Pistons Survive a 284-Point Shootout, and Our -10.5 Pick Takes the L

Detroit 144, Washington 140. Four points. That is the whole story, and it's the number that buries our Pistons -10.5 call. We wanted a comfortable Detroit win, and the Wizards refused to cooperate.

The framework leaned on the back-to-back. Washington was on its fourth game in seven nights, Detroit arrived with three days of rest, and the model projected a margin of roughly 10 to 14 points. Instead, Washington stayed in this one. A combined 284 points is a track meet, and a track meet is exactly where a tired team's legs are supposed to show up, but Washington kept scoring and never let the game turn into the rout the number needed.

So what went wrong? Fatigue is a real edge, but it's a tilt, not a guarantee. The Wizards don't need to be fresh to hang around, and a four-point finish tells us the B2B penalty was smaller in practice than the model assumed, or that it was offset by things the model doesn't price well. The season-long scoring margins pointed to a double-digit gap, and this one came in at a fraction of that.

The Pistons deserve credit for closing it out. They won, and in a game this loose, a win is a win. But for anyone who tailed the pick, this is a clean miss. We'll take the result, note where the projection overreached, and keep grinding. The Paddock doesn't hide from the bad beats.