Pistons tie 76ers for longest overall losing streak at 28 games
BOSTON -- When the Detroit Pistons entered the visiting locker room at halftime of Thursday night's matchup with the Boston Celtics, it looked like they had a chance to not only shock the basketball world but also avoid landing in a dubious place in the history books in the process.
Detroit, a 16.5-point underdog after losing 27 consecutive games, found itself leading Boston -- the NBA's best team with a perfect 14-0 record at TD Garden -- by 19 points.
Then the second half began. And as quickly as Detroit had taken control of the game, Boston surged right back into it. By the end of the third quarter, the Celtics had erased that halftime deficit. Despite the Pistons fighting back valiantly to force overtime, ultimately it was Boston that would claim a 128-122 victory.
With the defeat, the Pistons tied the 76ers for the longest overall losing streak, which Philadelphia set across the end of the 2014-15 season and the beginning of the 2015-16 campaign with 28 consecutive losses. The Pistons can set a new record for futility Saturday, when they face the Toronto Raptors in Detroit.
"I just told them that it takes a lot of character and integrity to do what they're doing," Pistons coach Monty Williams said. "I've been in the league for a while, and I've seen teams give into circumstances that are less than what we're dealing with. That was admirable. Obviously, we had a tough third quarter, and the ability to fight back and have it even in the fourth was tremendous.
"I hurt for them. We feel like we're just getting so close to not just winning one game but winning a lot of games if we play that way."
For much of the contest, it looked like the 2-29 Pistons would finally get back in the win column. Boston (24-6), back home after winning the final three games of a four-game West Coast swing, appeared to do exactly what Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla warned of before the game: take its struggling opponent lightly.
"I think just the expectation of it's supposed to go a certain way or it's supposed to be easy," Mazzulla said when asked what the challenge was in facing a team in Detroit's position. "It's just not the case.
"It's another game, regardless of the other team's record. And I think sometimes you get caught up in -- because it's this team, we should be up by this amount at first quarter, halftime -- and it's just not how it works."
It certainly wasn't how it worked Thursday, as Mazzulla's players went out and promptly looked like a team expecting to sleepwalk its way to a victory.
Instead, Boston found itself in a dogfight with Detroit that extended into an extra five minutes after Pistons forward Bojan Bogdanovic tied the score with a putback with 4.6 seconds remaining in regulation. Eventually, Boston was able to pull away in overtime, as Kristaps Porzingis (35 points) and Jayson Tatum (31) proved to be too much for Detroit to handle.
In so many ways, Detroit did enough to win. The league's worst 3-point shooting team made more treys (14) than Boston (11), which entered the game as the NBA's most prolific squad from deep. The Pistons had 31 second-chance points and repeatedly fought for extra shots. Detroit got strong performances from Cade Cunningham (31 points, 6 rebounds, 9 assists) and Jaden Ivey (22 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists before fouling out in overtime).
But it wound up being not quite enough to either break Boston's undefeated start to the season at home or stop Detroit's seemingly never-ending losing streak.
Nevertheless, Williams lauded his team's effort.
"They bring a spirit and integrity and toughness to the gym every single day," he said. "They hear everything that people have to say about them and us because they're on social media. It doesn't sway them from doing their jobs but also playing to the level and standard that we talk about every day.
"We can't do anything about the noise; we can control how we approach our jobs. And as bad as they hurt right now, I hurt for them. But I told them if we bring that kind of grit and toughness and execution, minus the turnovers, we're not just going to win one game, we're going to put something together. It doesn't matter what people say; we don't have to shut people up. We just have to continue to get better and grind and produce or put something on the floor that's productive that our fans can be happy about."
After the Pistons led by as many as 21 points in the first half, Boston outscored Detroit 35-16 in the third quarter to storm back, tying the score going into the fourth quarter.
Yet even after coughing up that lead, Detroit showed an impressive level of fight. The Pistons responded to the Celtics taking the lead to begin the fourth by pushing themselves back out in front by as many as four points on multiple occasions -- the latest being when Ivey split a pair of free throws with 4:23 remaining.
Boston, however, immediately responded with back-to-back buckets by Porzingis to retake the lead before a Tatum layup and a Porzingis 3-pointer pushed Boston's advantage to 106-100.
Ivey then scored six straight points -- first on an and-1 then on a corner 3 -- to tie it back up with 1:02 to play. Bogdanovic missed a wide-open 3 with 36 seconds left that would have given Detroit the lead, and Tatum was credited a layup with 8.7 seconds to go when Cunningham was called for goaltending.
Still, that left the Pistons with one more chance to tie or win. When Cunningham's 3-pointer missed short, Bogdanovic was there to make a putback for the tie. After Tatum missed a potential winner at the other end, the contest went to overtime.
And from there, Boston did just enough to survive -- and send Detroit home with yet another defeat.
But after the Pistons had a fifth straight competitive loss -- and, in this case, went to overtime with the league's top team -- Cunningham and the Pistons believe a breakthrough might finally be around the corner.
"That's what we're going for, man," Cunningham said. "I'm not interested in just winning one more game this year, to stop this. That would be soft, in my opinion. I think our goals are a lot higher than that. We have what it takes to win a game. That's nothing. But to put games together and to find our system, find what's clicking and allow us to sustain winning ... that's what we're looking for right now."
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