Isaiah Stewart is the kind of player who doesn’t care if he scores zero points or 20 points as long as he gets to defend, rebound, do the dirty work, and, most importantly, win. Pressed into starting duty against a large Memphis Grizzlies lineup in place of the injured Tobias Harris, the Pistons needed Stewart to do all that dirty work — and score a lot of points. Stewart delivered in a 114-106 win in Memphis, scoring a career-high 26 points to go with 14 rebounds and four blocks.
The only player
who could possibly outshine Stewart was Cade Cunningham, who scored a season-high 33 points. But it took him a while to get going. He scored 19 points in the final frame with his team struggling and slowly leaking away a double-digit lead.
The Pistons were seemingly running on fumes for much of the night. Occassionally their strong defense, which is becoming second nature these days, was able to power them through and generate some easy offensive looks, but when the Pistons were stuck in the half court, things were tough.
Outside of Ron Holland’s 14 points, Detroit got just seven points from their bench. Caris LeVert and Javonte Green played 20 minutes apiece and scored four points and three points, respectively. That put a lot of pressure on the starters to power Detroit through to the end.
Memphis was mostly listless for the first two quarters, but perked up in the second half when Jaren Jackson Jr. started hitting threes. As we know, threes are worth more than twos, and Memphis was able to slowly chip away at the lead by hitting threes in big spurts while the Pistons could only answer with twos or splitting at the free-throw line. The Pistons led by as many as 21 points in the third, but Memphis was able to cut it to a one-possession game with 3:09 to play.
That is when the Pistons put the ball in Cade’s hands and asked him to bring it home. He obliged. He forced his way to the free-throw line after a strong drive into the lane. He then split two defenders for an easy layup on the next posssession to bump the lead up to seven. The Grizzlies answered with a three from Jock Landale and Cade responded with a tough 14-foot jumper at the top of the key and then a game-sealing 3-pointer on the next possession.
In his return from a one-game suspension, Ja Morant scored 18 points and notched 10 assists, but rarely looked super engaged in the game. He was 5-of-16 from the floor and committed a team-high five turnovers. The Grizzles as a whole committed 20 turnovers, and the Pistons were able to turn those into 33 points.
The Pistons are 5-2 after seven games for the first time since 2017 under Stan Van Gundy. Their next game will be Wednesday at home hosting the Utah Jazz.
