Inexperienced Pistons, like veteran Clippers, know there's no time for hanging heads before Game 2s

NEW YORK (AP) — The Detroit Pistons could have sounded shaken, after a few miserable minutes against the New York Knicks ruined an otherwise solid return to the postseason.

Same with the Los Angeles Clippers, who played beautiful basketball down the stretch of the regular season but not in their series opener against Denver.

Yet whether it's a team filled with playoff newcomers such as the Pistons, or a group of tested veterans such as the Clippers, everyone knows the rules at this time of the year. There's no time for hanging heads or dwelling on disappointments.

The next game comes quickly and all that matters is being ready when it arrives.

“It's even keel,” Clippers All-Star said James Harden said. “We will come back in Game 2 and be even better.”

That comes Monday night in Denver, after the Knicks try to take a 2-0 lead over the Pistons in the opener of the doubleheader.

Harden and Kawhi Leonard, the Clippers' leaders, along with coach Tyronn Lue, have been part of many deep playoff runs. So they were not going to let their 112-110 overtime loss on Saturday linger. They just figure they will clean up the 20 turnovers they committed and be fine.

Most of the Pistons don't have that kind of experience to lean on. Detroit is in the playoffs for the first time since 2019, but the 21-0 run the Knicks hit them with in the fourth quarter of their 123-112 victory didn't have anyone fearing they weren't ready for the moment.

Instead, the Pistons focused on the way they played in building an eight-point lead before then and said their confidence had only grown.

“All-time high. We're in the playoffs, we know what time it is," forward Tobias Harris said. "We don't have anybody in there pouting or holding their head down. We know what we're made of, we know we work so hard for every single day of the year of this season. We're ready for Game 2.”

When/Where to Watch: Game 2, 7:30 p.m. EDT (TNT)

Series: Knicks lead, 1-0.

BetMGM says: Knicks by 6.5

What to Know: The Pistons' NBA-record losing streak in the postseason is now at 15 games, with Detroit's last victory in Game 4 of the 2008 Eastern Conference finals. Star guard Cade Cunningham had 21 points, 12 assists and six rebounds in his first playoff game, but OG Anunoby and the Knicks defense limited him to 8-for-21 shooting. He averaged 30.8 points on 56.3% shooting against the Knicks this season, and had gone for 32 per game in his previous four visits to Madison Square Garden. Jalen Brunson appeared to be hobbling in the third quarter after tweaking his ankle, but said after scoring 34 points that he felt fine.

When/Where to Watch: Game 2, 10 p.m. EDT (TNT)

Series: Nuggets lead, 1-0

BetMGM says: Clippers by 1.5

What to Know: Denver is 4-0 since firing Michael Malone and replacing him with interim coach David Adelman. The Clippers, meanwhile, had won eight in a row and 18 of 21 before blowing a 15-point lead in the opener. They will now try to avoid losing consecutive games for the first time since a three-game skid from Feb. 28 to March 4. The teams both went 50-32 in the regular season, when they split their four meetings, and was almost nothing between them in Game 1. The Clippers made two more field goals and had one more assist, while the Nuggets outrebounded them by one. Nikola Jokic, after averaging a triple-double during the regular season, just missed one with 29 points, 12 assists and nine rebounds.

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Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, right, looks to pass the ball as Los Angeles Clippers center Ivica Zubac, left, defends in the second half of Game 1 of an NBA first-round playoff series Saturday, April 19, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Los Angeles Clippers center Ivica Zubac, center, goes up for a basket between Denver Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon, left, and guard Russell Westbrook in the second half of Game 1 of an NBA first-round playoff series Saturday, April 19, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

New York Knicks forward OG Anunoby (8) shoots past Detroit Pistons guard Cade Cunningham (2) during the first half of Game 1 in an NBA basketball first-round playoff series, Saturday, April 19, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson (11) falls as Detroit Pistons forward Tobias Harris (12) shoots during the second half of Game 1 in an NBA basketball first-round playoff series, Saturday, April 19, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Los Angeles Clippers guard James Harden, right, drives past Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic (15) in the second half of Game 1 of an NBA first-round playoff series Saturday, April 19, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Detroit Pistons forward Tobias Harris (12), right, attempts to dribble past New York Knicks guard Josh Hart (3), left, during the second half of Game 1 in an NBA basketball first-round playoff series, Saturday, April 19, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Los Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard, left, passes the ball as Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic defends in the second half of Game 1 of an NBA first-round playoff series Saturday, April 19, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Detroit Pistons guard Cade Cunningham (2) falls during the second half of Game 1 in an NBA basketball first-round playoff series against the New York Knicks, Saturday, April 19, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Before becoming Pope Leo XIV, Cardinal Robert Prevost presided over one of the most revolutionary reforms of Pope Francis' pontificate by having women serve on the Vatican board that vets nominations for bishops.

But he also has said decisively that women cannot be ordained as priests, and despite having worked for years in Peru where women often lead church communities, seems noncommittal on whether women could ever serve in any ministerial capacity.

Nevertheless, the women who have worked closely with Prevost in recent years have praised his leadership style, ability to listen and respect for their opinions. In interviews with The Associated Press, they say they expect that as pope, Leo will continue to promote women in church governance positions, albeit with limits.

