I’ve been watching a lot of Detroit Pistons basketball of late. Everyone should. Forget the in-season tournament, or whatever that was. You always want to see something new in sports, so what’s better than the emergence of the worst team in the 77-year history of the National Basketball Association?
Detroit has now lost a record 27 consecutive games, a run that stretches across two-plus months.
The latest came Monday at the hands of Brooklyn, 118-112. If you want to know how sad the Pistons are, it was treated by some as a sort of moral victory because Cade Cunningham scored 41 and they trailed by only five, with the ball in the final minute.
They proceeded to commit a turnover, bat a rebound out of bounds, forget to intentionally foul (allowing nearly five precious seconds to burn) and then throw a pass to no one.
It’s like watching an NCAA tournament 16 seed play only 1 seeds … for an entire season.
Detroit is awful, absolutely awful. It’s a sight to behold, a team that is not trying to tank, playing like it is tanking. There is plenty of individual talent — Cunningham in particular — but it struggles to play together. It’s like they all just showed up at the park one day.
It is oddly mesmerizing. The lack of defense. The dribbling into traffic. The jacking up of 3-pointers by players with no proven ability to hit 3-pointers. Turnovers galore. The players wear glazed looks on their faces, like a school kid embarrassed to be in the holiday concert, just lip syncing until it’s over. They appear almost sheepish in warmups, especially on the road. It’s the G League Plus.
You tune in to see if they’ll come to play with some intensity — and they give up 81 points in a half to Milwaukee. OK, well, Milwaukee is good. How about the next night against Atlanta? Nope, they are down 13 in the first quarter. How about against a bad Utah team on the second leg of a back-to-back and without a slew of regulars, including their top two scorers? Nah, the Pistons committed 20 turnovers and lost by eight.
They aren’t even close. This isn’t bad luck, bad calls or an inability to “close out games.” The games…
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