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The Detroit Pistons won Game 5 of their first-round series against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday night.
Now comes the hard part.
Cade Cunningham's 45 points led the Pistons to a 116-109 over the Magic that cut Detroit's series deficit to 3-2. However, falling in a 3-1 hole in the first place puts the Pistons in deeply-adversarial circumstances.
MORE: Cade Cunningham and Paolo Banchero made NBA history not seen in a quarter-century
Out of 91 first-round series that saw one team build a 3-1 series lead, 88 of those teams eventually went on to get the job done and advance to the conference semifinals.
The Pistons, in 2003, are one of the three to buck the trend. In that postseason, Detroit rallied from a 3-1 series deficit to upend Orlando on its way to an Eastern Conference finals appearance.
Since 1968, 13 teams (out of 299) have come back to win a series in which they trailed by three games to one. That is 4.3 percent of all possible teams.
Though the odds remain firmly against the top-seeded Pistons, there is some historical precedent -- including precedent exclusive to them as a franchise -- working in their favor.
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