Both Cornerstones Are Questionable. The Playoffs Start Now.

Detroit closed the regular season 61–23 and earned the East's top seed, and then lost to Washington. That's the sentence nobody wanted to write. The Pistons dropped a 108–114 decision to the Wizards, snapped a four-game winning streak, and walked off the floor with Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren both listed as day-to-day.

Those are the two players this team is built around. Cunningham ran the offense at 24.6 points and 9.3 assists per game all season. Duren, fresh off a summer of contentious negotiations that ended with his "Detroit Piston for life" declaration, anchored the interior at 17.7 points and 9.9 rebounds on 64.8% shooting. Neither has a timetable.

The depth chart behind Duren is thin — Isaac Jones is the only center who logged meaningful minutes all year, and there's no real safety net there if Duren misses time. The close-game question hasn't gone away either; Detroit was 15–10 in games decided by five or fewer, a number that trails the team's overall winning percentage by a noticeable margin despite an offseason explicitly designed to address it.

The No. 1 seed means home court throughout, and that matters. But the next 10 days are going to tell us a lot about whether this roster is actually ready or just looked ready when it was healthy.