Justin Verrier

with like the advantages that you hoped that they would have, that they built their entire franchise around and led to a lot of belief in them going into the season to begin with.

Rob, what was kicking my head the entire time was that I think it's a Zach Randolph quote where it's like, this is where the bullies go to get bullied.

And it felt like the Paulo-Franz combination in particular was the bigger, stronger, more advantageous combination when that was supposed to be the Pistons' whole MO here.

For the more layman crowd, I have a pretty simple stat for you guys.

Cade was 13 for 27.

The rest of the Pistons were 18 for 50.

So the rest of the Pistons only had five more field goals in there.

And it's kind of typical of the Pistons.

The lack of creativity outside of Cade just leaves a lot to be wanting.

If they're not hitting their threes, what else are they going to be doing?

I think that's one problem, right?

Mm-hmm.

On the flip side of this, it didn't feel like they had the right combination of defenders in order to stop what the Magic were doing because the Magic have so much strength in that wing core where they're basically centers and power forwards with the mobility and versatility of wings.

And it's just like, who do you throw on them if you're the Pistons?

Because one, Cade.

Obviously, he has a lot to do offensively.

He had a ton to do in this one.

Coming off of the collapse long, obviously, probably not himself.

And they started slow.

And Cade, in particular, seemed to start slow, perhaps as a result of that.