I'm not sure I agree with your premise there, about easy 2nd round matchups. Let's review the 2nd round series over the last four years:

2004: Pistons over NJ in 7. This turned out to be their toughest series of that title run, in the sense that they actually faced elimination, which didn't happen in any of the other playoff series that year.

2005: Pistons over Indy in 6. This was a tougher series than it should have been, as this Indy team wasn't particularly strong. But the Pistons made it awfully interesting by going down 2-1 and having to win Game 4 at Indy to avoid a 3-1 hole.

2006: Pistons over Cleveland in 7. A bad signal of things to come--no one thought this would be a tough series, and it probably shouldn't have been, but it sure was.

2007: Pistons over Chicago in 6. I think we all expected this to be a tough series, in fact, the toughest the Pistons would face in the East. So it was a surprise when the Pistons went ahead 3-0, but then disappointing that they got crushed in the next two games, and then it swung back to positive when they toughed out a gritty Game 6 win in Chicago to close it out.

So I don't think the Pistons have had much slack past the first round in recent years, although some of that (I think certainly the '05 and '06 second rounds) was self-inflicted via under-performing against teams they should have handled more easily.

Though perhaps that's really the point you're making, max: this Orlando team is good enough to force the Pistons to play at a high level to beat them over a 7-game series, without much room for slacking off. I do agree with that premise.