DETROIT, MI — In a development that has baffled statisticians, confounded bookmakers, and forced at least three ESPN analysts to completely re-evaluate their understanding of how basketball works, the Detroit Pistons on Sunday completed a stunning comeback from a 3-1 series deficit, defeating the Orlando Magic in Game 7 by a score that sources close to the team describe as “emphatic.”
The Pistons, a franchise that had not made the playoffs for nearly a decade before this season, entered Game 7 as heavy underdogs, having previously appeared to be engaged in a polite effort to hand the series to Orlando with as little fuss as possible.
“We believed,” said the Pistons head coach, a man who has visibly aged approximately eleven years in the past two weeks. “We always believed. Occasionally we believed a little less than other times. But we believed.”
“I had them at 94 percent eliminated after Game 5,” said an ESPN analytics contributor, staring blankly into a wall during a live broadcast. “My model does not know what happened. My model is upset.”
The Pistons’ miraculous run comes as the NBA Conference Semifinals continue, with Detroit now set to face a much more formidable opponent in the next round — one they will, presumably, also trail 3-1 before doing something statistically inadvisable.
Fans in Detroit, a city that has endured several generations of near-misses, heartbreaks, and automotive industry restructuring, celebrated in the streets following the final buzzer, united in a shared feeling best described as “cautious euphoria with historical qualifications.”
“We’re not getting ahead of ourselves,” said one fan, 34, who was nonetheless wearing a homemade parade hat. “This city knows better than to get ahead of itself. That’s just how we are. Also can someone check when the parade is?”
The Magic, for their part, issued a gracious statement congratulating the Pistons on their comeback, adding that the organization was “proud of the fight this team showed all series” and that everyone on staff would be spending the next several days not thinking about Game 5 in particular.
The Pistons now advance to face the New York Knicks, who are favored by 7.5 points in Game 1 and are already being told by the city of New York that this is their year, which it has been every year since 1973.
Globe News Daily is satire. We do not actually have a sports department. We are doing our best.
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