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DETROIT — “Wake the f–k up!”
The scream cut through Little Caesars Arena like a warning flare — not from a team’s bench or the broadcast booth, but from a desperate Pistons fan sitting near press row, watching a golden opportunity slip through his team’s fingers.
Game 3 of the Knicks-Pistons first-round series had morphed into a street fight. The Pistons, a No. 6 seed riding the high of a Game 2 heist at Madison Square Garden, had clawed their way back from a 13-point halftime hole. And as the fourth quarter ticked on, a restless, rattling Motor City crowd — the same one that booed and cursed Jalen Brunson with every touch — suddenly found itself on edge, waiting, begging, for a response.
And then — everything broke. What followed wasn’t just chaos. It was one of the most bewildering, unprecedented and — according to the officials on-site — entirely by-the-book endings in NBA playoff history. A series of events so bizarre, it stunned fans, confused coaches and left players demanding answers before the final buzzer even sounded.
“Hell nah,” said Knicks center Mitchell Robinson. “Nah. I never seen that [before].
“But I did today.”
* * *
The Pistons wouldn’t go away. The Knicks led by 13 at the half, but Detroit stormed out with a 20–9 run to cut it to one early in the third. The Knicks answered with a 16–7 burst of their own — and from there, it was a back-and-forth slugfest. Every time the Pistons rallied, the Knicks hit back. A four-point game with 9:06 left ballooned to 11 by the 6:56 mark. Detroit chopped it to three with 4:42 to play — then Brunson delivered the final flurry. Two stops. Two buckets. A 112–105 lead with under a minute to go. The Knicks had regained control.
For the moment.
Out of the timeout, Detroit executed cleanly. Cade Cunningham found Tim Hardaway Jr. off the inbound, with Jalen Duren freeing Malik Beasley on a screen. Beasley, 1-of-8 from deep to that point, buried the corner three to make it a four-point game. Karl-Anthony Towns answered, drawing a foul and sinking both free throws. Cunningham came right back, spinning into the lane and feeding Duren for a two-handed dunk — four-point game, 29.4 seconds left. Then came Brunson, calmly advancing the ball, bumping into Hardaway Jr., and drawing the foul. Two free throws. An arena of boos. An overflow point for a pot that had boiled all night.
TOM THIBODEAU: “To Jalen, those are cheers. He lives for that stuff.”
JOSH HART: “I don’t think [Brunson gets rattled]. I think that he showed that he’s not. That’s the crowd doing their job trying to throw him off. He’s Clutch Player of the Year. In those moments, he’s not too worried about the crowd. He’s focused on helping this team win and he did that.”
BRUNSON: “Do I think it’s cheers? Uh, no. But it’s just another way to get me focused and stay composed and stay poised. Just another obstacle and knowing my teammates have my back, it’s nothing.”
HART: “We don’t care. We’re going to go out there and play our game. Nothing the fans do really dictates how we go about anything.”
CUNNINGHAM: “I thought there was a lot of energy in there. It’s amazing to have Pistons basketball back in Detroit. You can tell everybody has been waiting on it. I thought there was a lot of great energy in there that we fed off of. I think the ball just kind of didn’t bounce our way a few times.”
HART: “He’s not new to it. I’ve been with JB in a lot of different atmospheres. This, obviously, it was a good atmosphere. College you have sometimes little more rambunctious drunk college kids talking crazy. I’ve been in a lot of atmosphere with him, and it doesn’t faze him.”
HARDAWAY JR.: “It is what it is at the end of the day. I feel like, for ourselves, we’ve got to do a better job not putting those guys in that position [drawing fouls]. Got to try to do a better job of giving ourselves a better opportunity to win the ball game and win on our terms.”
Brunson hit both free throws — 116-110, Knicks. Cunningham missed a walk-up three. Beasley missed again on the rebound try. Mikal Bridges secured the board, game nearly in hand with 10.6 seconds left — until Cunningham ripped at the rock still in Bridges’ grasp. Jump ball. Bridges won the tip — but sent it straight to Hardaway Jr., who calmly set his feet and buried his seventh three of the night. Three-point game. 5.8 seconds left. A once silent arena erupted.
