The Detroit Pistons came back to reality against the Sacramento Kings, getting blown out at home in one of their worst games of the season.
We know this young team is going to be up and down, but this did not look like the same bunch that had just beaten Toronto on the road the game before.
This is why you can’t overreact too much to wins and losses with a young team, as you never know which group is going to show up from night to night.
There were few positives in this game, but plenty of negatives, some of which were just downright brutal.
I’ve broken my takeaways into three categories, the Good, the Bad and the Brutal.
Let’s start with the bad.
Detroit Pistons: The bench was bad vs. the Kings
Dwane Casey used his entire bench in the blowout last night, which at its worst swelled to a 32 point disadvantage for the Pistons.
All eight guys on the bench got into the game (even Hamidou Diallo!) but not a single one of them managed to score in double-digits.
The bench scored just 39 points total on the night. The Kings weren’t much better, as they only scored 43, but they did it mostly with four guys instead of eight.
The Detroit Pistons do have the 2nd-highest scoring bench in the NBA, but they have struggled mightily since Kelly Olynyk went out with injury.
The only good signs were that Saben Lee played more minutes than Cory Joesph, Luka Garza got his longest stint of the season, Diallo finally stepped on the floor and most of the starters were even worse.
In fact, there were only two positives from this game.