Pistons winning one important battle over Knicks in first two playoff games

The Pistons have fully lived up to their regular-season reputation.

They’ve outmuscled the Knicks through two games of this first-round series, which is tied 1-1 heading to Detroit.

Their physicality has been an early difference-maker.

It was particularly noticeable in Game 2 on Monday night, which the Knicks lost, 100-94, at Madison Square Garden.

They manhandled the Knicks, which left coach Tom Thibodeau ranting about the officiating. But they got away with it despite some thinking it crossed the line into fouls.

“I feel like they had better intensity,” Jalen Brunson said after the game. “When it comes to the playoffs, the team that loses and comes back is just more into it. It’s a natural reaction when you are in the playoffs. When you lose, you find a way to be better. You have to give them a lot of credit. It’s up to us to respond.”

That physicality has helped the Pistons dominate the boards.

Through two games, the Pistons have grabbed 15 more rebounds than the Knicks, which includes eight more than them on the offensive glass.

“We just didn’t get those 50-50 basketballs,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “They did a great job of getting those, and they did a great job of finding those long rebounds in different ways. They obviously knew after Game 1 that they had to come out with more intensity and we had to match it, and we just didn’t tonight.”

The Pistons were also aggressive in setting screen after screen on OG Anunoby in order to get him off of guarding Cade Cunningham.

That’s where Anunoby believes the Pistons crossed the line into fouls.

“They’re all trying to screen me,” Anunoby said. “They’re moving on the screens, they’re doing that illegal stuff. I’m sure not every one of them is illegal, but they’re all trying to screen me as hard as they can.”

But the Pistons aren’t changing their identity.

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And unless there’s a dramatic change in how they’re being officiated, they’ll continue to get away with their physicality.

The NBA on Tuesday said 20 of 22 calls/non-calls in the final two minutes of Game 2 were correct.

The Knicks will need to now figure out a way to match — or exceed — it.

“We’ve got to control what we can control,” Brunson said. “That’s obviously, defensively, that’s our mindset. That’s our attitude. That’s us complaining when things aren’t going our way. Regardless if fouls are being called or not called, we’ve got to adjust and I feel like we did that a little too late into the game. Regardless of how it’s being reffed, you’ve got to adjust and you’ve got to adapt to that and go on from there.”