While any 12 game losing streak looks bad, Detroit must be trying for the ugliest.
They start the season with a hot 2-1, only dropping a 1 point game to the runner-up Miami Heat. Hopes are high, fans are cheering, things might finally be looking up for little ol’ Detroit.
- Then comes a 112-124 loss to a healthy Thunder, understandable. 32 from SGA
- The Trailblazers missing Simons up next? That’d be a tough loss to have. And it is. 101-110 L
- The Pelicans missing Zion and Ingram, this should get them back on track, right? … 116-125 L
- Suns missing Beal and DBook, they have a chance! … 106-120 L
- 109-120 L to a healthy Warriors team
- The Bucks are missing Middleton, and Giannis gets ejected early (L refs on that one). Pistons still find a way to lose 118-120.
- 106-114 L to a healthy 76ers
- 108-119 L to the Bulls missing Caruso
- The Hawks missing Trae Young. 120-126 L
- The Cavs missing Donovan Mitchell. 100-108 L
- 113-142 L to a healthy Raptors
- The Nuggets are missing Jamal Murray, Mike Malone gets ejected in the 1st, Jokic gets ejected in the 2nd. The Pistons lose 103-107 to Reggie Jackson and KCP, two players they used to have.
The Pistons themselves have been dealing with anywhere from 3-7 players injured each game as well, but there doesn’t seem to be much light at the end of their tunnel right now. Just an absolutely pitiful stretch of games for a professional team. For me personally, all spirits were dead after the Pelicans loss.
Look no further than the owner Tom Gores. He has no interest in the team, he uses it so he can run his business in Detroit while he lives in California.
Fade with Cade
They just need Duren back
Free Cade, send him to Spurs please
Beef Stew as your best floor spacer is insane
I was getting shitted on for questioning their start. People were saying I was a hater for thinking they might not make the playoffs even if they were 2-1. Got the “nah we good now, you just haven’t been watching.” Yeah, I was watching.
What is going wrong with Detroit? Is it a lack of spacing? Is it that they are in need of vet leadership? Can any Pistons fans shed some light?
When you look at their roster, they have a ton of upside. Cade has superstar potential, Duren is developing into a terrific big, Ausar has DPOY potential and Ivey and Stewart play their roles really well. It feels like they could be really good if they figure it all out.
Yeah, spacing and injuries have been absolutely miserable. We haven’t had Bojan or Monte Morris available to play yet who should both be valuable for vet presence and spacing. Add on to that we’ve missed multiple games from Duren, Ivey, Burks, and Livers throughout this stretch. All the injuries and poor spacing is giving Cade an insane and highly difficult workload, which he’s not there yet to handle consistently. I believe that even just getting Duren back fully healthy(hoping Friday) will help stabilize this team because he was a difference maker before he got hurt. Team should be better when healthy, and I think they will be, but it’s been a tough start.
2 of our 3 best players (Duren and Bojan) are injured. Duren played some of these games in the losing streak, but the ongoing ankle injury meant he wasn’t looking right and probably shouldn’t have. Both of those players should open up Cade. For a while we didn’t have a single player over the age of 24 in the rotation (because we’ve had up to 7 players injured; and haven’t had a game without 3 rotation players injured). For reasons that aren’t clear, the coach was starting Killian Hayes, whose skillset is redundant with both Cade and Ausar. We had a brutal start to the schedule with almost nothing but back-to-backs.
All of that compounds together. Plus we make the standard issues you expect from a young team: too many fouls and turnovers, defensive lapses, letdowns in clutch time. There’s also a new coach implementing a fast decision-making system that likely is generating a lot of turnovers until the young players acclimitize to it.
It’s a perfect storm of bad things that aren’t necessarily longterm issues. We’ve yet to see Detroit’s best lineup on the court together.
2 of our 3 best players (Duren and Bojan) are injured. Duren played some of these games in the losing streak, but the ongoing ankle injury meant he wasn’t looking right and probably shouldn’t have. Both of those players should open up Cade. For a while we didn’t have a single player over the age of 24 in the rotation (because we’ve had up to 7 players injured; and haven’t had a game without 3 rotation players injured). For reasons that aren’t clear, the coach was starting Killian Hayes, whose skillset is redundant with both Cade and Ausar. We had a brutal start to the schedule with almost nothing but back-to-backs.
All of that compounds together. Plus we make the standard issues you expect from a young team: too many fouls and turnovers, defensive lapses, letdowns in clutch time. There’s also a new coach implementing a fast decision-making system that likely is generating a lot of turnovers until the young players acclimitize to it.
It’s a perfect storm of bad things that aren’t necessarily longterm issues. We’ve yet to see Detroit’s best lineup on the court together.
Monty Williams when booker isn’t there to carry his poor game management with shot making
If you’re wondering what’s wrong with the Pistons, here’s a brief rundown. This is quietly the worst ran team in the NBA.
Our current GM has drafted 1st, 5th, 5th, 7th, and 13th over the course of 4 years. Exactly zero of those players are league average 3 point shooters. And the rest of the roster around them over the course of those 4 season has been filled out with former draft busts and other “lottery tickets”, lottery tickets meaning guys who can jump high and not shoot a lick.
This front office has impeded the progress of our draft picks by doing a horrible job of filling out the roster. The Pistons had the most cap space in the league and our big swing was trading for Joe Harris on one leg and Monte Morris.
It is easily the worst ran team in the NBA and has been for a while, but a portion of our fans will tell you we started the rebuild with no assets 5 years ago so it’s actually unreasonable to start seeing results for another couple years. Famously, all successful rebuilds take 7 years to climb out of the basement
It’s interesting how those are the type of picks the Thunder used to make when Weaver was there, and we’ve mostly stopped drafting that type of player since he left. He needs to wake up and realize it’s just not working out.
It’s weird because they have a good amount of young talent and are fun to watch. They just have not played very well as a team. Their loss to the Pelicans, they looked like a quality pick-up team.
The only fault they had is getting the number 1 pick after Ant and before Banchero.
10 of those 12 teams are likely to make the playoffs or at least the play-in, so it’s a bit of a rough stretch in that sense. Losing to the Blazers was tough tho.
if you look at the big picture, sure you could say that. but the teams that we actually played? only the healthy warriors and healthy 76ers are certified playoff teams. nuggets without mike malone, jokic and murray are nothing. same for the bucks without giannis and middleton, the pelicans without zion and ingram, the suns without dbook and beal, etc. we’ve consistently lost to teams resting their core players, it’s beyond embarrassing.
we lost to a team led by CJ McCollum, Herb Jones, MATT RYAN, and Jonas Valanciunas. the suns only had 35 y/o KD, eric gordon, and grayson allen. the trailblazers loss was the beginning of the end
I want someone to do a similar rundown of the Spurs after the won their 3rd game.
i could do a deep dive, but i don’t even think that’s necessary tbh. they’ve been playing healthy teams, unlike the pistons. the 2 biggest factors of their losing streak are easily 1) devin vassell’s injury 2) team can’t shoot for shit.
devin got injured after 16 minutes in their second win against the suns, and his only good game since has been against minnesota (a game where the spurs bench combined for 21 pts). other than that, in all of these recent losses, you have most of their players shooting 2/7 and 0/3 from beyond the arc.
id be lying if i said i’ve watched the spurs at all, but seems like vassell is their core right now, and if his team could have a good shooting night while he’s healthy, the losing streak will end
I’m honestly tired of these questions with Detroit. Like you said OP, they’ve had 3-7 key players out every game. It’s not like they get blown out every game.
They have plenty of time to turn it around once the team actually comes together.