I don’t know where to begin this. This game put my mind in a pretzel. Am I mad we lost a close game against a Top-3 team in the NBA? Am I happy we showed fight until the very end? Should I care this much about Game #6 of the season? I simply don’t know.

What I do know is this. There’s a reason the Celtics are the Celtics and the Pistons are the Pistons. When it comes to crunch time, Boston is situationally more prepared in every aspect. They don’t panic. They have an answer for every lineup. They don’t miss free throws to clinch the game. They don’t shit the bed after every halftime. They can give their star the ball and let him take the game in his own hands. Tonight, they answered with Kyrie Irving.

The Pistons? Stanley Johnson swipes the ball and misses an easy transition layup because he gets too excited and loses all bodily functions. Blake and Stanley turn the ball over SIX times each. Drummond posts up Rozier and rushes one of his dumbass post hooks because he’s afraid of the double team. Reggie Bullock doesn’t decide to make a shot until the final minutes. Lastly, Blake chucks the ball away to ruin any kind of shot we have to tie it up. Tonight, we Plaxico Burress’d ourself. You don’t win coming out of halftime flat. You don’t win turning the ball over in crucial situations. You don’t turn the ball over 18 times and win. Little details matter, and Boston has prepared for all those details.

But at the end of the day, I can’t get mad. In fact, I’m okay with this. Every great team has to get punched in the mouth to learn how to get back up. Today, we can point out each and every flaw. In a week, we can talk about how close we made the Celtics work. In a month when Boston goes on a 15 game winning streak we can say “Hey! We at least made them work”. And by the end of the season we’ll totally forget about this moment because we have the attention span of a goldfish.

Here’s what this loss can do for Detroit. Either they 1. Rebound from this loss, address the issues at hand and take this constructively. Or 2. They hang their heads on this loss for far too long and play the blame game with one another. It also doesn’t help that they face off against Brooklyn the day after.

So the Pistons have these options. The blue pill, and the red pill. Make your choice, Dwayne Casey.

What I LIKED:

Despite the loss, I absolutely LOVED the fight from this team tonight. If this game was in the SVG-era, this team would’ve gave up before the start of the 4th quarter. From the starters to the bench unit, everyone wanted to win this game. And where effort becomes most obvious is on defense. Compared to Saturday’s game, the effort on defense was the difference from a close game to Celtics once taking advantage of our mistakes.

This was a BREAKOUT game for Bruce Brown. I think I’m already in love (no homo). A defensive presence that is confident taking the ball down the court. He can guard 1-through-3. He’s versatile as hell. And he’s only a rookie??? Sign me up for more of this moving forward.

Ish Smith can be trusted to shoot the three pointer. That is all.

Really interested about the tweet below moving forward.

Jose Calderon coming for Ish Smith. I suspect Casey likes how the offense is functioning with 2 PGs and wants to keep it going — Keith Langlois (@Keith_Langlois) October 31, 2018

What I HATED:

Uhhhhh….Did something happen to Reggie Jackson in the final quarter? It’ll be intriguing to see what Casey has to say about it. Ish played great to close it out, but if Reggie is going to be continually vanished during crunch time, then I don’t know why he’s on this roster. More to come…

Speaking on that, where the hell was Langston Galloway? For three quarters the three point shooting was non existent with Reggie Bullock shooting brick after brick after brick. Another move by Casey I would love to hear more of.

Blake Griffin might’ve lead the team in points (24), but his ability to take over against a smart defense vanished. For that, he lead the game with a plus/minus of -13. And that hot start from 3 has seemed like a ruse all along. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Alright, that’s it for now. Currently they’re +2.5 underdogs against Brooklyn tomorrow, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we dropped another one. Until then, thanks for being a #DetroitDummy with me.