Pistons tie 76ers for longest overall losing streak at 28 games،
BOSTON — When the Detroit Pistons entered the visiting locker room during halftime of Thursday night's game against the Boston Celtics, it seemed like the Pistons had a chance to not only shock the basketball world, but also to avoid landing in a dubious place in the history books in the process.
Detroit, a 16.5-point underdog after losing 27 straight games, found itself leading Boston — the NBA's best team with a perfect 14-0 record at TD Garden — by 19 points.
Then the second half started. And as soon as Detroit took control of the game, Boston came back. By the end of the third quarter, the Celtics had erased that halftime deficit. And despite the Pistons' valiant fightback to force overtime, it was ultimately Boston who won 128-122.
With the loss, the Pistons tied the 76ers for the longest losing streak, which Philadelphia established at the end of the 2014-15 season and the start of the 2015-16 campaign with 28 consecutive losses. The Pistons can set a new record for futility on Saturday, when they face the Toronto Raptors at home in Detroit.
“I just told them it takes a lot of character and integrity to do what they do,” Pistons coach Monty Williams said. “I've been in the league for a while and I've seen teams give in under circumstances that aren't what we're facing. It was admirable; obviously we had a tough third quarter and the ability to fight us back and to even have him in the fourth was great.
“I suffered for them. We feel like we're on the verge of not just winning one game, but winning a lot of games if we play this way.”
For much of the contest, it looked like the 2-29 Pistons were finally going to get back into the win column. Boston (24-6), returning home after winning the final three games of a four-game West Coast series, appeared to do exactly what Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla warned against before the match: taking your opponent in difficulty lightly.
“I think the expectation is supposed to go a certain way or it's supposed to be easy,” Mazzulla said when asked about the challenge of facing a team in Detroit's position. “That’s simply not the case.
“It's another game, regardless of the other team's record. And I think sometimes we get caught up – because it's this team, we should be up by this amount in the first quarter , at halftime – and that’s just not how it works.”
That certainly wasn't how it happened on Thursday, as Mazzulla's players came out and quickly looked like a team expecting to sleepwalk their way to victory.
Instead, Boston found itself in a dogfight with Detroit that stretched for five more minutes after Pistons forward Bojan Bogdanovic tied the score with a backhander with 4.6 seconds remaining in the period. regulation time. Ultimately, however, Boston managed to pull away in overtime, as Kristaps Porzingis (35 points) and Jayson Tatum (31) proved too much for Detroit to handle.
In many ways, Detroit did enough to win. The league's worst 3-point shooting team made more triples (13) than Boston (11), which entered the game as the league's most prolific team. The Pistons had 31 second chance points and repeatedly fought for extra shots. Detroit got solid performances from Cade Cunningham (31 points, 6 rebounds and 9 assists) and Jaden Ivey (22 points, 10 rebounds and 4 assists, before fouling out in overtime).
But it ultimately wasn't enough to snap Boston's undefeated start to the season at home or stop Detroit's seemingly endless losing streak.
“I'm not interested in winning one more game this year, to stop this. That would be sweet, in my opinion. I think our goals are much higher than that. We have what it takes to win a game . It's nothing. But running games and finding our system, finding what works and allowing us to keep winning… that's what we're looking for right now.
Cade Cunningham
Nonetheless, Williams praised his team's efforts.
“With everything this team has been through…they bring a spirit, an integrity and a toughness to the gym every day,” he said. “They hear everything people have to say about them and about us because they are on social media. That doesn't stop them from doing their job, but also from playing at the level and level that we all talk about days.
“We can't do anything about the noise; we can control how we approach our work. And even though they're hurting right now, I ache for them. But I told them if we brought that kind of courage , tenacity and execution, Without the turnovers, we're not just going to win a game, we're going to put something together. No matter what people say, we don't need to shut people up. We just have to keep getting better, grinding and producing or putting something productive on the floor that our fans can be happy about.”
After the Pistons led by as many as 21 points in the first half, Boston outscored Detroit 35-16 in the third quarter to come back strong, tying the score heading into the fourth quarter.
Yet even after blowing that lead, Detroit showed an impressive level of fight. The Pistons responded to Boston taking the lead to start the fourth by pushing themselves back in front by as many as four points on multiple occasions – the latest being when Ivey split a pair of free throws with 4:23 left.
Boston, however, immediately responded with back-to-back buckets from Porzingis to regain the lead, before a Tatum layup and a 3-pointer from Porzingis pushed Boston's advantage to 106-100.
Ivey then scored six straight points – first on an and-1 and then on a corner 3 – to tie the game with 1:02 left. Bogdanovic then missed a wide-open 3 with 36 seconds left that would have given Detroit the lead, and Tatum was credited with a layup with 8.7 seconds left when Cunningham was called for goaltending .
Still, that left the Pistons with one more chance to tie or win. But when Cunningham's 3-pointer narrowly missed, Bogdanovic was there to put in a putback to tie the game. After Tatum missed a potential game-winner at the other end of the court, the game went into overtime.
And from there, Boston did just enough to survive – and send Detroit home with another loss.
But after the Pistons suffered a fifth straight competitive loss — and, in this case, they went to overtime with the league's best team — Cunningham and the Pistons believe a breakthrough could finally be around the corner.
“That’s what we’re aiming for, man,” Cunningham said. “I'm not interested in winning one more game this year, to stop this. That would be sweet, in my opinion. I think our goals are much higher than that. We have what it takes to win a game . It's nothing. But running games and finding our system, finding what works and allowing us to keep winning… that's what we're looking for right now.
