team’s postseason plans<\/a>.<\/p>\nWith the Eastern Conference seedings far from being finalized, a potential first-round opponent has become nearly impossible for head coach J.B. Bickerstaff and his coaching staff to pinpoint in efforts to getting an early start on game planning.<\/p>\n
And while that may not seem like a big issue to some, typically at this time of the season, teams have an idea of who their first-round matchup will be against, even with the looming NBA Play-In Tournament.<\/p>\n
This season, that’s not the case.<\/p>\n
Pistons could play one of six different teams<\/p>\n
With April officially here, the regular season has just around 6-7 remaining games for most teams around the league.<\/p>\n
Looking at the standings in the East, a mere three games seperates the No. 5 seeded Atlanta Hawks and the No. 10 seeded Charlotte Hornets.<\/p>\n
The shifting in the standings will continue to shake out as the season unfolds, but even when the 82-game mark hits, the seeding 8-10 won’t be finalized until the conclusion of the Play-In Tournament.<\/p>\n
As a result, Detroit will have to wait until the very last second to find out who their first-round opponent will be, and with the possibility of playing the Hawks, Toronto Raptors, Philadelphia 76ers, Orlando Magic, Miami Heat and the Charlotte Hornets.<\/p>\n
That makes it a nightmare situation for the Pistons, who could use every bit of an advantage entering the postseason with uncertainty around the health of Cade Cunningham.<\/p>\n
Detroit has to be prepared for every scenario possible<\/p>\n
It’s nearly impossible for the Pistons to know how things will shake out in the East, but the team will have to be prepared for whatever challenge comes their way.<\/p>\n
Each game plan will be drastically different depending on the matchup, but Bickerstaff and his coaching staff will have to prepare his team for a variety of different scenarios as the regular season comes to an end.<\/p>\n
Obviously, Detroit’s focus should remain on finishing the season strong to ensure they are indeed the top seed, but beyond that, the Pistons need to be ready for what looms ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Pistons have all but secured the top seed in the Eastern Conference, which would give them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,296,188,3860,6,297],"class_list":{"0":"post-693568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-pistons","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-pistons","11":"tag-detroitpistons","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-pistons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116334404801922332","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693568","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=693568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}