NBA Playoffs Betting Guide<\/a>, which will serve as the hub for all of our postseason betting content!<\/p>\nPistons vs. Magic Series Odds<\/p>\n
(Odds from DraftKings Sportsbook as of Friday, April 15 at 12:00 am ET)<\/p>\n
Series Winner: Pistons -500, Magic +380<\/p>\n
Series Spread: Pistons -2.5 Games (+105), Magic +2.5 Games (-125)<\/p>\n
Series Total: Over 5.5 Games (-110), Under 5.5 Games (-110)<\/p>\n
Pistons vs. Magic Series Prediction<\/p>\n
The Magic showed some fight in a 121-90 victory over the Hornets in Friday night\u2019s Play-In Tournament matchup. Very few people actually believed Orlando would get the job done against Charlotte, as the Hornets had been one of the best teams in basketball \u2014\u00a0especially on the offensive end \u2014\u00a0since the start of 2026. The Magic were also coming off a pair of lackluster performances, and it was just hard to come up with reasons to believe in the home team. Well, you have to give credit where credit\u2019s due. The Magic dominated a good Hornets team right from the jump, shooting 50% from the floor in the game, outrebounding Charlotte by 15, and turning the ball over six fewer times. <\/p>\n
It suddenly feels like there\u2019s some decent support for Orlando in the market, as this is a 1-8 matchup with shorter odds than you\u2019re seeing in some of the other series. But I\u2019m not buying what we saw from the Magic, and I feel this is a good opportunity to grab a good price with the Pistons to win in six or fewer games. <\/p>\n
These teams met four times in the regular season, with Detroit winning and covering in all of the meetings. Three of the four victories also happened to be comfortable double-digit wins. <\/p>\n
The Pistons just feel like they\u2019re everything the Magic want to be. Orlando was once viewed as one of the best defensive teams in the league, but the team fell outside the top 10 in adjusted defensive rating (113.4) this year. Meanwhile, Detroit now sits at No. 2 in the NBA in aDRTG (109.5). The Pistons also finished the regular season No. 1 in turnover rate (16.9 turnovers per game for opponents). On top of that, Detroit was a top-five team in rebound rate (52.4), while Orlando was just ninth (50.5). <\/p>\n
The Pistons are just the better defensive team, the tougher team on the glass, and they\u2019re also way more organized on the offensive end. A decent argument can actually be made that Orlando has more overall talent than Detroit when looking strictly at shot creators. However, Cade Cunningham will be the best player on the floor in this series, by far. And all of the pieces around him have a full understanding of what they need to be doing, and those pieces also happen to fit very well with one another. You can\u2019t say the same about the Magic, with Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner being an awkward pairing \u2014\u00a0and one that isn\u2019t surrounded by enough shooting. <\/p>\n
I actually do think we\u2019re going to see the Pistons run into some trouble offensively at some point in these playoffs, as there\u2019s a need for consistent perimeter scoring outside of Cunningham. However, this doesn\u2019t feel like the type of series in which that\u2019ll come back to haunt them. We should see some ugly performances throughout this best-of-seven series, with both teams being defensive-minded groups. However, I trust the Pistons defense to be a little tougher, Cunningham is the best late-game closer, and Detroit has home-court advantage. All of that should mean a relatively quick series, and there\u2019s also the fact that Jalen Duren has the potential to completely own the paint. <\/p>\n
The Pistons just have to find a way to win Game 1 and finally win a home playoff game in Detroit. They haven\u2019t done so since May 26, 2008. It\u2019s time to put that whole thing behind them. Doing so with an early win would be cathartic for the group, and the Pistons can then focus on advancing and making a push towards the NBA Finals. <\/p>\n
Bet: Pistons -1.5 Games (-200 \u2013 2 units) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pistons vs. Magic Eastern Conference Series Preview: With the Orlando Magic beating the Charlotte Hornets on Friday, we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,296,188,3860,6,11,297],"class_list":{"0":"post-713071","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-nba-playoffs","14":"tag-pistons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116425019257801346","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713071","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=713071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}