HART: “Happy that we got the win. I feel like there were certain situations and certain times where we could’ve really extended the lead. I think we came out to start the third quarter terrible, sluggish, not playing with pace, energy, physicality. So we got to fix that. And obviously our goal of playing 48 minutes is an impossible goal. But we have to make sure we limit and minimize those lulls.”
Thibodeau called timeout and advanced the ball to the frontcourt. From the sideline, Bridges surveyed the floor. Anunoby cut hard toward the rim. Ausar Thompson trailed, then peeled off, chasing after Brunson instead. Bridges lofted the inbound near mid-court. Brunson caught it in stride — one foot in the frontcourt, the other brushing into the back — then took a dribble into the back court. The whistle came, but not the one the Pistons or their fans sought. Thompson committed the intentional foul on Brunson to stop the clock, but chaos erupted. Every Pistons coach, player and fan pointed and screamed: Backcourt! Brunson, instead, went to the foul line.
BICKERSTAFF: “If you catch the ball in the front court, and you cross the line, I thought it was backcourt. Maybe I’m wrong. Always has been in my life. I thought with the time on the clock, I thought we could check that, and they decided not to check that. It didn’t decide the game at all though. I’m not harping on those moments.”
CUNNINGHAM: “You catch the ball, have possession and put it down, to me, possession in the front court — the ball has to be thrown into the backcourt. If you catch it in the front-court, the ball is not in the backcourt. Again, maybe I’m wrong, but we’ll see.”
CREW CHIEF ZACH ZARBA: “Rule 4 section 6G, the front court back court status is not obtained until a player with the ball has established a positive position in either half in this instance, during the throw in the last two minutes of the fourth period and the last two minutes in any overtime period. So, obviously that is where we were at that point. Brunson and the trajectory of the pass were headed towards the backcourt. Brunson’s momentum was taking him there when he touches the ball. Due to that momentum he’s not considered in a positive position at that time. That’s why that play is legal.”
Brunson hit the first free throw, missed the second. Duren snatched the rebound with 3.2 seconds left, and Detroit called timeout. Down four, the Pistons had just enough daylight for a miracle. The Knicks, wary of committing a costly foul, chose not to contest the perimeter. Cunningham inbounded to Tobias Harris, who stepped into a wide-open corner three and drilled it. Just like that, it was a one-point game with 1.5 seconds to go. Hart inbounded to Brunson — who tried to heave it downcourt — but Beasley reached in and fouled before the release. 0.5 seconds left. One more whistle. One more moment, not without controversy.
BICKERSTAFF: “It’s frustrating for a bunch of different reasons. I thought in the second half we played well enough to win the game. There’s some procedural things that we’ve got questions on. In the game situation, we foul, the foul happens, you go back and look at it with one second or 0.9 seconds. [The] question I have is: How come we don’t go make sure that we’re positive of the time on the clock? The Brunson play where he catches the ball in the front court, recognizes that he’s getting ready to go in the back court, and then drops the ball. And we had a timeout with 5.8 seconds on the clock. So, there’s some things procedurally that I have questions about, and I’d be interested to hear some answers.”
Brunson made the first free throw. Then he intentionally missed the second. It was the smart play — up two with just half a second remaining, and the Pistons out of timeouts. A live-ball scramble would chew the clock. Game over.
But no one touched it. The ball hit the rim, the horn sounded, and every player on the floor froze — arms up, heads swiveling, unsure of what they just witnessed.
ANUNOBY: “At the end of the game, I don’t think anyone knew what was happening. It took a long time.”
After a lengthy deliberation, the officials made their ruling: Detroit ball, side out of bounds with 0.5 seconds left on the clock. A team with no timeouts miraculously found a way to stop the clock from running.
THIBODEAU: *smirks* “[The officials] did say that that’s what’s in the rules. It doesn’t seem right to me. It’s unfortunate. That should never happen, ever, in a playoff game. Never happen.”
ANUNOBY: “They didn’t give me an explanation. I thought it was going to be a re-shoot of the free throw. They just said — I don’t know. They were saying a bunch of stuff out there.”
HART: “He missed it on purpose. I guess that’s the reason why you go out there and make it. They’re going to give them the shot. If the [scorer’s] table does that, then just re-shoot them.”
