Dates and games that will live in infamy for the Detroit Pistons

Game #31: History is made

With the spirited loss to the Nuggets long-forgotten, Detroit found itself on the brink of infamy. The Pistons were in Boston where they would have to beat a team that was at that time arguably the odds-on favorite to win the next NBA championship.

Head Coach Monty Williams had pretty much given up on his effort to mold Hayes into a legitimate NBA player, but he also decided to destroy the confidence of rookie Ausar Thompson much in the way he had already done to second-year player Jaden Ivey. While Ivey was back in the starting lineup, Ausar was stuck behind journeyman Kevin Knox. Had Knox knocked down even one of his six 3-point attempts the Pistons may have won the game in regulation and avoided losing it in overtime to tie the for the longest losing streak in NBA history at 28 games.

Remarkably, the Pistons held a 20-point lead during the second quarter, something that surely contributed to Monty’s comments after the game. “I’m unbelievably proud of the group, the way they bring it” he said. Those words actually came out of the mouth of a man who made $26,592.14 each and every time he led the Pistons to one of those 28 straight dubious losses.

Game #33: Here we go again

Hey, Game #32 was a wonderful relief. Maybe skipping the single most notable win during the entire Pistons season in order to delve into the two losses that bookended it is cruel, but that's what we doing. Point being, just as soon as we finally got a dub under our belts and the monkey off our backs, we went out there and got drubbed by the Rockets, a team that was thought to be on a similar competitive timeline as our own.

The head-scratcher here soon became a familiar theme, as Monty deployed a seemingly uninspired 12 man rotation. Who does that? Cunningham was the only Piston to play 30 minutes, and he played exactly 30 minutes, which was lower than his average. But hey, James Wiseman got down for 16 minutes, during which he compiled a lofty -24 in the +/- column. Not an insignificant accomplishment for a guy coming off the bench.

It was immediately apparent that nothing had really changed, and we were nowhere near finding our way out of the woods yet.