DETROIT -- You know how the thinking goes. The visiting team in a best-of-seven series loses the first game, the mantra is, "Our goal was to get a split." If the visiting team wins the first game and loses the second game, the mantra is, "Our goal was to get a split."

	Paul Pierce scored a personal playoff-low 17 points in Boston's Game 1 loss.

The Boston Celtics' goal against the Detroit Pistons is -- are you ready? -- to get a split. The Pistons won the opener and, after a respite that lasted longer than Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett, they will play Game 2 tonight at The Palace of Auburn Hills.

Already we've seen two teams bounce back and -- get the split. Dallas outlasted Sacramento and the Spurs held off the Lakers. Only the Hornets proved incapable of getting the split against the Nets.

The Celtics took a bit of an unorthodox approach after playing sloppily in the opener. They flew home, supposedly for two days of practice in their own gym and two nights of sleep in their own beds. They got the latter. But coach Jim O'Brien gave his boys Monday off, sensing, perhaps, that a day away from basketball was the best thing.

Game 1 already is in the recycle bin for the Celtics. If you saw that game, you wondered how they ever beat Philadelphia. They shot poorly, defended poorly and had more turnovers than assists. The performance was, in a way, somewhat predictable given that they were on the road and were still hung over from their richly rewarding dispatch of the Sixers just 36 hours earlier.

The Celtics like to think of themselves as an unselfish, make-the-extra-pass kind of team on offense. Usually, they are. In Game 1, they weren't. Anytime Kenny Anderson has as many shots as Paul Pierce, you know things aren't going according to Hoyle.

The result was Boston's worst shooting performance of the season and its second lowest point total. Neither Pierce nor Antoine Walker are efficient scorers; they're volume scorers, especially Walker. If they shoot 14-for-39 from the field again, the Celtics will be very challenged to get the split.

Detroit threw a wrinkle at the team defensively, switching on the perimeter to deny the Celtics one of their favorite plays, the pick-and-pop. You can be sure O'Brien devised something to counter that. You can be sure Coach of the Year Rick Carlisle has something in store to counter O'Brien. That's how playoff basketball works.

But the Pistons present a bit of defensive challenge for the Celtics because, like Boston, they don't really have a legitimate center. (Well, they do, but Zeljko Rebraca is out for the series with a broken bone in his hand.) And their big people are also agile big people, which is a stark contrast to the Sixers' tandem of Derrick Coleman and Dikembe Mutombo.

Walker has his hands full with Cliff Robinson, one of the most underrated and underappreciated players in the league. Ben Wallace can stay outside with Rodney Rogers. The Pistons prefer not to double team and, as long as Michael Curry can at least contain Pierce, they won't have to. But that is asking a lot of Curry, or anyone. As Pierce himself noted, somewhat matter-of-factly, "No one in this league can guard me, one-on-one." He's right.

"He's a nightmare," Carlisle said.

	“	No one in this league can guard me, one-on-one. ”
		— Paul Pierce

But the real Boston adjustment is going to have to come at the other end. O'Brien can safely assume that Pierce and Walker will do the necessary things on offense and that they will get back to their customary ways. He can't make that same assumption at the other end, although the Celtics' improved defense was a big reason for its surprising season.

After primarily concerning themselves with a whirling dervish in their first-round series, the Celtics now have to contend with a much more balanced offensive team that moves the ball as well as they do. It says something of Detroit (or, maybe, Toronto) that it can see its top scorer go basket-less for 47 minutes in a deciding Game 5 and still emerge with a win.

Carlisle won't be looking for Curry to duplicate his Game 1 performance, when he scored more points in one game (15) than he did in the previous five against the Raptors (13). But he might expect Chucky Atkins or Jon Barry to do it. The Pistons have a lot of options on offense, and the Celtics have to do a much better job of recognizing that. In Game 1, Robinson scored 30 points and many of them came on jumpers in which he had time to measure the shot from any number of angles.

The Celtics this season have been a resilient bunch who have bounced back time and again when things looked bleak. They feel they went through a rite of passage with their Game 5 destruction of the Sixers (who still are getting more face time than any playoff team.) They still, however, are new to this and have yet to win a playoff game on the road. The Pistons, meanwhile, have yet to lose a playoff game at home.

Boston does not want to go back home facing a 2-0 deficit. They don't want to hear about the short list -- the number of teams who've extricated themselves from such a deficit. They can look back to Game 1 and, despite their play, they made a run in the fourth quarter that made things very antsy for Carlisle & Co. But they didn't have enough to finish the job.

The Pistons, meanwhile, keep racking up postseason awards. That's three, now, if you're counting at home. The last two teams that had as many made it to the NBA Finals (the 2001 Sixers and the 1996 Bulls, and Chicago, of course, won the championship). There's still a lot of work ahead, but, for the Celtics, this is a statement game. They've felt all along that they're up to the challenge. They'd better be.

Peter May, who covers the NBA for the Boston Globe, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.