The Knicks, privately and publicly, believed the early buzzer was no accident — that someone at Detroit’s scorer’s table intentionally sounded the horn before the ball was touched, knowing it would result in one last Hail Mary shot for the Pistons. NBA playoff protocol, however, requires all scorer’s table staff to be neutral-party personnel — unaffiliated with either team — precisely to prevent suspicion in moments as tense and consequential as this.
TOWNS: “Aye, shoutouts to their [scorers] table.”
BRUNSON: “Yeah they need a raise for that.”
TOWNS: “Shoutout to the table. Ten years [in the league], I ain’t never seen that. They gave ‘em a chance, bro. Shoutout to them.”
BRUNSON: “Smart on their part.”
TOWNS: “I got nothing, but respect for that.”
ANUNOBY: “I didn’t even think about that, but I won’t say it was [intentional]. Maybe? Who knows.”
HART: “We’re in Detroit, bro. What do you expect? You know what I mean? They had the home-court advantage. That’s Example A of home-court advantage.”
The Pistons put Duren, their strongman center, side-out in the back court to inbound with 0.5 seconds remaining — a Hail Mary attempt to find Cunningham for a game-winning three. But Duren’s pass sailed out of bounds untouched. Knicks win, 118-116, extending Little Caesars Arena’s home playoff losing streak to four and escaping one of the most bizarre finishes in postseason memory.
CUNNINGHAM: “It’s frustrating. We didn’t want to go drop that game. We didn’t want to drop Game 1. Like I said it’s the small things that are coming to bite us, but we’re learning from it and that’s all that we can do. I think all of these things are making us a better team, and I think it’s going to make us better to go win this series.”
THIBODEAU: “Sometimes, it’s a possession game really in the playoffs, and you don’t know which possession is gonna be the difference, so that’s why you fight to win every possession. Every possession matters.”
BICKERSTAFF: “We won’t be deflated. Our guys are too committed to one another. We’re not results-driven. We’ll show up Sunday, we’re going to lay it on the line. We’re going to fight like hell and see what happens.”
BRUNSON: “We could have handled things a lot better, but a win is a win and we move on.”
Continue reading...
The scream cut through Little Caesars Arena like a warning flare — not from a team’s bench or the broadcast booth, but from a desperate Pistons fan sitting near press row, watching a golden opportunity slip through his team’s fingers.
Game 3 of the Knicks-Pistons first-round series had morphed into a street fight. The Pistons, a No. 6 seed riding the high of a Game 2 heist at Madison Square Garden, had clawed their way back from a 13-point halftime hole. And as the fourth quarter ticked on, a restless, rattling Motor City crowd — the same one that booed and cursed Jalen Brunson with every touch — suddenly found itself on edge, waiting, begging, for a response.
And then — everything broke. What followed wasn’t just chaos. It was one of the most bewildering, unprecedented and — according to the officials on-site — entirely by-the-book endings in NBA playoff history. A series of events so bizarre, it stunned fans, confused coaches and left players demanding answers before the final buzzer even sounded.
“Hell nah,” said Knicks center Mitchell Robinson. “Nah. I never seen that [before].
“But I did today.”
* * *
The Pistons wouldn’t go away. The Knicks led by 13 at the half, but Detroit stormed out with a 20–9 run to cut it to one early in the third. The Knicks answered with a 16–7 burst of their own — and from there, it was a back-and-forth slugfest. Every time the Pistons rallied, the Knicks hit back. A four-point game with 9:06 left ballooned to 11 by the 6:56 mark. Detroit chopped it to three with 4:42 to play — then Brunson delivered the final flurry. Two stops. Two buckets. A 112–105 lead with under a minute to go. The Knicks had regained control.
For the moment.
Out of the timeout, Detroit executed cleanly. Cade Cunningham found Tim Hardaway Jr. off the inbound, with Jalen Duren freeing Malik Beasley on a screen. Beasley, 1-of-8 from deep to that point, buried the corner three to make it a four-point game. Karl-Anthony Towns answered, drawing a foul and sinking both free throws. Cunningham came right back, spinning into the lane and feeding Duren for a two-handed dunk — four-point game, 29.4 seconds left. Then came Brunson, calmly advancing the ball, bumping into Hardaway Jr., and drawing the foul. Two free throws. An arena of boos. An overflow point for a pot that had boiled all night.
