Dream vs. Nightmare: Pistons vs. Spurs is Toilet Bowl 2024
The Detroit Pistons were terrible last season, tanking away for a 14 percent chance at landing prospect Victor Wembanyama.
It's only gotten worse since.
The Pistons put all of their eggs into that particular 14 percent basket and didn't have a plan B when predictably they fell to the 5th pick, leaving the idea of Cade Cunningham and Victor Wembanyama as a fanciful dream.
That dream quickly became a nightmare as the Pistons lost 28 games in a row this season after starting 2-1, and with Cade Cunningham now out, we can expect their current 5-game losing streak to continue to blossom. Can they do it again? Don't rule it out.
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But I also wouldn't rule out a win tonight against the San Antonio Spurs, who have also lost five in a row and have only won two more games than the Detroit Pistons, so San Antonio fans are living their own sort of nightmare watching some of their comrades turn on Gregg Popovich.
But they've at least got a little sugar to help the medicine go down.
Detroit Pistons vs. San Antonio Spurs: The Toilet Bowl
Who would have ever imagined that two of the premier franchises in the NBA, who met in the 2005 NBA Finals, would be the two worst teams in the league 19 years later?
The Pistons haven't won a single playoff game since George W. Bush was president, a drought that started in 2008 and continues to the present day with no end in sight.
The Spurs won a title in 2014, but have missed the playoffs the last four years and will again this season, a pedestrian run of futility compared to the Pistons, but for the Spurs, this is tantamount to disaster.
The difference between the two franchises is that the Spurs have Victor Wembanyama, which helps ease the pain. He's a rookie, already very good and sure to get much better. He's a potential MVP candidate, a guy who can almost single-handedly get the Spurs back to relevance very soon.
The Pistons' nightmare isn't tempered by that kind of hope, as Detroit was meant to make their leap this season. This isn't 2021, Cade's first season, when we had the kind of hope that San Antonio is now using to deaden the pain of being one of the worst teams in the league.
San Antonio is still living the dream, while Detroit still lives out this nightmare of a season.
The two will tip off at 7:00 PM ET tonight in what is sure to be the Toilet Bowl that closes out bowl season.
The winner won't have much in the way of bragging rights and the loser should probably be relegated to the G-League. So, big game tonight!
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