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 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 3-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 night 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 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 night.
Schroder, who wasn't even on the Pistons until a trade in February, nailed the 3-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 2023-24 that included a 28-game losing streak, longest ever in a single season.
