Pistons Erase 22-Point Deficit With 23-0 Fourth-Quarter Run to Beat Celtics 121-113 in Season Opener

DETROIT

The first game of the 2026-27 NBA season was supposed to be a Paul George coronation. For about 27 minutes, it was. George, making his Boston Celtics debut after arriving in the July trade that sent Jaylen Brown to Philadelphia, poured in 38 points — the most any player has ever scored in his first game as a Celtic, according to NBC Sports Boston — and pushed Boston's lead to 72-50 with 8:35 left in the third quarter. Then the Detroit Pistons scored 23 straight points in the fourth quarter, and opening day flipped completely. Detroit beat Boston 121-113 at Little Caesars Arena on Tuesday afternoon, erasing a 22-point deficit for what the Detroit Free Press, citing NBA Communications, called the largest opening-day comeback of the play-by-play era.

The matinee tip — noon Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern, on NBC and Peacock — was itself the experiment of the day, the league and the network turning opening day into an all-day event, as USA Today reported in its live coverage. What the experiment produced was the kind of game no scheduling gimmick can manufacture: last season's Eastern Conference regular-season champions in Detroit, who won 60 games, looking dead at home, and then very suddenly not dead at all. For more background on why the league opened its season in the middle of the afternoon, see Previously's look at NBC's opening-day experiment.

Down 22, and looking every bit of it

Boston built the lead the way veteran teams do, in layers. According to Reuters, the Celtics ripped off 15 unanswered points in the second quarter after Detroit had led 39-35, and George scored Boston's last eight points of the half to send the visitors in up 58-45. He did not cool off after the break. Reuters reported that George fired in three 3-pointers in a 52-second span early in the third quarter to stretch the lead to 72-50, the largest of the game, and Bleacher Report noted that George passed the franchise's single-game debut scoring record during that third-quarter burst.

Detroit's response started, improbably, with a reserve asked to guard George. According to Reuters, Javonte Green entered the game shortly after the lead peaked, slowed George down, and then started scoring himself — 11 points in the third quarter, including three 3-pointers, as the Pistons closed the period on what AFP described as a 27-9 run to pull within 88-82 entering the fourth. The building, quiet through the middle quarters, was suddenly very awake.

The 23-0 run that flipped opening day

Boston briefly steadied itself. George opened the fourth quarter with a layup for a 90-82 lead, and the Celtics nudged the margin back to 12, according to Reuters. Then Detroit detonated. An Ausar Thompson three-point play started it. Duncan Robinson scored 11 straight points to pull the Pistons within one at 99-98, then set up a Green 3-pointer that gave Detroit the lead — 101-99, with 6:41 remaining, its first lead since early in the second quarter, according to AFP. Jalen Duren converted a three-point play, Robinson hit another 3 for 107-99 with 5:13 left, and Green capped the run with one more 3-pointer for a 112-99 lead with 3:33 to go, according to Reuters.

Twenty-three points, unanswered, in the fourth quarter of the first game of the season. Robinson finished with 21 points, 15 of them in the fourth quarter, according to Reuters, and shot 5-of-9 from 3-point range on the figures reported by the Detroit Free Press. Green scored 19 points in 18 minutes off the bench, 19 of them after halftime, according to theScore, and shot 5-of-8 from deep. Cade Cunningham, who briefly spoke for the whole locker room afterward, put the first half bluntly. “We just didn't do our brand of basketball good enough in the first half and we had to turn it up,” Cunningham said, according to AFP. “We had a good talk at halftime and lit that fire a little bit better.” Boston rallied within four in the final minute, but Green hit two free throws with 6.7 seconds left to close it out, according to Reuters.

George's record debut, Tatum's rough afternoon

The strangest part of the box score is that Boston's best player had a historic day and it still was not enough. George finished with 38 points on 12-of-21 shooting, including 7-of-12 from 3-point range, according to Celtics Wire, and AFP credited him with five rebounds, five steals and three assists as well. It is the most points ever scored by a player in his Celtics debut, according to NBC Sports Boston and Bleacher Report — a record set in a loss his team led by 22.

The help George needed never arrived. Jayson Tatum, now the undisputed centerpiece in Boston after the Brown trade, was held to 13 points on 6-of-23 shooting and missed all seven of his 3-point attempts, according to Celtics Wire, though Reuters credited him with 11 assists. Derrick White and Payton Pritchard scored 17 points apiece, according to Reuters. Celtics Wire noted that Boston actually won the rebounding battle 49-39 and outscored Detroit in the paint 44-34 — and lost anyway, because a 23-0 fourth-quarter run erases a lot of good arithmetic. Cunningham matched Duren with 22 points for Detroit, adding eight assists on 8-of-18 shooting, according to theScore, while Duren grabbed nine rebounds and Thompson supplied 11 points, 11 rebounds and five assists, according to Reuters.

What it means on day one

One game proves very little, and both teams know it. But openers set tones, and the tones here could hardly be more different. Detroit, coming off the franchise's first 60-win season in two decades, according to USA Today, starts 1-0 with a comeback that will live on opening-day highlight reels for years. Boston starts 0-1 with a franchise-record debut wasted, a blown 22-point lead to explain, and the reigning champion New York Knicks visiting for its home opener on Friday, according to NBC Sports Boston. Tatum and George will get months to build the partnership this trade was supposed to create. On day one, though, the story was simpler: the Pistons refused to lose the first game of the season in their own building, and for one fourth quarter, nobody in green could do anything about it. For the wider picture of the season ahead, see Previously's 2026-27 NBA season preview and the rest of the day's coverage on the Previously sports front.