Maria Lia Zervino was among the three women Francis appointe d to the Dicastery for Bishops in 2022 to review possible appointments. It was a job previously held by cardinals and bishops, an old boy’s club that has jealously guarded the secret process behind the appointment of bishops.

Zervino rejoiced when Prevost was elected pope, saying the respect he showed for her and other women on the board and their opinions gave them faith in him as a leader.

“I’m convinced that he doesn’t need to learn how to work (with women), how to let them speak, to listen to them, to have them participate in decisions, because that’s what he does anyway,” said Zervino, the Argentine former head of the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations.

Zervino said she expected Leo would continue Francis' reform processes, albeit in his own style.

“He’s a simple man, serene, always with that smile that we saw that seems to come from an interior peace,” she said in an interview. “So when you see someone who is balanced, peaceful and respectful and who welcomes what you say and is always ready to hear the other, you have faith in him.”

At a 2023 gathering of bishops on the future of the Catholic Church, Prevost was asked at a news conference about women in church leadership positions. He said it was “a work in progress” and that there would be a “continuing recognition of the fact that women can add a great deal to the life of the church on many different levels.”

But he drew some very clear lines.

“I think we’re all familiar with the very significant and long tradition of the church, and that the apostolic tradition is something that has been spelled out very clearly, especially if you want to talk about the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood,” he said in the Oct. 25, 2023, briefing.

Catholic women do much of the church’s work in schools and hospitals and are usually responsible for passing the faith to the next generation. But they have long complained of second-class status in an institution that reserves the priesthood for men.

Prevost acknowledged Francis had created two commissions to study whether women could be made deacons, who perform many of the same functions as priests. While he said the issue was still open, he warned that turning women into clerics “doesn’t necessarily solve a problem, it might make a new problem.”

Just because a woman in society can be president doesn't mean there's an “immediate parallel” in the church, he argued.

“It isn’t as simple as saying that at this stage we’re going to change, if you will, the tradition of the church after 2,000 years on any one of those points,” he said.

Deacons are ordained ministers who preside at weddings, baptisms and funerals. They can preach but cannot celebrate Mass. Married men can be ordained as deacons while women cannot, although historians say women served as deacons in the early Christian church.

Karlijn Demasure, emeritus professor of practical theology at St. Paul University in Ottawa, served on a Vatican commission with Prevost proposing reforms to the authority of bishops and how they are selected. She said Prevost was absolutely convinced of the need to involve lay people and nuns in the selection of bishops, at least at an initial level.

“He listens well,” Demasure said. “He hears what has been said, and if he doesn’t agree, he says it but in a nice way: ‘I wouldn’t say it like this, or I wouldn’t do it like that.’”

She said Prevost was quiet, “prudent and private.” She wonders, though, what will happen with the work of the commission, one of 10 groups that are studying particularly thorny questions, such as the role of women, and were due to report back to the pope by July.

Sister Nathalie Becquart, one of the highest-ranking women at the Vatican, worked with Prevost during Francis’ meeting, known as a synod, on the future of the church. She also happens to be his neighbor, living in the same Palazzo Sant’Uffizio inside the Vatican gates, and was among the well-wishers who greeted Leo when he came home the night of his May 8 election.

Becquart posted a joyous selfie with the pope in the courtyard in one of the first private moments after his election. “I had time to greet him, not just as a neighbor," she said.

Becquart recalled that she had been at a conference of the 900 nuns who run the world's female religious orders when the white smoke came out of the Sistine Chapel chimney. It didn't bother her that the nuns had no vote in the conclave, since the cardinals “could see that the church is the people of God.”

"Synodality is about feeling we are from the same body, we are interdependent, we have a deep inner connection, and for me that was a deep spiritual experience I could never imagine before,” she said.

Also during the conclave, advocates for women’s ordination set off pink smoke flares over the Vatican to protest their exclusion from the priesthood and the election process.

“The discrimination and exclusion of women is a sin, and we’re here to say the next pope will inherit this question and needs to work quickly to correct it,” said Kate McElwee, executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference.

Hofstra University researcher Phyllis Zagano, who was on Francis’ first Vatican commission on women deacons, remains optimistic. She pointed to Prevost’s acknowledgement that the deacon issue was still open and that he ministered in Peru, a region that has pushed for years for the church to recognize women as ministerial deacons to help offset the priest shortage.

In a column for Religion News Service, Zagano noted that a recent proposal for a new Amazonian liturgical rite, published last month by the Amazonian bishops conference, contained explicit recommendations for women to be ordained as deacons. When Francis in 2020 considered official requests from Amazonian bishops for female deacons, he dodged the issue.

“Women deserve the ordained diaconal ministry of women,” she said in an interview.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Sister Nathalie Becquart walks inside the General Secretariat of the Synod in Rome on Saturday, May 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Sister Nathalie Becquart walks inside the General Secretariat of the Synod in Rome on Saturday, May 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Maria Lia Zervino, chosen by Pope Francis to be on the Dicastery for Bishops, is interviewed by The Associated Press in Rome on Friday, May 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)

Pope Leo XIV appears on the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican to bless the crowd below on May 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)