{"id":544685,"date":"2026-01-18T13:35:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T13:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/544685\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T13:35:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T13:35:20","slug":"pistons-reveal-why-veteran-forward-exited-pacers-game-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/544685\/","title":{"rendered":"Pistons reveal why veteran forward exited Pacers game early"},"content":{"rendered":"

DETROIT \u2014 The Detroit Pistons just got veteran forward Tobias Harris back from a hip injury, only to see him exit Saturday night\u2019s game against the Indiana Pacers<\/a> in the third quarter and not return.<\/p>\n

The game was already well in hand when Harris subbed out with 6:26 to go in the third quarter as the Pistons had grown out a 34-point lead in a rout of the bottom team in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n

But it certainly wouldn\u2019t be ideal to see Harris miss any more time as he\u2019s already been absent for 16 games, his most in a regular season since 2013-14.<\/p>\n

While his status won\u2019t be a sure thing until the Pistons release an injury report ahead of Monday night\u2019s game with the Boston Celtics, coach J.B. Bickerstaff said it was out of caution Harris was taken out.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe got hit coming off a screen, so we just wanted to be cautious with him,\u201d Bickerstaff said postgame.<\/p>\n

Seconds before being taken out, Harris could be seen trying to get through a screen from Indiana\u2019s Jay Huff and it appears his hip collides with the 7-footer. Harris showed some visible pain and briefly held at his hip, but was moving around fine on the court for another possession before getting subbed out and heading to the locker room.<\/p>\n

Harris returned to the bench not long after his exit, but didn\u2019t check back into the game the rest of the way, with Bickerstaff wanting to be careful in a game the Pistons were already running away with.<\/p>\n

A hip strain kept Harris, 33, out for the first five games of 2026. He revealed last week that his hip had already been banged up<\/a> before suffering a strain against the Los Angeles Lakers on Dec. 30 that forced him to exit that game early.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven before (the hip strain), it wasn\u2019t really at 100%,\u201d Harris said Wednesday. \u201cNeeded to take some days off and let it heal up fully. I was able to do that, feel great now. Just ready to back out there and get going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris turned in a strong performance in his first game back on Thursday, scoring 16 points with seven rebounds and five steals, knocking down some of the key late shots in a win over the Phoenix Suns.<\/p>\n

In just under 18 minutes on Saturday, Harris scored seven points with five boards and four assists before his departure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2014 The Detroit Pistons just got veteran forward Tobias Harris back from a hip injury, only to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3774],"tags":[7,113,126,3866,6,114],"class_list":{"0":"post-544685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indiana-pacers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-indiana","10":"tag-indiana-pacers","11":"tag-indianapacers","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-pacers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115916369326578226","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}