Alex Speers

It's the Detroit Pistons because I was watching them destroy the Knicks again on Thursday.

I was thinking about how many impressive wins they've had this season.

I feel like every time I watch the Pistons, it's always a big game and they're always winning and per cleaning the glass in games against teams with a top 10 point differential, Detroit is 11 and three.

And in those games, the Pistons have a plus 6.4 point differential.

As a comparison, the second best point differential in games against top 10 opponents is Houston with a plus 2.9.

And they're only 9 and 8 in those games, but they have the second best point differential.

Now that got me wondering how Detroit's success against the best stacks up historically and how predictive that might be for postseason success.

So I went back to the 03-04 season.

as far as you can go, cleaning the glass.

And I looked at every team that was the best against the best.

So these are the 22 teams from 03-04 until last season who had the best point differential in games against top 10 opponents.

Of those 22 teams, 10 made the finals and five won it all, which, you know, that's a decent percentage, but probably not all that thrilling for Pistons fans.

But looking over that list of 22 teams, a lot of these teams had point differentials that were significantly worse than this year's Detroit team.

So instead, I looked for teams that had a better point differential than Detroit in games against top 10 opponents.

Since the 03-04 season, there have only been nine teams with a better point differential against top 10 opponents than this season's Detroit team.

And of those nine, seven made the finals and five were NBA champions.

Wow.

Again, Detroit's point differential in these games is plus 6.4.

The teams that were better than that from lower to higher point differential, 09 Lakers, champs, 08 Celtics, champs, 22 Celtics, made the finals, 25 Thunder, champs, 15 Warriors, champs, 25 Celtics, and 06 Pistons.

Those are the only two teams on the list that didn't at least make the finals.