Official Detroit Pistons thread

[jaadam4]

The Pistons have talent issues for sure but starting K Hayes isn’t a sign of a genius.

[froot loops]

The record seems to almost always be reflective of the talent and not so much the coach....I dont think it matters who the pistons coach is right now.....Monty took off in Phoenix when Chris Paul arrived...I think he is a good coach, but not a miracle worker.

Ivey should not be the 11th player to enter the game. He was supposed to be bring in a defensive mentality and they are worse defensively. Their transition defense is abhorrent, guys like Beef Stew are just jogging back in transition. That's coaching, they look worse under Monty Williams that Dwayne Casey.

[froot loops]

When a guy like Bogdonavic says they play harder in practice than in the game, that's coaching. He didn't have to take the money, but he did and he has to do better. The team does not play hard. Anytime you are on a 18 game losing streak, the coaching should be called into question.

[jaadam4]

He didn't have to take the money, but he did and he has to do better.

That’s absolutely correct. We’re all making excuses about dragging him out of retirement

[wcfwtf]

The coach did want the job. Owner kept throwing money at him til he finally said eff it I’ll take it.
He probably still doesn’t want the job and Gores is going to pay the price. Even a bigger one then he already has.
Franchise at the moment has a bad owner. Kind of reminding me of WCF.
He’s in deep water and can’t swim.

[ghandi]

It does seem like his heart isnt in it....who can blame him for taking the money though? On the other hand, something has to give somewhere....

[froot loops]

This season is going to surpass the '03 Tigers and the '08 Lions seasons by a large margin. Think Secretariat at the Belmont.

If this was.the Premier League, Williams would be sacked in the morning.

[Mainevent]

Orlando is the team I wish the Pistons were. Very sad to have Orlando Magic envy.

[froot loops]

The Williams bench rotations are ridiculous. This team should only be playing 8 players regularly.

Does he try to motivate anyone on the team or joes he just look at his bank statements at practice? Yesterday was masterclass in disinterest.

[ghandi]

Kind of a battle of the wills....WIll the Pistons fire Williams first or will he walk away out of boredom? Stay tuned!

[Cody_Russell]

My idea would be fire Troy Weaver due to poor roster construction and results. Then have Monty Williams involved in the GM search. Need the GM and HC on the same page with the vision of the team.

Orlando is the team I wish the Pistons were. Very sad to have Orlando Magic envy.

I said something similar back in October! My adopted 2nd team for the time being.

[jaadam4]

You want to give Williams more power over this team? Hes acting like a clown. No thanks

[whatever_gong82]

Detroit Pistons' 20-game losing streak isn't the longest in the city's history ... barely


Ryan Ford
Detroit Free Press



With Monday night’s 131-123 loss to the Indiana Pacers, the Detroit Pistons’ losing streak reached 20 games. Although it’s a franchise record for a single season — the Pistons haven’t won since Oct. 28, a drought of 44 days — it’s still a game short of the franchise’s all-time record. (The Pistons can tie the record on Wednesday night and break it Friday.)

Still, it set the mark for the second-longest losing streak in Detroit pro history (over multiple seasons). Here are the longest skids by each franchise:


1980 Pistons: 21 games


The Pistons, a franchise with just three winning seasons in 23 years in Detroit (and Pontiac, where it began playing in 1978), had seemingly had enough when second-year owner Bill Davidson fired second-year head coach Dick Vitale after a 4-8 start in the 1979-80 season. But replacement Richie Adubato did little better with Vitale’s hand-picked roster: His final victory came on March 5, 1980 — four games after a 13-game skid that set the franchise’s single-season record … for about a month.

Beginning on March 7, 1980, the Pistons lost their final 14 games of the 1979-80 season — it was a skid that included nine double-digit losses, a three-losses-in-three days stretch (with one on the road) and an average margin of defeat of 12.6 points. The season ended with a 20-point loss in San Antonio in which future Hall of Famer George Gervin put up 37 points against the Pistons and Larry Kenon (a five-time All-Star but far from a Hall of Famer) had 51; the Pistons finished with a franchise-worst 16-66 record, but still didn’t get to draft No. 1 overall, as Vitale had dealt the pick to Boston in a package for Bob McAdoo in September 1979. (It became Joe Barry Carroll, after the Celtics had flipped it for a package that included future Hall of Famers Robert Parish and Kevin McHale.) But the losing wasn’t over.



