TORONTO — Maybe the Detroit Pistons surprised some NBA fans and observers when they hung tough with the New York Knicks last spring. They lost in six games in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs but won twice in the series at Madison Square Garden. They lost three times by a total of 6 points and squandered an 8-point lead in the fourth quarter of Game 1, a very “welcome to the playoffs” moment.
On the whole, they were right there. And they weren’t shocked.
“You watched our group, and there was a resilience to our group the entire year,” Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said before his team lost 119-108 to the Toronto Raptors on Sunday. His Pistons, at 48-19, are first in the Eastern Conference, and they’ve been there all season.
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“We just continued to build momentum and continued to get better as the season went along,” Bickerstaff added. “It’s funny with that series: We had a game at New York halfway through the year, somewhere around there, and we ended up winning that game. It was like, ‘OK, our guys believe they can go (into) a place like the Garden and beat a quality opponent.’ When we did that and continued to gain momentum from things like that and get to the playoffs, it wasn’t a surprise to our guys.”
You wouldn’t say the Raptors (38-29) have been building momentum all season as those Pistons did; the win Bickerstaff mentioned got Detroit to a meagre 10-15. It was just two days ago, with about a month to go in the regular season, that Raptors coach Darko Rajaković thanked God in the first question of his postgame news conference for keeping his team together down the stretch in a much-needed win over the Phoenix Suns. That’s not something Rajaković makes a habit of doing in public. Sure, belief from the outside wasn’t high, but it didn’t feel like their self-belief was, either.
But now they have two quality wins in a row, or exactly 50 percent as many as they had for the whole season before this weekend. If they play like they did this weekend, putting together a postseason like the Pistons did last year — perhaps a precursor to something bigger to come — is on the table. It’s not a bad goal: to prove they are for real against a team that is definitely for real.
“For sure, but outside noise is outside noise,” Raptors forward Brandon Ingram said when asked whether the two wins lend some legitimacy to his team. After slumping, he had 70 points over the last two games. “Whatever opinion they have about us, that’s cool. But we continue to fight, try to be the best we can on every single time that we play and live with the result.”
Brandon Ingram got buckets from all three levels in today’s win!
34 PTS
4 3PM pic.twitter.com/pFETJp772u— NBA (@NBA) March 15, 2026
Just like last season’s Pistons, the Raptors are limited offensively. Toronto doesn’t have a single player who bends the game to his will like the Pistons have with Cade Cunningham, but the Raptors generally try to get the ball to Ingram down the stretch and go from there. Other than him, the release valves in the half court are few and far between, with little one-on-one offensive talent.
Just like the Pistons, the Raptors don’t have much shooting. The Raptors went just 3-for-17 from deep in the first half against Detroit, and they have ranked near the bottom in made 3s and 3s attempted per possession for most of the season.
And just like the Pistons, the Raptors pride themselves on being a tough, defence-first team. Obviously, that toughness has been questioned, and the defence hasn’t been perfect either: Despite hanging around in the top 10 in points allowed per possession for most of the season, some of the better teams have made a meal of the Raptors’ high-pressure defence.
But with Jakob Poeltl back after dealing with a back injury for much of the season, the Raptors can defend in multiple ways. Poeltl had 21 points and 18 rebounds against the Pistons, an impressive day on the glass and inside, even if Detroit was without Isaiah Stewart. If rookie Collin Murray-Boyles can get back from his thumb injury, it will give the Raptors another weapon when they play without Poeltl and employ a switch-heavy strategy.
RJ Barrett is another player who could help on that front. His defensive ability, especially off the ball, has been a career-long issue. He has had ugly moments on that end this season.
But he absorbed some key minutes against Devin Booker on Friday, then took on the Cunningham assignment down the stretch Sunday after Scottie Barnes had checked him most of the night. He’s not a shutdown wing by any stretch, but he’s big and sturdy enough that he can hold his own against a lot of players. And to emulate the Pistons, the Raptors need him to be that guy; they don’t have enough depth behind him, so they can live with him being an occasional defender.
“There is absolutely nothing that’s preventing him from being an elite two-way player,” Rajaković said of Barrett. “And that’s from day one that he came over here. We’re preaching … to him (that) there is no physical attribute that he does not have, that (there is no reason) he’s not capable of guarding one through four of anybody in the league. He just (needs) that grit and mindset of doing it over and over and over again. And he showed us in moments that he is capable of doing it, but lately he’s doing it in much longer — much longer — periods of time.”
After looking flat for most of the last few months, the past two games appear to have reanimated the Raptors. With some help from the referees, the Raptors frustrated Cunningham as the Pistons’ offence disappeared in the second half. When he picked up a technical foul, backup Raptors wing Ja’Kobe Walter mimicked the “T” sign, doing a little dance.
Moments later, after Ingram hit a jumper to extend the Raptors’ lead, he broke out some finger guns, pointing them at the fans. Nobody outside of the locker room can know whether the belief disappeared from the Raptors as they piled up close losses to superior competition, but there are some outward signs that it has reemerged.
The Pistons, as Rajaković said, are for real now. Even if their offensive limitations are worrisome and will keep them from being the Eastern Conference’s clear favourite, none of the teams with a longer track record of playoff experience will breathe easy in a series against them. They figure to be good for a while.
How the Raptors lock that down is uncertain. First things first, though: Make the playoffs. Then, have some fun.