TOM THIBODEAU: “To Jalen, those are cheers. He lives for that stuff.”
JOSH HART: “I don’t think [Brunson gets rattled]. I think that he showed that he’s not. That’s the crowd doing their job trying to throw him off. He’s Clutch Player of the Year. In those moments, he’s not too worried about the crowd. He’s focused on helping this team win and he did that.”
BRUNSON: “Do I think it’s cheers? Uh, no. But it’s just another way to get me focused and stay composed and stay poised. Just another obstacle and knowing my teammates have my back, it’s nothing.”
HART: “We don’t care. We’re going to go out there and play our game. Nothing the fans do really dictates how we go about anything.”
CUNNINGHAM: “I thought there was a lot of energy in there. It’s amazing to have Pistons basketball back in Detroit. You can tell everybody has been waiting on it. I thought there was a lot of great energy in there that we fed off of. I think the ball just kind of didn’t bounce our way a few times.”
HART: “He’s not new to it. I’ve been with JB in a lot of different atmospheres. This, obviously, it was a good atmosphere. College you have sometimes little more rambunctious drunk college kids talking crazy. I’ve been in a lot of atmosphere with him, and it doesn’t faze him.”
HARDAWAY JR.: “It is what it is at the end of the day. I feel like, for ourselves, we’ve got to do a better job not putting those guys in that position [drawing fouls]. Got to try to do a better job of giving ourselves a better opportunity to win the ball game and win on our terms.”
Brunson hit both free throws — 116-110, Knicks. Cunningham missed a walk-up three. Beasley missed again on the rebound try. Mikal Bridges secured the board, game nearly in hand with 10.6 seconds left — until Cunningham ripped at the rock still in Bridges’ grasp. Jump ball. Bridges won the tip — but sent it straight to Hardaway Jr., who calmly set his feet and buried his seventh three of the night. Three-point game. 5.8 seconds left. A once silent arena erupted.
HART: “Happy that we got the win. I feel like there were certain situations and certain times where we could’ve really extended the lead. I think we came out to start the third quarter terrible, sluggish, not playing with pace, energy, physicality. So we got to fix that. And obviously our goal of playing 48 minutes is an impossible goal. But we have to make sure we limit and minimize those lulls.”
Thibodeau called timeout and advanced the ball to the frontcourt. From the sideline, Bridges surveyed the floor. Anunoby cut hard toward the rim. Ausar Thompson trailed, then peeled off, chasing after Brunson instead. Bridges lofted the inbound near mid-court. Brunson caught it in stride — one foot in the frontcourt, the other brushing into the back — then took a dribble into the back court. The whistle came, but not the one the Pistons or their fans sought. Thompson committed the intentional foul on Brunson to stop the clock, but chaos erupted. Every Pistons coach, player and fan pointed and screamed: Backcourt! Brunson, instead, went to the foul line.
BICKERSTAFF: “If you catch the ball in the front court, and you cross the line, I thought it was backcourt. Maybe I’m wrong. Always has been in my life. I thought with the time on the clock, I thought we could check that, and they decided not to check that. It didn’t decide the game at all though. I’m not harping on those moments.”
CUNNINGHAM: “You catch the ball, have possession and put it down, to me, possession in the front court — the ball has to be thrown into the backcourt. If you catch it in the front-court, the ball is not in the backcourt. Again, maybe I’m wrong, but we’ll see.”
CREW CHIEF ZACH ZARBA: “Rule 4 section 6G, the front court back court status is not obtained until a player with the ball has established a positive position in either half in this instance, during the throw in the last two minutes of the fourth period and the last two minutes in any overtime period. So, obviously that is where we were at that point. Brunson and the trajectory of the pass were headed towards the backcourt. Brunson’s momentum was taking him there when he touches the ball. Due to that momentum he’s not considered in a positive position at that time. That’s why that play is legal.”
