One win might not turn around the season for the Detroit Pistons.
But a victory would spare the franchise from going 0-for-November and end a 14-game losing streak, which ties the team record for consecutive losses in a single season.
“It’s just a level of growing up on this team, maturity, understanding what game-plan discipline is, all the stuff we talk about all the time,” head coach Monty Williams said Monday night following a 126-107 loss to the Washington Wizards. “That wasn’t fight on the floor. That wasn’t Pistons basketball by any stretch of the imagination. We have to have people that honor the organization and the jersey by competing at a high level every night.”
Detroit is 2-15 this season, already 10 games behind the first-place Milwaukee Bucks (12-5) in the Central.
Williams said the latest loss was “on me” with the spiral threatening to stretch to the all-time mark of 21 consecutive losses set in 1980 across the end of one season and the start of the next.
A players-only meeting was held Friday to address issues and effort yielded familiar results. The Wizards (3-14) had 30-plus points in three of four quarters in Monday’s game, ending a nine-game losing streak.
Detroit is home to face the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday with a back-to-back sending the Pistons to Madison Square Garden to play the New York Knicks on Thursday night.
Losses in both games would cement the Pistons’ winless November.
The Lakers went 2-0 against the Pistons last season, winning 124-117 at Detroit on Dec. 11 and 128-121 in Los Angeles on Nov. 18. Anthony Davis had 38 points in the Lakers’ home win, and LeBron James had 35 at Detroit.
Third-year forward Isaiah Livers said the losing streak can be dissected a number of different ways but one root concern stands out in the locker room.
“We just didn’t play hard,” Livers said.
–Field Level Media