NEW YORK — Cade Cunningham wasn't thinking about himself after the first postseason victory of his career. His focus was on all the Detroit fans who stuck by the Pistons during the 17 years since the last one.
Now Cunningham and his teammates want to give those fans more than just a game. They want to get them a series.
Cunningham had 33 points and 12 rebounds, Dennis Schroder made the tiebreaking three-pointer with 55 seconds left, and the Pistons snapped their NBA-record, 15-game postseason losing streak by beating the New York Knicks, 100-94, on Monday (Tuesday in Manila) in Game 2 of their playoff series.
"It's a great feeling. It feels good to represent the city like we did tonight," Cunningham said. "It's something that the city has been waiting on for a long time, so we feel good about it and we're ready to get back to the crib and perform in front of them."
The Pistons, who hadn't even been to the postseason since 2019, recovered after the Knicks erased a 15-point deficit to earn their first playoff victory since Game 4 of the 2008 Eastern Conference finals against Boston. The Celtics won the final two games of that series, and the Pistons were then swept in 2009, 2016 and 2019 before dropping Game 1 at Madison Square Garden.
Now they are back in the win column, all tied in the series and will host Game 3 on Thursday (Friday in Manila).
Schroder, who wasn't even on the Pistons until a trade in February, nailed the three-pointer after the Knicks had used a 16-4 run to tie it at 94 on Josh Hart's dunk. He finished with 20 points off the bench.
The Pistons engineered one of the biggest turnarounds in NBA history this season, going 44-38 after a 14-win season in 2023-2024 that included a 28-game losing streak, the longest ever in a single season.
Clippers 105, Nuggets 102
In Denver, Kawhi Leonard scored 39 points on 15-of-19 shooting, and the Los Angeles Clippers evened their first-round playoff series against the Nuggets.
Christian Braun was long on a three-pointer with six seconds left, and Nikola Jokic, who recorded his 19th career playoff triple-double, grabbed the rebound but also missed a 3, with one second remaining.
The Clippers, who lost Game 1 in overtime, haven't lost back-to-back games since March 2 to 4, a stretch of 23 games, and they handed David Adelman his first loss in five games since replacing Michael Malone in a stunning move on the eve of the playoffs.
Jokic, just the third player to average a triple-double over a season, had 26 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists, and Jamal Murray added 23 points for the Nuggets, who also got a bounce-back game from Michael Porter Jr. (15 points and 15 rebounds) after his three-point performance in Game 1.