Left out of the 10-team Christmas Day showcase despite owning the best record in the Eastern Conference and sent on the road to spend the holiday in the West, the Detroit Pistons have plenty of incentive to put on a show when they visit the Utah Jazz on Friday night in Salt Lake City.
And the Pistons also have plenty of depth that already has come in handy as the club completed the pre-Christmas portion of its current nine-day trip with hard-fought victories at Portland (110-102) and Sacramento (136-127), respectively.
Asked to identify the key to success in the high-scoring affair in the California capital on Tuesday, Pistons coach JB Bickerstaff mentioned Tobias Harris, Ausar Thompson, Jalen Duren and Javonte Green before realizing he was basically running down the entire roster that had contributed to the success on the second night of a back-to-back.
“Give our guys a ton of credit. Down the stretch, so many guys made so many plays for us,” Bickerstaff told reporters. “It speaks to the depth and the collective of this team.”
The Pistons celebrated Christmas in Salt Lake City, happy to wear the 30-game crown as the top team in the East. The feat was accomplished by compiling a 24-6 record, the organization’s best since the 2005-06 squad went 25-5 en route to a franchise-record 64 wins.
Utah already has gotten an up-close-and-personal with the Pistons’ express, suffering a competitive 114-103 loss at Detroit on Nov. 5. Svi Mykhailiuk put up 28 points against his former team in the loss.
The Jazz were at home for Christmas but didn’t have much to celebrate from a basketball standpoint. Their 137-128 home loss to Memphis on Tuesday was their fourth straight during a stretch in which they will play five of seven at home.
The losing streak has seen the Jazz allow 143, 128, 135 and 137 points. The team will return from Christmas as the league’s worst defensively, allowing 127.4 points per game.
It’s a work in progress, coach Will Hardy notes.
“Sporadic,” he responded to reporters about a defense that has held just four opponents under 110 points all season.
Communication, or lack thereof, is the key.
“The part about communication that we have to keep focusing on is, just because you and I understand what we both are trying to do in this scenario, we still have to say it out loud if we’re switching,” he explained. “The consistency hasn’t been where we need it to be.”
The game pits two of the league’s top scorers in Detroit’s Cade Cunningham and Utah’s Lauri Markkanen for the first time in Salt Lake City since one of the highest scoring games in Delta Center history.
Cunningham got the better of Markkanen 31 to 25 points in the earlier meeting in Detroit. But Markkanen is having the better season numbers-wise, averaging 27.8 points per game while Cunningham has gone at a 26.4 slip.
They each went for 31 points when both were healthy for their last meeting in Utah on Jan. 3, 2024, with the Jazz winning 154-148 in overtime.
Markkanen sat out Detroit’s 134-106 win at Utah on March 3, 2025. Cunningham contributed 29 points in the victory.
