Don't panic, Detroit! The five reasons to still trust the Pistons this postseason

1. They learned serious lessons after last year's crushing playoff loss

All-Star point guard Cade Cunningham made a vow shortly after the Pistons' season ended last year. Detroit had been engaged in a tightly contested series with the Knicks before being eliminated in six games.

Down by three and with a chance to tie the score in the closing seconds of Game 6 in Detroit, Cunningham made a pass to a wide-open Malik Beasley, the team's best 3-point shooter, but the ball slipped through his hands and out of bounds. The turnover sealed the series and ended Detroit's first playoff appearance since the 2018-19 campaign.

"That feeling will stick with us throughout this summer in our workouts and conversations," Cunningham said that night. "We'll be back and better."

So far, Cunningham is two for two.

Duren is, perhaps, the most visible manifestation of that vow. He took two weeks off last offseason before linking up with Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff during the summer for individual work. Doing so led to the best season of his career.

"Honestly, it kind of changed my perspective," Duren told ESPN. "At first, it was trying to get there, trying to get to the club. Now it's like OK, we know we have a good enough team to get back. Now it's like can we make some noise there?"

Bickerstaff, who is a finalist for Coach of the Year, has heard the adage countless times: Young teams have to experience heartbreak in the early rounds of the playoffs before they can achieve deep playoff runs.

Years of NBA history have reinforced this mantra -- Michael Jordan falling to the Bad Boy Pistons; LeBron James' various playoff shortcomings before he became a champion; the Oklahoma City Thunder losing in the 2024-25 Western Conference semifinals despite amassing the best record in the league.

Yet these Pistons believe they can defy it.

"We got a feeling of what it felt like last year against the Knicks -- a series that was highly contested and one that kind of made us feel like there was more out there to be had," Bickerstaff said earlier this month. "That fueled what our guys did this summer and turned it into this year."

The veteran coach has led multiple teams to the playoffs in his career, including the Cavaliers. Those Cavaliers teams experienced similar growing pains in Bickerstaff's early seasons with the franchise. "I do think experience matters," Bickerstaff said.

"Experience for people is different. In the playoffs in particular, when you are a young team and you're facing new experiences, it's determined by how quickly you can learn and adjust to that experience. If in Game 1 you learn something and experience something, in Game 2, can you fix it? It doesn't take you three games; you're probably going to lose that series."

2. The Duren of Sunday's Game 1 ... was not the Duren of games 1-82

Even after a disappointing Game 1 loss, Cunningham's postgame demeanor was steady.

"We're sick about losing this one," he said. "But it's a long series. There's no confidence drop from us."

Cunningham did his part in Game 1, finishing with a playoff career-high 39 points, along with five rebounds and four assists in 40 minutes. But his lack of a co-star was glaring.

Throughout the regular season, though, Duren had been that co-star, ascending into All-NBA status, alongside another All-Star campaign from Cunningham.

Duren increased his scoring average to 19.5 points this season, a 7.7-point increase that was the seventh largest among players from last year.

"[Duren is] figuring out how strong he is on the floor," Pistons forward Tobias Harris told ESPN. "He's figuring out ways to make guys better. And I always told him early on in the year, your demeanor, your voice, your energy is so crucial for our whole group, especially defensively. He's done a great job just taking over and figuring out how good he is."

The Pistons are going to need that Duren in Game 2 -- something he addressed Tuesday -- after the Magic successfully committed their Game 1 defensive scheme to stop him. He had just eight points and seven rebounds.

"The scary thing is he can be a whole lot better too," Harris said. "And he knows that."

3. Their bench is experienced -- and deep

All five of the Pistons' starters were injured as the team prepared for a game on Nov. 12 against the Chicago Bulls. If there was going to be a scheduled loss, it would've been this one.

It was then, Harris told ESPN, that he sensed a shift in the team's confidence.

"I remember pregame in the locker room, like, we expect to win this game," he said. "That's just our mentality -- and we've just been rolling with it."

Behind a starting lineup of Daniss Jenkins, Javonte Green, Paul Reed, Ronald Holland II and Duncan Robinson, the Pistons won by 11, improving to 10-2 on the season that night despite missing Cunningham, Duren, Harris and Thompson.

It set the tone for the rest of the season, Harris said. When Cunningham missed 11 games with a collapsed lung at the end of the regular season, the team didn't miss a beat.

"We all know it's not one guy," Duren said. "It takes the whole team for us to be successful. We understood that from early on. We got a bunch of guys in here who can put the ball in the hole, guard and who all buy into our culture and what we've been building."

Detroit went 13-5 (.722) without Cunningham this season, the best winning percentage in the league among teams playing without their leading scorer, according to ESPN Research.

Bickerstaff has one of the deepest benches in the league. Detroit has 10 players averaging at least seven points and who have appeared in 70% of the team's games. The combination is practically unheard of in NBA history: The Pistons are only the second team in league history to do so, joining the 1962-63 Syracuse Nationals.

"If you can get guys to buy in to an identity, to a style, if you can play systematic basketball on both ends of the floor," Bickerstaff said, "you can have some success when guys are missing or when guys have to sub in because everybody knows their role, they know their responsibility."

4. They've played exceedingly well in the clutch -- and they've done it often

The Pistons went 27-15 (64.3%) this season in clutch games, tied for the most clutch wins in the NBA and the fourth-best winning percentage.

After a clutch win over the Lakers near the end of the season, Jenkins explained why.

"We don't play scared because at the end of the day, we know we play defense," he said. "When we get in these tight moments, it's never a panic."

The numbers back him up. The Pistons played the NBA's second-stingiest defense.

And Detroit was especially successful when matching up against the best teams in the league. They went a league-best 30-12 in games between playoff teams, including 8-3 in contests against the top four in the East.

5. Elite defense, inside and out

From the moment Bickerstaff took over as head coach at the start of the 2024-25 season, he reinforced the characteristics of some of the best rosters in team history: physicality, toughness and a punishing defense that makes opponents think twice about going into the paint.

The Pistons already have one DPOY finalist in Thompson, who hunts on the perimeter.

The combination of Isaiah Stewart and Duren on the interior has created one of the league's most formidable combos at the rim too. As a team, the Pistons held opponents to just 54.6% shooting during the regular season, third in the league behind Oklahoma City and Boston -- the past two NBA champions.

"We take super, super pride in it," Duren told ESPN. "My job as an anchor of the defense is to hold it down. And I take pride in it because we're a defense-first mindset team."

Duren's chops shine through in his pick-and-roll defense. According to GeniusIQ, the Pistons allow 0.92 points per opponent pick when Duren is involved, the 14th-best mark in the league.

After last year's playoff series against the Knicks and facing one of the league's premier pick-and-roll players in Jalen Brunson, Duren dove into film over the summer, looking for more effective ways to defend the action.

"Just learning where I could be better," Duren told ESPN. "Watching a lot of film, understanding what my weaknesses were and understanding what my strengths were and kind of just locking in on it."

Stewart, for his part, held opponents to just 41.4% shooting when he was the closest defender, according to GeniusIQ, third among players who defended at least 500 field goals this season (behind Oklahoma City's Chet Holmgren and Boston's Derrick White).

In the paint specifically, Stewart held opponents to 43.8% shooting, the lowest field goal percentage among qualified players in the league.