Pistons' Unconventional Winning: Don't Look Now, Detroit Fans, They Win Another

Color me shocked. The Detroit Pistons won their second straight game, knocking off the the Golden State Warriors 102-97.

While victories over the Warriors and Charlotte Bobcats may be underwhelming to most observers, I am somewhat impressed. First, the Bobcats are coached by Larry Brown, and while they may be light in the talent department, they will always be tough because of their leader.

The Warriors are also an improving team with a lot of young talent, including sophomore shooter Stephen Curry and free agent acquisition David Lee.

However, what is really strange about these two games is how the Pistons won. On paper, Detroit had no business winning either game.

Against Golden State, Detroit won despite hot shooting from Monta Ellis and the fact that they couldn't keep Andris Biedrins off the glass. They also had a rare off night from this year's top scorer, Ben Gordon, who finished with only seven points.

Another statistical anomaly from the game was the fact that Charlie Villanueva had a double-double, grabbing 10 boards despite sharing the floor with Biedrins and Lee, both tremendous rebounders.

But if you thought the win against the Warriors was strange, the prior game against Charlotte was even more mind-boggling.

Against the Bobcats, the Pistons were without a point guard as Will Bynum was still hurt and Rodney Stuckey was benched. That left Tracy McGrady to run the team, which he did adequately before leaving with (drum roll, please) a sore knee.

As a result, the Bobcats crushed Detroit in the assists department, 28-14. The leading assist man for the Pistons was Ben Wallace (!) with four.

Teams don't win when they only have 14 assists, yet Detroit managed to do just that.

Unbelievable stat number two: Detroit got dominated on the boards, managing a paltry 31. The leading rebounders were Wallace and Greg Monroe, who each managed to get six.

Teams don't win when they get only 31 rebounds, yet Detroit managed to do just that.

Unbelievable stat number three: the Bobcats out-shot the Pistons 55 percent to 43 percent, led by Stephen Jackson's torrid 12-19 shooting.

Teams don't win when they get out-shot by such a margin, yet Detroit managed to do just that.

Unbelievable stat number four: Detroit was outscored in the second half 51-42. They were able to win because they had built up such a large half time lead. But the team's penchant for letting their opponents back into games again reared its ugly head, and Detroit had to limp to a victory.

Teams don't win when they get beat up in the second half, yet Detroit managed to do just that.

This leads to a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that Detroit won and did so in a number of different ways.

In both games, they were led by a different player in points, rebounds and assists. They won with Stuckey and without him. They won with a great performance by Villanueva and with a bad performance by Villanueva.

The bad news is that they won in two strikingly different ways and nothing concrete can be gained analytically from these wins. Overall, there is nothing tangible that we learned.

Typically, a team can hang its hat on something that they did well to form a pattern. But Detroit has no such place to hang their hats.

In all honesty, we know as little about this team now as we did a week ago. They are still a team that is not built to succeed, and likely will be the same team heading forward unless officially sold in the coming weeks.

Therefore, coach John Kuester will have to continue to cobble together a team out of this cast of shooting guards and small forwards and hope for the best.

But Pistons fans need to take these wins and not look back, as the road going forward is going to get very tough. Detroit begins a west coast road trip tomorrow night in Portland (where I am writing this article right now) against a Trail Blazers team that is licking their wounds after a tough loss against the Los Angeles Lakers.

The Pistons will have to hope for continued statistical anomalies if they are going to continue this winning streak.