Two questions: 1.) Where’s Vince Lombardi when you need him? 2.) Where’s a shock collar when you need one?

First off, to answer the first, the Detroit Pistons just need a little pep talk. With two weeks left in the regular season, looking up at the playoff bracket as an 11th seed, they seem to have now been given a sacred seven-game gift from God. Those seven games are about as weak as any two-week stretch a team will undergo this year. The Pistons’ capability of going undefeated through it and seizing their first playoff berth in half a decade? Oh, they have it. Let a good pep talk sink in and the motivation spark. 7-0 can happen with the talent they have.

But to my other question, and to the spot readers may or may not have skipped to: shock collars?...What? Yeah. Unleash a Detroit pit bull somewhere because the city’s pro basketball team needs to borrow a collar to keep a very important yet undisciplined resident out of prohibited land. Three-point land, that is.

Perhaps this will clarify the confusion: At 25 percent from beyond the arc, Pistons forward Josh Smith is well on his way to having the worst three-point shooting season in NBA history. Given that he’s taking the second-most threes per game on the team yet only making a quarter of them, is it wrong to suggest—or at this point in the season, just enforce—that once settled in to a half-court offense, Smith be restricted from floating out to the perimeter to launch threes?

Critique doesn’t sound rightfully fair for a marquee player who has averaged nearly 16 points, eight rebounds, three assists, and two blocks per game over the course of his nine-year career. This, instead, may sound perfectly just, though. He’s making $13.5 million, the most on the team by about five million, but even over green paper, what he seems to have too much of are those possessions upon wasted possessions of wildly contested shots he flips up in the lane with a better shot available, those contested three-pointers, and his high demand to fly into someone and draw a foul, which is appreciated, though results in free throws made only 53 percent of the time. It’s quite a plummet from his career average of 64 percent, but even worse, his overload of attempts this season contributes massively to the league-worst 67 percent on free throws as a team.

Much can be said in regards to Smith’s undisciplined mindset to float out beyond the arc and launch three-pointers, which he happens to be struggling with about as much as he would shooting a bowling ball at a Dixie cup. Smith must pay homage to the shooters he has around him, from Brandon Jennings to Kyle Singler, take a reality check, and realize that playing bigger than his 6’9”, 225-pound frame gives Detroit a better chance than trying to prove he can play smaller than it.

As far as the team mindset, it should be mutual in this sense.

If they wish to reach that final spot in the playoffs, that eighth seed, they must take advantage of the weak schedule they have in these last two weeks of the regular season. It’s time to seize this golden opportunity they have at their disposal. Here it is, the closed door isolating them from the playoffs: the Brooklyn Nets, Boston Celtics, Atlanta Hawks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Chicago Bulls, Toronto Raptors, and to end the regular season, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

That closed door definitely isn’t locked.

There is no reason Detroit can’t go 7-0, here. The Bulls and Thunder are the only true tests, but the Bulls are very much beatable, as they have the league’s best defense but the worst offense, and the Thunder very well may rest Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook for the playoffs if the game doesn’t affect their seeding. People could throw the Nets (37-33) in the mix for teams potentially problematic for Detroit in the most important few games of the year thus far, but the Pistons are 3-0 against them this year and just far too fast-paced for them.

Apart from those three, the remaining four games have a combined record of 123-162 (winning percentage, 43%). To whoever thought Detroit’s seclusion from the playoffs was a lock, that they were out of the hunt, best be aware that this schedule is basically a key to that locked door.

Detroit wins these seven games—all ones they should come out on top of if they play like they’re capable of—and cross their fingers that the ninth-seed Knicks snap out of this abnormally hot spurt that they’re in, that the eighth-seed Hawks and seventh-seed Bobcats play as subpar as they have been, and the Pistons will be playing a nationally televised series in April.

It’s going to come down to this motto: holding on; holding onto 16-point leads and not blowing them in the fourth quarter; holding onto their composure in the dwindling games of great contention they have left, as four other teams (Bobcats, Hawks, Knicks, and Cavaliers) all are throwing elbows in the same tight, shoulder-to-shoulder race; and in the greater picture, holding onto the glorified position as a playoff seed if they follow through with the other necessary keys of ‘holding on.’

If they do follow through, if they do hold on in those aspects, it’ll be because they took those keys to heart. There’s no lock on hearts, so there’s no need to have any list of keys on how to access them. Just play with them.