Detroit Pistons at New York Knicks
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
8:00 PM ET, Madison Square Garden
The Knicks are 3.5-point favorites over the Pistons with a total of 218.5, and my play is Detroit +3.5 (-110).
Five days. That’s all it took for the defending champions to lose as many games as they lost during their entire 16-3 title run last spring. New York is 0-3, the first reigning champ to start that way since the 2011-12 Mavericks, and one more loss puts them next to the 1969-70 Celtics as the only title holders to open 0-4. The market’s reaction? Lay 3.5 with them against the one team in the East that has beaten them like a drum.
The banner is still doing the pricing
Strip the names off the jerseys and look at what’s actually happened through three games. Detroit is scoring about 114 points per 100 trips and allowing about 102. That’s a double-digit net rating, and they built it against Boston, Miami and Philadelphia, not a cupcake schedule. New York is scoring under 100 per 100 possessions, which ranks 30th, dead last. A three-game sample can lie, sure. But the Knicks are being priced like last June, and the Pistons like a team waiting to be exposed.
Three meetings, three beatdowns
Detroit swept last season’s three meetings by an average of 28 points, including wins by 31 and 38. That’s not a coin-flip rivalry. It’s a style problem. The Pistons play bully ball: they crash the offensive glass (seventh in offensive rebound rate), live in the paint, and turn every possession into a wrestling match. That’s the exact thing Mike Brown said his team “didn’t handle” in Boston, where the Celtics pulled away in the third quarter.
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Brunson is working overtime, and Bridges has vanished
Jalen Brunson is getting his points, but he’s shooting 39% and dragging the whole offense uphill. The bigger alarm is Mikal Bridges, who has 10 points in three games on 5-of-23 shooting. Brown keeps telling him to fire away, which is the right message, but the whole roster is ice cold from deep (32% as a team).
The late-game collapses are the real tell. New York led Orlando by double digits in the fourth quarter Sunday and still lost by nine, while its bench got buried 47-11. “Giving up 40 points in the fourth quarter is way too much,” Brown said afterward. Hard to argue. That doesn’t look like a team one good night away from flipping a switch.
No Duren? Detroit barely blinked
The Pistons lost All-Star center Jalen Duren to a hamstring strain on Friday, and he’s expected to miss at least two weeks. Ausar Thompson (ankle) and Isaiah Joe (hip) are listed as questionable on the official injury report. So what happened in the first game without Duren? Detroit jumped Philadelphia 20-4, never trailed, and won the rebounding battle 54-37.
Paul Reed and John Collins have filled the middle, and Daniss Jenkins stepped in for Thompson with 18 points. Duncan Robinson is splashing better than half of his threes. Then there’s Cade Cunningham, who averages eight assists and is a nightmare for New York’s smaller guards every time a screen pulls OG Anunoby off him.
The case against me
I’m not blind to the risks. Turnovers are the Pistons’ real flaw: they’re coughing it up on 17.3% of possessions (26th in the league), and Cunningham has 16 in three games. If New York turns those into easy runouts, the Garden gets loud quickly. Without Duren, Karl-Anthony Towns has a real chance to win the glass. And regression cuts both ways. The Knicks won’t shoot 32% from deep forever, while Robinson won’t keep shooting 54%. If Thompson sits again, Detroit also loses its best perimeter defender, and a desperate champion at home is never a comfortable fade.
Still, desperation doesn’t fix spacing, and a pep talk doesn’t box out. The Knicks need to prove they can finish a game before I lay points with them against a team that has embarrassed them three straight times. The line has even touched +4.5 in spots, so grab the best number you can find, but anything +3 or better works.
Projected score: Pistons 110, Knicks 107
The Pick: Pistons +3.5 (-110)
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