The Pistons moved beyond moral victories very early in the Joe Dumars reconstruction, so nobody was in a mood to celebrate the 120-114 double-overtime loss to Utah on a night four of Michael Curry’s best players ended the game with the same perspective as he had – from the bench, watching, tagged with six fouls apiece.
That makes seven straight losses to the Jazz, which at least makes the notion of taking a stake to drive through their collective heart on the trip to Utah for this season’s rematch tempting.
But in the ashes of this smoldering defeat, you don’t need an arson expert to detect the signs of an offense about to combust and a team inching closer to the vision Dumars had when he pulled off the Chauncey Billups-Allen Iverson deal two games into the season.
“I would rather both of us not score at all and get a win than have good games like that in a loss,” Allen Iverson said after establishing a personal best as a Piston with 38 points on a night Rip Hamilton tossed in 30, the first time two Pistons crested 30 since Hamilton and Billups did it in March 2003. “But it keeps you positive and lets you know we can get it done and we can be effective, both of us, in one single game.”
Remember when the prevailing wisdom was that these two couldn’t play together, couldn’t share the ball, couldn’t strike the balance necessary for the Pistons to realize the on-paper potential of combining two of their generation’s most irrepressible scorers?
Well, scratch that.
You could nitpick a lot about this game to find the one play that would have enabled the Pistons to win it in regulation, or in the first overtime, before the zebras sidelined three more of them – Hamilton, Rodney Stuckey and Antonio McDyess early in the second overtime – after Rasheed Wallace had been banished in the first overtime. But the losing side can do that in every game.
The inescapable truth about this game was that it took a great performance from Utah on a night the Pistons would have beaten pretty much all comers. It was that good. Who’d have guessed that on dollar hot dog night, the best bargain would turn out to be the basketball? No matter what a seat cost at The Palace for Friday night’s pulsating double-overtime thriller, it represented Black Friday value.
If they could have captured the heat this one generated, they wouldn’t have had to bother with plowing the parking lot for the foot of snow that got dumped on Detroit earlier in the day – it would have melted in a flash. Presciently enough, the souvenir giveaway was a snowbrush. Michael Curry might have used his to sweep away the disappointment that clung to him unmistakably, yet Curry vacillated between hurt and hope, clearly believing that many things he saw from his team on a night that showcased the NBA at its best will translate into the future he believes will validate them all.
“I’m pleased with what our guys did,” he said. “We made some mistakes, but overall I thought our guys tried to play to their strengths and played unselfish and continued to attack.”
With the first real test of the small lineup since Curry swapped out Kwame Brown for Rodney Stuckey in the starting lineup, the Pistons played one of the NBA’s top rebounding and toughest teams to a virtual draw on the boards – Utah won 50-47 despite Wallace and McDyess both fouling out – and held the Jazz to 40 points in the paint, five under their average despite the 10 extra minutes.
And let’s make this clear: Deron Williams and ex-Piston Mehmet Okur were sensational, and if they had been merely exceptionally good, the Pistons would have walked into the Currier & Ives night winners. Williams knocked down 11 of 18 shots despite mostly stout defense played on him all night, and his turnaround jumper that twisted Stuckey into the ground with 2.3 seconds left in regulation would have won it if not for Hamilton’s coldblooded 17-footer to tie with four-tenths of a second left.
Williams finished with 29 points and eight assists, Okur with 26 and 12 boards. Paul Millsap, standing in for the 16th straight game for the injured Carlos Boozer, kept his remarkable streak of double-doubles alive at 14 – though he needed both overtimes to do it – as he scored added 24 points and 13 rebounds.
Okur and Millsap combined for nine points in the second overtime when the Pistons had to go with Jason Maxiell and Walter Herrmann as their big man combination. The Pistons were whistled for 34 fouls to Utah’s 21 and the Jazz shot 17 more foul shots.
The Pistons had a shot to win at the end of the first overtime, but Stuckey missed an open triple from a few feet beyond the spot where Hamilton had drained his shot to force overtime. It was Iverson’s play to make, but Utah knew that as well as anyone and was determined to make someone else beat them.
“I wanted to take it,” Iverson said, “but I looked at the way the defense was playing, I knew everyone on their team knew I was going to try to take the shot. They packed in so much, that’s how Rodney got the look he got. Out of 100 shots, I’ll take that one 100 times.”
Ten days ago, when the Pistons were dealing with the rare franchise-disorienting three-game losing streak, Joe D said he saw a team trying to find itself. Get big leads, lose them. Get down big, come roaring back.
They were this close to winning their fourth straight game on Friday night, and would have with a little less heroics from Williams or Okur, a little more favorable whistle, a little better bounce here or there. No one’s calling off the search party just yet, but the bread crumbs are getting a little closer together.
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Award-winning journalist Keith Langlois, most recently lead sports columnist at The Oakland Press, joined Pistons.com as the web site editor on October 2, 2006. Langlois, who brings over 27 years of professional sports journalism experience to Palace Sports & Entertainment, serves as Pistons.com's official beat writer and covers the team on a daily basis.