Inside the numbers: How Detroit escaped elimination in Orlando with a stunning comeback

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Orlando forward Paolo Banchero, when asked to explain what went wrong for the Magic in the second half against the Detroit Pistons on Friday night, had a very succinct answer.

“They went on a pretty big run there,” Banchero said. “And we didn’t score.”

It truly might have been that simple.

The Pistons — facing elimination and down by 24 points, on the road, in the second half, and about to join an ignominious club of No. 1 seeds who were ousted from the playoffs by No. 8 seeds — pulled off a comeback for the ages in Game 6 of their Eastern Conference first-round series against the Magic.

The final score: Pistons 93, Magic 79.

“We weren’t going to lay down,” Pistons guard Cade Cunningham said. “For anything.”

A breakdown of how the comeback — or the collapse, depending on one’s perspective — happened:

The basic numbers

— The score over the first 25 minutes: Magic 62, Pistons 38.

— The score over the final 23 minutes: Pistons 55, Magic 17.

— The score in the fourth quarter: Pistons 31, Magic 8.

— Orlando’s shooting percentage in the fourth quarter: 5%. The Magic were 1 for 20.

— That was the worst shooting percentage by any team, in any quarter, since Washington shot 5% in the fourth quarter against Charlotte on Nov. 25, 2015. Put another way, it was the worst shooting performance in any quarter by an NBA team in the league’s last 20,238 games.

Orlando’s shooting drought

The Magic missed 23 consecutive shots from the field, the most by any team in a playoff game during the play-by-play era (which started with the 1996-97 season).

— Banchero and Desmond Bane were both 0 for 6.

— Jalen Suggs was 0 for 4.

— In all, eight Magic players missed a shot during the drought and 13 of the 23 misses were from 3-point range.

— Orlando led 70-54 when the run of missed shots started. Detroit led 89-75 when it ended. That’s a 35-5 Pistons run.

— In game time, the missed-shot stretch took 13 minutes, 50 seconds. In real time, it was about 41 minutes.

What the Pistons did

Cunningham had seven field goals in the second half and Duncan Robinson had four for the Pistons in that span.

The Magic — as a team — had four baskets, in the entire second half. And Cunningham outscored the Magic in the second half by himself, 24-19.

“I mean, we just have amazing spirit and never quit,” Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “This is a testament to what we’ve built.”

Detroit didn’t exactly get red-hot; the Pistons shot 40% in the second half. But the defense and a dominant show on the glass — the Pistons outrebounded the Magic 35-17 in the second half — was more than enough.

The final word

“It keeps us alive. It allows us to fight another day. And now it’s about us going and finishing the job. None of this stuff means anything if we don’t go win Game 7. But we’ll be back at home, we’ll have a lot of energy in there, and these last two games have given us a lot of life.” — Cunningham, on what the comeback and having a chance to play Game 7 means.

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