ESPN NBA Playoffs 2008

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Quick, name one other team that can come back from 15 down in the second half in a road playoff game without its best player.

You can't.

And that's what makes the Detroit Pistons so unique. They were missing All-Star guard Chauncey Billups, but in the end it didn't matter. Thanks to their four other quality starters and seamless chemistry, they were able to rally for a 90-89 win over the Magic in Game 4 that gives them a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series. They'll go for the kill Tuesday at the Palace at Auburn Hills.

Tayshaun Prince hit the game-winner on a running hook over Dwight Howard with 8.9 seconds left, but the story on this night was everything in the second half leading led up to that point.

"Our guys could have said it's not gonna be our night and wait till we get home," Pistons coach Flip Saunders said of his team's predicament.

Instead they turned to an old hand, veteran Lindsey Hunter (more on him here), and turned up the dial at the defensive end. Orlando went scoreless for 6:40 during a 15-0 Pistons run that allowed Detroit to tie the game at 63, and at that point it was nip-and-tuck the rest of the way.

"We changed some of our pick-and-roll defenses," Saunders said. "We changed some of our weakside rotations to help out on rolls."

From there, Detroit's experience -- with each other as much as in playoff games -- came out at the end. The Pistons didn't skip a beat with the veteran Hunter at the controls, even though he has hardly played this season, and eschewed a timeout on their final possession in favor of running a screen-and-roll for Prince. Rasheed Wallace destroyed Hedo Turkoglu on the screen (one of several outstanding lead blocks Sheed threw), and Prince turned the corner and threw in his runner.

"We wanted to rely on our guys' instincts to play off each other," Saunders said.

Meanwhile, the Pistons' defense showed us one of Superman's rarely used powers: invisibility. Howard was totally ineffective, failing to make a field goal after the first quarter and finishing 3-for-12 from the floor with eight points. Among those misses was a left-handed tip in the final seconds that could have given Orlando the lead.

It appeared Prince may have hit Howard on the play, but with the way the game was being called, it might not have drawn a whistle even in the first quarter. In fact, had it been called more tightly, the zebras probably would have nailed Turkoglu for a charge on the initial shot -- he ran over Jason Maxiell on his way to the rim.

"I'm not going to get into that, all I do is give the league some money if I get into that," Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said.

Certainly it was a let 'em play atmosphere, in which Detroit was more comfortable. Howard had only two free-throw attempts after leading the league during the regular season and getting at least seven in each of the first three games of the series.

"They're very physical with him, and how it's called is a huge thing," Van Gundy said. "I thought [in the third quarter] we were attacking the basket very well, we were driving the ball … and coming away with nothing -- no hoop, no foul."

That underscores the frustrating part for Orlando: The Magic ended up playing Detroit's game. Van Gundy talked about the importance of pushing the pace after Game 3, even in half-court settings where zippy passes and quick moves could get the league's slowest-paced team playing faster than it wanted.

It turned into a slow-moving, physical, grinding affair, and the Magic were completely overmatched in such a battle. Yes, partly it was because Joey Crawford's crew mostly stayed mum, but a lot was simply Orlando's inability to rebound and run.

"We didn't get opportunities to get out and run, which is when we've been most successful," Van Gundy said. "It became their game, it became a grind-it-out, half-court game, and they played that game a lot better than we did.

"If you look at the second half of Game 2, Game 3, [and] the first half today, that's four straight halves of the game being played the way we want it to be played. And in the second half it got back to being their type of game."

The numbers show how completely Orlando became sucked into Detroit's style in the second half: It featured an absurdly slow 74 possessions. Most halves have about 100, and 74 is turtle-paced even by the Pistons' low standards.

That enabled Detroit to lay bodies on the Magic, and hold them to a bagel in fast-break points in the second half after they had accrued 14 in building an 11-point edge at intermission.

"That's our style," said Wallace, who had 12 points and several key defensive stops in the second half after being even more invisible than Howard in the first. "We like being physical. We wish we could do that more often."

Of course, the Pistons aren't out of the woods yet. Nobody can guarantee Billups' availability for Game 5, and the Magic were the only team in the league to win more games on the road than at home.

But thanks to the Pistons' depth, willpower and experience, they stole a game they had no business winning. As a result, they're one game away from an amazing sixth consecutive trip to the conference finals.

John Hollinger writes for ESPN Insider. To e-mail him, click here.