The Detroit Pistons already knew how much they need Cade Cunningham in the lineup. His absence on Saturday served to reinforce that.
With Cunningham sidelined by a hip injury, they lost at Orlando 111-100.
Detroit is unlikely to have its franchise player again when it hosts Toronto on Monday night. Cunningham was listed as doubtful by the team on Sunday.
Cunningham suffered the hip injury on Thursday when he took a hard fall late in the fourth quarter of an overtime loss to Charlotte.
“Obviously those injuries are tough when you take a blow to the tailbone-ish area,” coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “That’s the core of where your movement starts.”
The Pistons’ offense predictably suffered without their floor leader, who is averaging 23.5 points and 8.9 assists a game. They committed 17 turnovers against the Magic — which Orlando converted into 29 points — and racked up only 16 assists.
“It’s hard to overcome that, and a lot of them were preventable and then too many of them came in bunches,” Bickerstaff said. “Between the turnovers and offensive rebounds we gave up, it’s difficult to overcome. That’s where we keep talking about winning the possession battle.”
The Pistons, who have lost three straight games, allowed 17 offensive rebounds. They didn’t have a 20-point scorer to pick up the slack for Cunningham.
“Let them get too many easy baskets, let them get on the glass and things of that nature, get second chance points,” forward Tobias Harris said. “Didn’t take care of the basketball well too, offensively. Just a little bit too lax with our execution as well. When we do play and Cade’s not out there, it’s a chance for us to come out and really just exploit other teams, like the Magic, some of their defensive schemes.
“We didn’t get enough ball movement in that second half to do that, and that hurt us — turnovers and lack of ball movement. We didn’t make many shots as well.”
The Raptors, meanwhile, will play the second game of a back-to-back set on Monday. Toronto lost to league leader Cleveland on Sunday, 122-108.
A poor first quarter doomed the Raptors. They were down 38-22 after the first 12 minutes.
Toronto had defeated Indiana and Minnesota — teams that reached the conference finals last season — in its previous two games.
RJ Barrett scored a combined 70 points in those victories but was held to 16 points on 6-of-18 shooting by the Cavs.
“To be honest with you, I wish we could play this team every week because we could learn a lot,” Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic said.
The loss dropped the Raptors to 0-9 on the road. They’ll need a win on Monday to avoid matching the worst road start in franchise history, set in 1997-98. They are in the midst of a four-game road swing.
Bruce Brown is expected to make his season debut during the trip. Brown has been rehabbing a knee injury that hampered him last season.
“I was on one leg,” he said. “You could watch, first half I was pretty much fine, once the second half started and it got really stiff.”
Detroit recorded a 99-95 victory over Toronto on Nov. 15 behind Malik Beasley’s 20 points. That game was part of the NBA Cup.
–Field Level Media
