For a guy who built his brand appeal by dunking over sedans, Blake Griffin runs the fast break like he's working a crossword puzzle. He moves briskly, alert, head up, watching the pieces move into place.

In just his third game with the Detroit Pistons, the 6-foot-10 power forward saw Andre Drummond at "one o'clock," a half-pace ahead of Portland's Jusuf Nurkic on the right side of the floor. As Griffin rumbled past half court up the left side, he lobbed the ball through the air. Drummond snatched it just above the lip of the restricted area and threw it through the iron in a single motion.

"The pass he made to Andre on the break excited him," Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy said. "I'm watching and I think he enjoys that a lot more, it seems, than he does when he scores."

If this is what the treadmill of mediocrity looks like, the Pistons will happily run forever. At 27-26, they own the Eastern Conference's longest winning streak at five games and are clawing their way back into playoff contention. Griffin has been the spark. On Friday night (ESPN, 7 ET), Griffin and his new squad will face the only team he'd previously played for during his nine seasons in the NBA -- a franchise he single-handedly re-energized when he entered the league.

Drummond has seemingly smiled more in the past week than he has in his previous five seasons in Detroit, and why not? Winning in the NBA is exhilarating. So is collecting drop-off passes, alley-oops and baseline skids from your running mate in the frontcourt. According to Second Spectrum, since the Drummond-Griffin duo suited up for the first time Feb. 1 versus Memphis, only six players have received more assisted passes from a single teammate than Drummond has from Griffin -- and every one of those passers is a point guard except Griffin.