The Knicks game is the one Detroit should study. The Pistons led 38-25 after 1 quarter, then lost the 2nd and 3rd quarters by a combined 63-25 and trailed by 25 going into the 4th. A 34-23 garbage-time 4th made the final 111-97, but it didn't fix anything. That was the first time this team without Duren and Joe played badly for a long stretch, and Brooklyn, which led Boston at the half and scored 35 in the 4th, can score enough to make a lapse like that cost them.
Brooklyn is 0-4 but not a pushover every night. The Indiana game was a 27-point beating, but the Cleveland loss was by 4 and the Boston loss was by 1, in overtime, after Mikel Brown Jr. hit a 3 to force the extra period and Jayson Tatum needed 40 points and a buzzer-beater to finish them off. The odd thing is that the Nets' 2 most important young guards have barely played together. Brown's minutes limit has kept him out of the starting lineup, and going into the 4th game he and Demin had shared the floor for 4 minutes total, a plus-5 stretch against the Cavs.
That is the question for Brooklyn: how much Brown, and whether Demin's leg lets him go. If both play real minutes together, the Nets have a backcourt that can hang with Detroit's for a while. If Demin sits and Brown stays capped, it falls on a bench that gave up 136 to Indiana at home.
For Detroit, the job is simple to describe and harder to do: Cunningham runs the game, Collins handles the glass without Duren, and nobody goes cold for a full quarter the way they did at Madison Square Garden. The Pistons have the better team and the healthier top end. The Nets get the extra rest day and a building that wants to see win number 1. Friday comes down to which of those matters more.