Brunson hit the first free throw, missed the second. Duren snatched the rebound with 3.2 seconds left, and Detroit called timeout. Down four, the Pistons had just enough daylight for a miracle. The Knicks, wary of committing a costly foul, chose not to contest the perimeter. Cunningham inbounded to Tobias Harris, who stepped into a wide-open corner three and drilled it. Just like that, it was a one-point game with 1.5 seconds to go. Hart inbounded to Brunson — who tried to heave it downcourt — but Beasley reached in and fouled before the release. 0.5 seconds left. One more whistle. One more moment, not without controversy.
BICKERSTAFF: “It’s frustrating for a bunch of different reasons. I thought in the second half we played well enough to win the game. There’s some procedural things that we’ve got questions on. In the game situation, we foul, the foul happens, you go back and look at it with one second or 0.9 seconds. [The] question I have is: How come we don’t go make sure that we’re positive of the time on the clock? The Brunson play where he catches the ball in the front court, recognizes that he’s getting ready to go in the back court, and then drops the ball. And we had a timeout with 5.8 seconds on the clock. So, there’s some things procedurally that I have questions about, and I’d be interested to hear some answers.”
Brunson made the first free throw. Then he intentionally missed the second. It was the smart play — up two with just half a second remaining, and the Pistons out of timeouts. A live-ball scramble would chew the clock. Game over.
But no one touched it. The ball hit the rim, the horn sounded, and every player on the floor froze — arms up, heads swiveling, unsure of what they just witnessed.
ANUNOBY: “At the end of the game, I don’t think anyone knew what was happening. It took a long time.”
After a lengthy deliberation, the officials made their ruling: Detroit ball, side out of bounds with 0.5 seconds left on the clock. A team with no timeouts miraculously found a way to stop the clock from running.
THIBODEAU: *smirks* “[The officials] did say that that’s what’s in the rules. It doesn’t seem right to me. It’s unfortunate. That should never happen, ever, in a playoff game. Never happen.”
ANUNOBY: “They didn’t give me an explanation. I thought it was going to be a re-shoot of the free throw. They just said — I don’t know. They were saying a bunch of stuff out there.”
HART: “He missed it on purpose. I guess that’s the reason why you go out there and make it. They’re going to give them the shot. If the [scorer’s] table does that, then just re-shoot them.”
The Knicks, privately and publicly, believed the early buzzer was no accident — that someone at Detroit’s scorer’s table intentionally sounded the horn before the ball was touched, knowing it would result in one last Hail Mary shot for the Pistons. NBA playoff protocol, however, requires all scorer’s table staff to be neutral-party personnel — unaffiliated with either team — precisely to prevent suspicion in moments as tense and consequential as this.
TOWNS: “Aye, shoutouts to their [scorers] table.”
BRUNSON: “Yeah they need a raise for that.”
TOWNS: “Shoutout to the table. Ten years [in the league], I ain’t never seen that. They gave ‘em a chance, bro. Shoutout to them.”
BRUNSON: “Smart on their part.”
TOWNS: “I got nothing, but respect for that.”
ANUNOBY: “I didn’t even think about that, but I won’t say it was [intentional]. Maybe? Who knows.”
HART: “We’re in Detroit, bro. What do you expect? You know what I mean? They had the home-court advantage. That’s Example A of home-court advantage.”
The Pistons put Duren, their strongman center, side-out in the back court to inbound with 0.5 seconds remaining — a Hail Mary attempt to find Cunningham for a game-winning three. But Duren’s pass sailed out of bounds untouched. Knicks win, 118-116, extending Little Caesars Arena’s home playoff losing streak to four and escaping one of the most bizarre finishes in postseason memory.
CUNNINGHAM: “It’s frustrating. We didn’t want to go drop that game. We didn’t want to drop Game 1. Like I said it’s the small things that are coming to bite us, but we’re learning from it and that’s all that we can do. I think all of these things are making us a better team, and I think it’s going to make us better to go win this series.”
THIBODEAU: “Sometimes, it’s a possession game really in the playoffs, and you don’t know which possession is gonna be the difference, so that’s why you fight to win every possession. Every possession matters.”
BICKERSTAFF: “We won’t be deflated. Our guys are too committed to one another. We’re not results-driven. We’ll show up Sunday, we’re going to lay it on the line. We’re going to fight like hell and see what happens.”
BRUNSON: “We could have handled things a lot better, but a win is a win and we move on.”
Continue reading...
