Pistons vs. Heat preview: Don’t let the Pistons get hot

The Pistons enter this game winners of 3 of their last 4 games, which is shocking to type out with how this season has gone. To make it even more shocking, the Pistons have won their last 2 games while the Heat enter as losers of their last 4 games.

It truly is amazing what can happen when you have a mostly healthy roster and your bench rotations make a bit more sense. It only took 60 plus games to get to this point.

With all that being said, the Heat are still a better team than the Pistons, even if they might be down a couple players. This is especially true with the Pistons looking at the possibility of not having Cade Cunningham, who is questionable for knee injury management.

Game Vitals

Where: Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, MI
When: Friday, March 15 at 7 pm EST
Watch: Bally Sports Detroit
Odds: Miami (-8.5)

Analysis

This is the first game of back-to-back games between these two teams at LCA, so the Heat will be spending the weekend in town after this game. One of the many weird NBA schedule quirks.

The Pistons have actually played the Heat tough in both games they have played this season with a 1-point loss on Opening Night and an 8-point loss a couple of weeks ago in Miami. However, both of those games were with Cade Cunningham and the Pistons may not have him tonight.

The Pistons managed to close out a short-handed Raptors team on Wednesday while Cade sat the last 17 minutes, but the Heat are not nearly as short-handed as the Raptors were and are a better team to begin with.

It was a very weird game with the Pistons getting out to an early lead only to fall apart with bad turnovers and rushed play from the Raptors’ pace. However, they got things settled in the 2nd half and benefitted from some cold shooting by the Raptors to close it down. Sometimes you need some luck in the NBA, but being able to close out any team while letting your star player rest is huge.

The Pistons have already announced that Ausar Thompson will miss his 3rd straight game with an illness, so they will be without their Jimmy Butler stopper. Isaiah Stewart and Simone Fontecchio will each get their chances with defending Butler, but defending Jimmy Butler is a tough ask for anybody.

The Heat are able to bring it defensively every night with their current roster, but are missing a huge offensive piece in Tyler Herro, which has been part of the reason for some of their struggles this season. There is also the fact that they are a team composed of mostly veterans, so the regular season just does not matter as much.

As long as Jalen Duren and James Wiseman keep bringing it every night like they have been since the Pistons signed Taj Gibson to a 10-day contract, they can probably still keep this game close even without Ausar Thompson and possibly Cade Cunningham.

With how close these games have been this season and the fact that the Heat have struggled a bit lately, I am surprised they are still favored by as much as they are, which makes me think that Cade Cunningham will not be playing.