Four Eastern and Western Conference Game 1s Sunday. The headline matchup tips at 6:30 p.m. ET on NBC at Little Caesars Arena: the Detroit Pistons, 60-22 and the top seed in the East, against the Orlando Magic, 45-37, who came through the play-in tournament. [1] The Pistons are the East's No. 1 seed for the first time since the 2006-07 season. [2] That is a nineteen-year gap.

Detroit's arc in that interval is its own cultural document. The Pistons finished 14-68 two seasons ago. Cade Cunningham, the guard now leading the return, missed much of this year's second half with a collapsed lung before coming back for the last three regular-season games. [3] The franchise clinched the top seed on April 4 with a 116-93 win in Philadelphia. [2] Every starter logged double-digit points that night. The last time the Pistons were the East's top seed, Chauncey Billups was the starting point guard and the arena was called The Palace of Auburn Hills. [2]

Orlando's path is different but not less specific. The Magic lost to Philadelphia in the play-in round on Wednesday, then pounded Charlotte on Friday to take the eighth seed. [1] Paolo Banchero scored 25 in the Charlotte win after a muted performance against the 76ers. The regular-season series against Detroit split 2-2; the Magic won the last meeting 123-107 behind 31 from Banchero and played without Cade Cunningham and Isaiah Stewart. [1]

The line on Game 1 reads Pistons -8.5, with the total at 218.5. [4] Detroit is 44-38 against the spread on the season, 21-19 at home. The Pistons are ninth in offensive net rating but second in defensive net rating — the league's best defensive top seed since the 2020 Bucks. Jalen Duren, the fourth-year center, has averaged 23 points and 10.6 rebounds since the All-Star break, shooting 66 percent from the field and 83.8 percent from the line. [2] Ausar Thompson is a viable All-Defense candidate. Cunningham is healthy.

The symbolism carries additional weight because the broadcast is NBC. This is NBA-on-NBC's return to the postseason after twenty-four years, part of the league's new rights deal that has NBC airing Sunday primetime through the playoffs and Peacock carrying weekend afternoon games. [3] A Detroit top seed, hosting at Little Caesars Arena in front of a city that spent a decade losing, on the first Sunday playoff slate NBC has held since 2002, is the kind of alignment television executives cannot engineer. Coach J.B. Bickerstaff, in his second year with Detroit, told reporters the team used its first playoff-practice week to work on internal corrections. Banchero will matter; so will Desmond Bane and Franz Wagner, the Magic's other proven scorers.

The rest of Sunday: Thunder-Suns tips at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC. Phoenix backed into the first round via the play-in; Oklahoma City finished 60-win the hard way. Celtics-76ers is the most recognisable matchup by brand, a 1 vs. 8 disguised as a rivalry. [5] Spurs-Trail Blazers closes the West slate from San Antonio. Each one is a document of a regular season whose storylines the network will have to relitigate over the next week.

What Sunday does not replicate is the history of the Pistons' top seed. In 2006-07 Detroit went to the Eastern Conference Finals and lost to Cleveland in six. In 2007-08 they went to the Conference Finals again, lost to Boston in six, and Flip Saunders was fired. That was the end of the Bad Boys 2.0 era. Nineteen years later the franchise is young, intact, and uninjured at the top of its rotation for the first time since February. The playoff run that starts Sunday is not a restoration — too much has changed for that frame — but it is the first time in nineteen years that the question it raises is a real one.

Cunningham took a moment earlier in the week to rewatch team introductions from a prior playoff series against New York. The version he wants on Sunday is the one where the arena is loud from the first tip and the team delivers the win that validates the regular season. [1] Detroit fans, per Facebook-era Local4 social posts, have been making the trip downtown for days. [6]

Pistons-Magic. 6:30 p.m. ET. NBC. Little Caesars Arena. Nineteen years.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos