Before the game, Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy said he sat down with Jackson to go over film from last season when he excelled down the stretch.
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Which team is the real Detroit Pistons? We lost. We lost in the Finals. Which one measures us?
Detroit plays at Minnesota on Friday night. Every team deals with back-to-backs and, worse yet, those dreaded sequences of three game in four nights. Was Atlanta a measuring stick game?
So he wasn’t about to start cartwheeling his way through the hallways of the Palace of Auburn Hills following Tuesday’s 104-99 victory over LeBron James and the defending National Basketball Association Eastern Conference champion Cavaliers. The Warriors have now bested the Pistons in nine-straight contests and now have 23 consecutive home wins at Oracle. Four straight losses had scrubbed a few of the sheen away. And the team that beat us looks more hungry than we are.
“Said forward Marcus Morris: “(James) baits you to come down and help.
LeBron James in a promotional event in Hong Kong (2014).
Lebron was not happy with their performance and had something to say about it after the game, “We need to get tougher, but I’m not talking about being an iron man. You have to be mentally tough, and that means performing at the best of your abilities at all times”.
Van Gundy hasn’t talked much about the P-word yet this season, but something tells me that he’d be just as reluctant, even though he might be the most honest man in pro sports. “It was good to revisit that”. This is going to be an ongoing issue for the Pistons.
James was upset after the Cavs blew a 13-point second-half lead, as was his coach, David Blatt. “I think they’re more of a complete team”.
Jackson had 23 points and 12 assists for Detroit, and Ersan Ilyasova added 20 points.
“We haven’t done anything”, James said via ESPN. “They’re an improved team no question”.
“That’s probably the best game he’s played since he’s been in Detroit in terms of his energy, mixing his scoring, attacks, passes”, Van Gundy said of Jackson. “You just couldn’t have a much better game than he had tonight and obviously finishing it off with the free throws”. Drummond commented on what he needed to do to hit the big shot, “It comes to a point where I’ve just got to shoot with confidence”.
But on this night he didn’t, and the Pistons were full marks for the win, no matter what their coach felt about the accomplishment. “What I said to our team is, what we’ve proven through 11 games is, we’re capable of beating anybody, and anybody’s capable of beating us”.
A measuring stick game?
Jackson didn’t sign an $80 million contract for his defense, but he was happy to hear Van Gundy’s praise for the first time in a while.
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Yeah, he’ll accept that.
