Breaking records, Detroit style
A C ertain V iew
Losing isn’t fun. Or, at the very least, it’s less fun than winning. But I can only imagine what is going on in the heads of the Detroit Pistons players, coaches and fans right now.
After falling 118-112 to the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday night, 2021’s number one overall pick Cade Cunningham, head coach Monty Williams and the rest of the 2023-24 etched their names in the record books. Detroit has now lost 27 straight games, setting a new single season streak and putting them one game behind the all-time NBA record set across two seasons in 2015 by the 76ers.
And most of these games haven’t been close. The Pistons are surrendering 120.8 points per game while scoring just an average of 109.3, an 11.5 point differential that is second only to the 4-25 Spurs.
Funnily enough (in that dark, macabre sense of the phrase), their closest game during this now infamous streak came against the Milwaukee Bucks. After opening the season 2-1, the Pistons came into Milwaukee having lost five straight contests. As the game crept into the fourth period, it looked like it was just going to be one of those nights, where the law of averages would come into play and a bad team would sneak past a good one and come out with a win. Detroit had, after all, lost five in a row; they were bound to win at some point, and the Bucks just so happened to be on the wrong end of that calculus.
With just over three minutes left and Giannis Antetokounmpo having been ejected, the Pistons were holding on to a five-point advantage that they had held on to for much of the fourth quarter. Not much, but the Bucks had not really been able to make a significant dent in it over the last nine minutes. But then Damian Lillard started doing Damian Lillard things and suddenly that lead was down to just one. Cunningham hits two clutch free throws to stave off the Bucks momentarily, but Lillard hits two shots and Brook Lopez nails a three on their next possession. Cunningham instantly answers with a three of his own, bringing the score to 119-118 with 40 seconds left.
And that would be the closest Detroit would get to winning a basketball game in two months. Jae Crowder sunk a free throw for the Bucks and the Pistons came away empty handed on their final four possessions to lose 120-118.
They have lost 21 straight games since. When your team is on an extended losing streak, there comes a point where you figure, “well, this has to end sometime, so maybe today is the day.” After all, they are bound to win at some point. The losing can’t go on endlessly.
But I wonder if there is another point where you begin to wonder if your team has somehow broken the rules of the universe and rocketed into a new dimension of losing, one where you never win another basketball and you are subjected to an eternity of looking at pictures of a downtrodden Cunningham or an endless stream of Monty Williams delivering another sad post-game press conference. While, scientifically speaking, that seems highly unlikely, I feel like if I was a Pistons fan, I would at least be considering it at this point.
Unfortunately for Detroit, apparently the universe seems to have a horrible sense of humor, as they will face the Boston Celtics, the top team in the Eastern Conference, in their next game, one they will need to win if they do not wish to join the 76ers at the top of the most consecutive losses list.
But hey, the Lions won the NFC North, giving them their first conference championship in 30 years. It is their fourth, finally breaking a tie with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who won three back when it was the NFC Central. So there’s at least that, right?
