Sports

The Pistons erased a 22-point deficit to open the season

Detroit beat Boston 121-113 on opening night with a 23-0 fourth-quarter run, spoiling Paul George’s 38-point Celtics debut.

Published

2 days ago

October 21, 2026

Massih Shahbazi

A basketball on a hardwood court under a spotlight, in black and white, beside the headline Down 22, then 23-0

Twenty-two points down on opening night, at home, with a new star on the other bench scoring at will. That’s usually how a season starts going sideways. For the Detroit Pistons, it was how it started going right.

Detroit erased a 22-point second-half deficit to beat the Boston Celtics 121-113 on Tuesday, Oct. 20, in the opening game of the 2026-27 NBA season at Little Caesars Arena, France 24 reported.

Twenty-three to nothing

The comeback came in two waves. Detroit closed the third quarter on a 27-9 run to pull within 88-82 heading into the fourth, NBA.com reported. Then came the run that decided it: 23 straight points in the fourth quarter, according to NBA.com and Sky Sports. NBC Sports described the stretch as a 28-3 run, depending on where you start counting.

The go-ahead shot belonged to Javonte Green, whose three-pointer with 6:41 left gave Detroit a 101-99 lead, the Pistons’ first lead since early in the second quarter, NBA.com reported. Boston never led again.

A balanced night

Nobody carried Detroit alone. Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren each scored 22 points, with Cunningham adding eight assists and Duren grabbing nine rebounds, Yahoo Sports reported. Duncan Robinson added 21. Green, who didn’t play in the first half, finished with 19, according to NBA.com.

That last line is the strangest and best detail of the night. A player who sat out the first 24 minutes came off the bench in the second half and scored 19 points, including the shot that flipped the game. Coaches dream about depth like that in March. Detroit had it on opening night.

Paul George’s big debut, wasted

On the other side, Boston got a historic individual performance and still lost. Paul George scored 38 points, the most by any player in his Celtics debut, France 24 reported.

Thirty-eight points in a first game with a new team is the kind of night that usually comes with a win attached. Instead, George’s debut will be remembered as the backdrop to someone else’s comeback. For the Celtics, the lesson is uncomfortable: one star scoring at will doesn’t protect a 22-point lead if the rest of the team stops scoring for most of a quarter.

What it says about Detroit

The Pistons spent years at or near the bottom of the league, rebuilding around young players and draft picks. Cunningham and Duren are the core of that rebuild, and both delivered on opening night. A comeback like this, against a contender, says something about a young team’s nerve that a regular blowout win wouldn’t.

It’s one game. Detroit fans have learned the hard way not to read too much into October. But a team that can be down 22 at home and refuse to fold has at least one quality that losing teams usually lack.

What Boston has to fix

For the Celtics, the box score hides an awkward truth. Paul George did his job and then some. The collapse came from everything around him: a team that stopped scoring for most of a quarter while Detroit poured in 23 straight points. Opening nights often expose how a new roster behaves under pressure, and Boston learned on the first night that its new star can’t carry a lead alone. The good news for Boston is that it’s the kind of problem coaching can fix in October. The bad news is that the rest of the league just watched the film.

From the stands

For the crowd in Detroit, the night had everything a season opener should: a scary first half, a famous opponent, a career night from a star on the wrong team and then a fourth-quarter stretch where the building got louder with every possession. Twenty-three straight points is the kind of run people remember for years, and tell people about who weren’t there.

For Boston fans, it’s a gut punch, but an early one. Eighty-one games is a lot of time to fix a fourth-quarter collapse.

Don’t crown anyone yet

Opening-night results are famously poor predictors. Teams are still learning new rotations, new players and new systems, and the Celtics will have film from this game to study for months. A 22-point lead that disappears in October can easily become a lesson that wins a game in April.

But for one night, the story wasn’t the new star or the contender. It was a young team, written off at halftime, that came back and wouldn’t let go. That’s not a bad way to start a season.