DETROIT — The people started to file out of the arena, and still the damned Pistons wouldn’t go away. They kept making shots, long past the point where a comeback seemed reasonable. The folks at the scorer’s table even tried a little throwback to Munich 1972, giving the Pistons an extra chance to cash a miracle ticket, finagling the last five-tenths of a second accidentally (we think).

“Shout out to the table,” Karl-Anthony Towns said with a laugh.

The table wasn’t enough. The Knicks were going to survive three hours’ worth of some of the most intense, intensive playoff basketball we’ve seen around here in a while. The Knicks kept trying to pull away. The Pistons kept coming back. The crowd at Little Caesar’s Arena — all 20,062 of them — kept throwing some Trae Young-style venom at Jalen Brunson.

The Knicks prevailed anyway. The final score was 118-116.