuries to their stars.
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The Knicks also replaced Tom Thibodeau with Mike Brown in the hopes that Brown could get them where Thibs couldn’t — to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999. So far, the jury’s still out on where this Knicks team will go, but one thing is abundantly clear. They’re not the clear-cut favorites to get through at least three rounds of the playoffs. Not by a long shot.
That’s because the Pistons have emerged as the team to beat. Detroit has been atop the conference since rolling off a 13-game winning streak early in the season, and led by MVP candidate Cade Cunningham and a rugged style that evokes the Bad Boy Pistons of old, they haven’t let the Knicks, or anyone else, get close to them in the standings.
Stephen A. Smith is a longtime Knicks fan, and though he was brash and confident when the season began, the Pistons have done the impossible and quieted him down a little. “I didn’t pay enough attention to the Detroit Pistons,” he lamented on this morning’s First Take before mentioning the Raptors and Celtics as other contenders who, while tough, he believes the Knicks could beat.
“The Detroit Pistons scare the living hell out of me,” he admitted. “I think they’re the best team in the East, and most importantly … they don’t just want to win, they want the Knicks.”
Stephen A. is remembering last season’s first-round playoff series in which the upstart Pistons gave the Knicks just about all they could handle in an extremely close six-game series. That was Detroit’s first playoff appearance since 2019, and though they didn’t come out on top, they saw just how close they were to a team that even then was considered among the league’s top contenders.
Now the Pistons are coming for revenge, and if the one meeting between these teams this season is any indication, Stephen A. is right to be terrified. In that game, which took place almost a month ago, the Pistons took the Knicks behind the woodshed in a 31-point beating. Josh Hart, the Knicks’ glue guy, missed that game with an ankle sprain, but he should be good to go when the teams meet twice this month.
Smith pointed out how important Hart is to everything the Knicks do by saying, “OK, you’re a game under .500 without Josh Hart in the 11 games he’s missed. You’re 14 games over .500 in the games that he’s played.” He also touched, though, on the biggest difference between Detroit and New York.
The Pistons have been consistent all year, never losing more than two games in a row, while the Knicks have been on an interminable roller coaster ride. They’re currently riding a six-game winning streak, but before that, they had lost nine of their previous 11.
Which Knicks team will show up for the rematches in the coming weeks, and which one will we get in the playoffs? “I believe they can do it,” Smith said of the Knicks’ Eastern Conference chances, “but I’m not overly confident, because to me, the Pistons are the team to beat in the East right now, not the Knicks.”
