Remember those first three games of the season when it looked like the Detroit Pistons were finally going to be competitive? Those were good times.
It's been all downhill from there, as the Pistons have continued to find new lows in season four of their rebuild under Troy Weaver.
The team is nearly a lock to finish with the worst record in franchise history, not that anyone seems to care, as we are now into the portion of the season when the Pistons run out a rotation full of players who weren't on the team at the beginning of the season and likely won't be back next year. The tank is well and truly on once again.
This was the year the Pistons were supposed to "make a leap," to be competitive, when all of that losing and tanking would finally start to show up in the win column.
Instead, we got the Bizarro version, the opposite of everything good, a team miraculously worse than the one that won 17 games last season which may be running out the worst rotation we've seen, a motley collaboration of non-NBA players, the Bizarro All-NBA yelling "Pistons am number one!" as they reclaim the worst record in the league.
Detroit Pistons rotation: The worst in years
Recently, I compared the Detroit Pistons' starting lineups at the beginning of the last four seasons to the end and there was a stark contrast, with each season fizzling out with G-Leaguers, recent signings and NBA journeymen in the starting five.
Those season-ending starting fives are some of the worst in team history, but this year's may take the prize.
Here is the rotation the Detroit Pistons are running out right now:
-Chimezie Metu
-Troy Brown Jr.
-James Wiseman
-Jaden Ivey
-Marcus Sasser
-Buddy Boeheim
-Tosan Evbuomwan
-Malachi Flynn
-Evan Fournier
-Jared Rhoden
Wow. Just wow. If you had told me at the beginning of the season that the Pistons would use this rotation, I would have assumed some horrible tragedy had befallen the team, like they ended up trapped in a cave in Thailand or something.
If you are counting, that is three G-Leaguers, four players who weren't on the roster when the season started, a rookie backup, a backup center and Jaden Ivey.
Only three of these players (Ivey, Sasser, Wiseman) are guaranteed to be in the NBA at all next season, and I wouldn't bet large amounts of money on any of them being back on the Pistons.
What will likely go down as the worst season in team history very much looks the part as this season disintegrates the way the last three have, with the Pistons running out an embarrassing rotation better suited for the G-League or NCAA than the NBA.
It's hard to see how anyone from Troy Weaver on down could survive, as this is now year four of this and we are no closer to the goal of being competitive than we were in year one.
This is the Bizarro rebuild, a house constructed by pulling out one nail at a time until there is nothing left but an empty lot.