Pistons news: The ugly Tank and Jaden Ivey questions the team

The Detroit Pistons were blown out by the Toronto Raptors in one of the ugliest games of the season.

Detroit had a chance to play spoiler to Toronto’s play-in chances, but forgot to come out of the locker room, and dropped their 16th game out of their last 17.

After getting the lead in the first minute, the Raptors got it back and never relinquished it, outplaying and outworking the Detroit Pistons in every facet of the game.

Detroit was sitting all of their veterans with “injuries’ and once-again started two centers, with the doomed duo of Marvin Bagley III and James Wiseman in the front court. It didn’t matter, as the Pistons were out rebounded 46-39 overall while giving up a whopping 15 offensive rebounds.

Detroit has been one of the worst defensive rebounding teams in the NBA, even with two bigs, which doesn’t help their struggling defense when trying to close out possessions.

The Tank is getting ugly and hard to watch, even for rookie Jaden Ivey.

Detroit Pistons news: Jaden Ivey calls out the team

Rookie Jaden Ivey was not happy about his team’s performance last night and made it clear after the game, calling out their effort and questioning their heart:

"“I feel like our effort was horrible tonight…We’ve just got to have more effort…We’ve got to all look ourselves in the mirror and say, ‘Is our spirit there? That’s the most important thing when you step out there on the floor.”"

Harsh words from the rookie, especially since he had nine turnovers last night. But he’s not wrong, as Detroit simply rolled the ball out last night and did little else. It’s one thing to be a young team losing games, but it’s another to put up so little resistance, a habit that can’t be good for the culture of the team.

I recently wrote about some things to watch in the final games and one of them was effort. Head coach Dwane Casey will surely be evaluated at the end of the season and one of the things to monitor is whether his team starts to quit on him.

No one expects a shorthanded team to win on the road against a team with something to play for, but at least managing competitive losses would give the team something to hang its hat on going into the offseason.

I commend Jaden Ivey for showing some leadership and calling out his team, let’s see if it has any effect in these last eight games as the Pistons try to salvage something positive from this season.