Under new head coach Scotty Robertson, whose optimism upon being hired — “I think we’re a better team than 16 victories. There are a lot of skeptics who don’t think we are. Let’s show ‘em.” — was barely validated by the team’s eventual 21-61 record, the Pistons flopped in their first seven games. They finally won, for the first time in 234 days, on Oct. 25, 1980, beating the Houston Rockets, 112-109, on the road. At the time, the losing streak was the longest in NBA history; it was topped by the Cleveland Cavaliers 24-game skid over parts of two seasons in 1982 and, eventually, by the Philadelphia 76ers’ 28-game run over parts of two seasons in 2015.

Still, the Pistons’ run of futility had one benefit: After finishing the 1980-81 season with the NBA’s second-worst record — and losing the coin flip for the No. 1 overall pick — they selected point guard Isiah Thomas with the No. 2 pick. That worked out OK.


2007-09 Lions: 19 games


The 2008 Lions aren’t the only NFL team to lose every game in a 16-game season — the Cleveland Browns repeated the feat in 2017 — but they were the first, going from a 4-0 preseason run to dropping every regular-season game while getting outscored by 249 points (517-262). The losing actually began the season before, as the Lions lost their 2007 finale, 34-13, to the Packers in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Dec. 30, a week after snapping a six-game skid that nixed any playoff hopes engendered by a 6-2 start.


Still, that preseason rekindled hopes of the franchise’s first playoff berth in the 21st century. Losses by 13, 23, 18 and 28 points in the first four regular-season games quickly doused them. Games 5-8 brought single-possession losses — four of the five managed by the Lions all year. That included Game 5’s opening score, a safety credited to the Minnesota Vikings’ Jared Allen after Lions QB Dan Orlovsky ran along the back line of his end zone. The early play, which wound up the deciding margin in a 12-10 loss in Minneapolis, went viral (yes, all the way back in 2008) as emblematic of the franchise’s issues, with the accompanying commentary: “Poor guy, I don’t even know if he realized it.” The Lions lost their final eight games of 2008 by an average of 18.4 points.



The next season, which began without GM Matt Millen (fired in October 2008), coach Rod Marinelli (fired in January 2009, along with son-in-law and defensive coordinator Joe Barry) and Orlovsky (allowed to become a free agent in February 2009), started equally dismally, with 18- and 14-point losses. Finally, on Sept. 27, 2009, No. 1 overall pick Matthew Stafford led the Lions to a 19-14 win over Washington at Ford Field in Detroit — covering a span of 637 days between victories. Jim Schwartz, who had replaced Marinelli as head coach, didn't minimize the weight of the 19-game run — after the victory, at least: "You can't hide the fact that we had lost 19 in a row. The point that I made to the team the first week is that, ‘Hey we're not 0-10, we're 0-1, or 0-18, we're 0-1. We're not 0-19, we're 0-2.' There are a lot of teams in the same position. If we act like we're a 0-19 team, then we're going to lose again."


1975 Tigers: 19 games


When the Tigers blanked the Yankees, 3-0, at Yankee Stadium in New York on July 28, they were in last place in the AL East, but only nine games under .500, at 46-55. They didn’t win for nearly another three weeks, dropping 19 straight — including a pair of doubleheaders — and getting outscored 102-46 (though only 89 of the runs allowed were earned). The run included three extra-inning losses, all by one run, and four shutouts, including a three-game stretch from Aug. 9-11 at Tiger Stadium against the Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers. A whopping 12 of the 19 losses were by at least two runs, with the nadir coming in the final loss: An 8-0 shutout by the Angels in Anaheim, California on Aug. 15. Mickey Lolich, in his final season as a Tiger, started that loss and, in all, took four of the losses, allowing 17 runs over 33 innings.



