DETROIT — The Detroit Pistons opened the NBA playoffs with a flop.
Detroit went into the postseason as the top-seeded team in the Eastern Conference, openly talking about exceeding modest expectations and winning the franchise’s fourth championship.
If the Pistons don’t play better than they did in a 112-101 loss to Orlando on Sunday night in Game 1, they might get knocked out in the first round again.
“We’re sick about losing this one,” Cade Cunningham said after scoring a playoffs career-high 39 points and not getting much help from his teammates. “It’s a long series.”
Detroit, which has lost an NBA-record 11 straight home postseason games, hosts the Magic again on Wednesday night.
The Pistons have not won a home playoffs game since 2008, which is also the last year they advanced in the playoffs.
They were sluggish early against the Magic and had a built-in excuse, playing for the first time in a week.
“We didn’t come out with the right energy,” Cunningham said.
They were flat early in the third quarter, too, and that’s tougher to explain.
“We were chasing them all night,” coach JB Bickerstaff said. “We made some runs to get ourselves back in the ball game.”
The Magic, meanwhile, looked ready to play just two nights after routing Charlotte in an elimination game to earn a spot in the playoffs.
“They’ve been off and we’ve found a little bit of a rhythm,” Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said. “That always plays a part in it.”
At no point in the game did Detroit have the lead.
Cunningham made a 3-pointer to pull the Pistons into a tie midway through the third quarter, but they wasted the opportunity by giving up 14 of the next 17 points and couldn’t recover.
Detroit finished with a season-low 31 baskets, connecting on just 40 percent of its shots. Tobias Harris scored 17 points as the only double-digit scorer other than Cunningham, but he missed 10 of 15 shots.
All-Star Jalen Duren, who averaged nearly 20 points in the regular season, was limited to four shots and eight points.
“They packed the paint with a bunch of bodies to try to make it difficult on him,” Bickerstaff said.
Emphatic wins
The Oklahoma City Thunder and the Boston Celtics launched their NBA playoffs campaigns with big wins on Sunday.
The Thunder, trying to become the first team since Golden State in 2017 and 2018 to repeat as champion, routed the Phoenix Suns 119-84.
The Celtics, seeded second in the Eastern Conference behind Detroit, dominated the Philadelphia 76ers 123-91.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the reigning NBA Most Valuable Player and Finals MVP, scored 25 points, connecting on just five of 18 from the field, but drilling 15 of his 17 free throw attempts for Oklahoma City.
He added seven assists and two blocked shots before sitting out the entire fourth quarter.
Jalen Williams added 22 points and Chet Holmgren scored 16 for the Thunder, which wasted no time in seizing control in the first game of its best-of-seven Western Conference series in front of a revved-up crowd at the Paycom Center.
Devin Booker scored 23 points for Phoenix, but the Suns, which scraped through the play-in to claim the Western Conference eighth seed, were largely helpless against a Thunder team that amassed the best record in the league with 64 regular-season wins.
“It was a great defensive performance,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said.
“I thought the guys were really competitive, played on a string, great communication, covered for each other. (It) wasn’t perfect, but we had each other’s back. We forced them to earn everything.”
In Boston, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined for 51 points, as the Celtics led wire to wire against the Sixers, who have lost their last six postseason series against Boston.
Tatum led the charge, racking up 21 of his 25 points in the first half. Brown poured in 16 of his 26 in the third quarter alone.
“It’s an incredible feeling,” said Tatum, whose unexpected late-season return from a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered in last year’s playoffs has plenty of pundits picking Boston, not Detroit, to emerge from the East.
“Not too long ago, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to be able to play this season, let alone get an opportunity to play in the playoffs,” Tatum said.
