Pistons’ Isaiah Stewart vows to ‘fight’ in Game 5 with back against the wall

After winning 60 games in the regular season and emerging as the best team in the Eastern Conference, the Detroit Pistons’ minds must have been filled with ambitions of winning the 2026 NBA championship. But fast forward to Monday night, and the Pistons are reeling.

They are now down 3-1 in their first-round matchup against the Orlando Magic, so they would now have to win three consecutive games just to avoid seeing their season come to quite the premature end.

In Game 4, the Pistons held the Magic to a putrid 32.6 percent shooting night as a team. However, the Magic did win the battle on the boards (52-49) and the Pistons turned the ball over twice as many times as the Magic did (20-10), which is quite the recipe for disaster.

A lot of things have to go right for the Pistons to avoid being just the seventh one-seed in NBA history to lose in the first round of the playoffs. But to start things off, they have to take care of the things they can control. At the very least, it looks as though going down 3-1 hasn’t broken their spirit, especially with Isaiah Stewart around to rally his teammates.

“Back is against the wall. What you gonna do? We’re gonna fight. You gotta fight until the end. Let’s get back to the crib, protect the crib and take it one game at a time. The series is not over, we’re gonna keep fighting,” Stewart said in his postgame presser, via Hunter Patterson of The Athletic.