Monday night at Madison Square Garden, the Wolves quietly put a bow on the best road trip a preseason can offer. Minnesota pushed its exhibition record to 3-1 with a 122-104 win over Karl-Anthony Towns and the Knicks, another night the starters logged their minutes early and the bottom of the roster refused to cooperate with the script.
Now the circus comes home. Detroit rolls into Target Center on Wednesday, and if you need a reminder that these glorified scrimmages can still leave a mark, the Pistons are happy to oblige. They beat Minnesota twice last season, including a 109-87 dismantling on this exact floor that nobody around here enjoyed. Cade Cunningham is a genuine problem, a first-team All-NBA guard coming off a career year, and the Pistons have grown into one of the tougher outs in the East. If Detroit keeps its stars on a preseason pitch count, the group you see Wednesday may be mostly reserves. Fine by us.
With the opener eight days out, here are the keys.
1. Somebody take the backup point guard job. Still. It is still sitting there, unclaimed, with Donte DiVincenzo rehabbing an Achilles and the minutes behind the starters wide open. Bones Hyland and Zyon Pullin traded 20-point nights in Miami, and both kept answering runs instead of just chasing buckets. The job goes to whoever runs the thing, not whoever pads the box score. Detroit’s backup backcourt, likely handling most of Wednesday night, is the right crowd to prove it against.
2. Wall off the paint and make Detroit earn it. Jalen Duren is a load on the glass and a lob threat every time a guard turns the corner, exactly the kind of big who feasts when a defense gets lazy in transition. If Rudy Gobert sits again, this is Joan Beringer’s night. The 19-year-old blocked four shots and finished plus-16 in Miami, and a steady diet of real NBA size is how you learn whether that was a fluke or a floor.
3. Get the work in, then get everybody home healthy. The morning report has Rocco Zikarsky, Terrence Shannon Jr., Jonathan Kuminga and Enrique Freeman all day-to-day. In the fifth game of a preseason, caution is the whole assignment. Run the sets, bank the conditioning, and do not let a meaningless Wednesday cost anybody a minute of Oct. 21.
None of it counts. The final score will be a trivia answer by Thursday. But the last two roster spots count plenty, and the guys scrapping for them get a good Detroit team at home one more time. If you want to watch, DAZN is the Wolves’ local streaming home this season, with League Pass covering out-of-market fans; our how-to-watch guide walks through every option, and the injury report will tell you who actually dresses.
Run the kids.
Make Cade’s understudies work for it.
Eight days to Miami.
