Pistons stay hot at 5-1, and the Nets stay winless at 0-5

The slow start, then the run

Detroit did not begin this game like a team that had won four of its first five. The Pistons trailed 28-21 after one quarter and looked a step behind Brooklyn's energy.

Brooklyn pushed the lead to 10 early in the second quarter, its largest margin of the season, after a pair of free throws from Julius Randle with 10:44 to play in the half.

Then Detroit closed the half with an 18-7 spurt and went into the break leading 56-49. The game never returned to the shape it had in the first quarter.

That is the pattern of a good team learning to win without playing well for 48 minutes. The Pistons have done it repeatedly in the first six games.

The first quarter was Brooklyn's, and it was earned: the Nets moved the ball, attacked the paint and got to the line early. Detroit spent those twelve minutes looking like the team playing its third game in four nights, which it was.

What the defense is doing

Detroit limited the Nets to 40 percent shooting from the field. That number is not an outlier; no team has shot better than 45.5 percent against the Pistons this season.

The mechanism is simple enough to describe and hard enough to beat: Detroit keeps the ball in front of it and contests without fouling, and opponents end up taking the shots the defense wants them to take.

Brooklyn's offense was the worst version of itself on a night when it needed the opposite. The Nets came in off their best effort of the season, a 125-124 overtime loss in Boston, and cratered.

That is the part of Detroit's start that does not get enough attention. The Pistons are winning with defense first and asking the offense to catch up, which is the opposite of how most good starts are built.

The bench did the separating

Ron Holland II finished with 16 points off the bench, and Paul Reed added 12. Those are not the numbers that lead a highlight package, and they are the numbers that win games like this.

Detroit's starters were fine. The second unit is what turned a 10-point deficit into a comfortable margin, which is the part of a 5-1 start that travels.

The Pistons have now won five of their first six games for the first time since the 2015-16 season, a fact that says more about the franchise's last decade than about this month.

Reed's role is the one worth watching. He is not a scorer by trade, and he has been the player who makes Detroit's second unit function by doing the things that do not appear in a box score.

Brooklyn's 0-5, in context

The Nets are the last winless team in the Eastern Conference. They are also a team whose first five opponents have included a Boston team that needed overtime to beat them and a Detroit team that has now beaten four others.

The schedule is not the problem. The problem is the offense: Brooklyn got smothered at home in front of a sellout crowd of 17,548 at Barclays Center.

There is a version of this season where the Nets are competitive and lose close games, and Friday was not that version. Friday was the version where the margin never got close.

Brooklyn's problem on Friday was not effort. The Nets competed for a quarter and then ran into a defense that made every possession cost them eight seconds of work and a contested shot.

The Nets have now lost five games by an average that flatters them, because the Boston overtime game was close and this one was not. That mix is what a 0-5 start looks like when the roster has talent.

The group table

This was Brooklyn's first NBA Cup game of the season, and point differential is the second tiebreaker in the tournament after head-to-head results.

That makes a 16-point loss worse than a loss. The Nets are already behind in Group A, which also includes Toronto, Orlando and Milwaukee.

Detroit, meanwhile, has a group win and the best start in the conference. The Cup table and the regular-season table agree for once.

Detroit's group has a different feel now. A 5-1 team with a Cup win is a team other groups have to account for, which is a sentence nobody in Detroit has been able to say in a decade.

What to watch

Three things. First, whether Detroit's defensive numbers hold as the schedule improves. A 45.5 percent ceiling for opponents is a real skill until it meets better shooters.

Second, Brooklyn's offense. The Nets have the personnel to score, and five games of evidence now say they are not doing it.

Third, the group tiebreaker. A 16-point loss in the first Cup game is the kind of margin that decides a group in November.

Fourth, the Nets' next week. If 0-5 becomes 0-7, the conversation stops being about shooting and starts being about everything else.

Fifth, Detroit's next five games. The schedule gets harder, and the 45.5 percent ceiling will meet the teams that can break it.