But the next night, Aug. 16, the Tigers handed the Halos an 8-0 shutout of their own to avoid tying the American League mark. Rookie Ray Bare threw a two-hitter, walking three and striking out six. “The nightmares over,” Bare told reporters. "Thank goodness it happened tonight.” Meanwhile, catcher Bill Freehan, in his final All-Star season and next-to-last year in the majors, went 4-for-5 with a double and a triple, coming just a homer short of hitting for the cycle. Freehan, along with Lolich the subject of the iconic photo celebrating the end of the Tigers’ 1968 World Series victory, flashed back to that success as the Tigers celebrated the end of their skid. “There was a lot of champagne after that game, but I don’t know if that game was as hard as this one,” Freehan told reporters. ”Maybe from a personal standpoint that game was easier because I was playing with guys who had been through a successful season and I sort of expected success. During our streak, it seemed like adversity followed us inning after inning; we’d get a lead and couldn’t hold it.”

Indeed, the long skid led to the franchise’s first 100-loss season since 1952. But the Tigers stuck with manager Ralph Houk for the 1976 season (as well as the next two). The Tigers’ top pick in 1976, Pat Underwood, didn’t quite pan out, but three of the next six — Alan Trammell, Jack Morris and Ozzie Smith — wound up In the Baseball Hall of Fame.


1982 Red Wings: 14 games

After dropping the only worse team in the NHL, the Colorado Rockies (in their final season before moving to New Jersey to become the Devils), 6-3 on Feb. 23, the Wings lost every game for a month. The streak began on Feb. 24 with a 5-3 fall vs. the Kings in Los Angeles and lasted until March 25 with a 4-3 loss to the Minnesota North Stars at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

Coach Wayne Maxner, himself a midseason hiring the previous year, lasted just seven losses into the streak before being fired, with the Wings’ record at 18-39-12. Billy Dea took over and lost his first seven games behind the bench. Few of the 14 losses were close, too: 10 came by at least two goals and five came by at least three goals, including an 8-2 stinker against the Jets in Winnipeg on March 21. In all, the Wings were outscored 73-37 — giving up 5.21 goals a game in a season in which the league average was 4.01.



Finally, the Wings snapped the streak with a 2-1 win against the Maple Leafs in Toronto on March 27 … and immediately won three straight, before finishing the season with a loss. Wings fans weren’t deterred by the losing streak; in their first home game after the end of the streak, 10,150 showed up at The Joe, drawing a quip from former Detroit radio host Ron Cameron: “The people who are here are either die-hard fans or air-heads.” The offseason brought plenty of changes, including a new owner (the Ilitch family), a new GM (Jimmy Devellano) and a new coach (Nick Polano).

Interestingly, that 1982 run wasn’t the longest winless streak in franchise history: The 1976-77 and 1977-78 squads combined on a 23-game run without wins in which the Wings went 0-20-3 (in the days with ties and no overtime). The dark age lasted from Feb. 26, 1977, when the Wings lost, 4-3, to the Kings, to Oct. 22, 1977, when the Wings beat the North Stars, 4-2, in Minnesota. The 1976-77 squad lost seven straight, earned a tie, then lost 11 more; that was followed by a tie, two losses and another tie to open the 1977-78 season, as the franchise went 241 days without a victory. It’s still the fifth-longest winless streak in NHL history; Winnipeg’s 30-game run (0-23-7) during the 1980-81 season is No. 1.


Contact Ryan Ford atrford@freepress.com. Follow him on X (which used to be Twitter, y’know?)@theford.

[wcfwtf]

I’m pulling for them😂

[Cody_Russell]

I feel bad for the players! Rough situation to be in.
The losing streak probably gets to 23 considering the next three games are: vs 76ers, @ 76ers, @Bucks.
Barring one of those teams sleepwalking or an unconventional performance.

Maybe win @ Hawks 🤷♂️

In the less likely scenario where the losing streak continues until the Spurs game, that would be 34 in a row… The Spurs have quietly lost 17 in a row!!