The Pistons’ dismal journey to become the NBA’s worst-ever team
TThe Detroit Pistons finally formally made history on Tuesday night. Detroit lost their single-season record for the 27th straight time, the last of which was at home by a score of 118-112 against the Brooklyn Nets. By falling to 2-28, the Pistons built more cushion in what may be an inexorable quest to become the worst team in league history.
To put their woeful streak into context, the 2011-2012 Charlotte Bobcats won 10.6% of their games for a 7-59 record in a lockout-shortened season. The 1972-73 Philadelphia Sixers actually won 11%, setting the standard for awfulness above a typical 82-game slate at 9-73. The Pistons, with a 6.6% winning percentage, are aiming for 5-77. Whether it's possible for an NBA team to be this bad for so long in the modern era remains to be seen, but the Pistons appear to want to give the sports world a definitive answer.
The Pistons are egregious in every aspect of basketball and surprisingly have no bright spots in a league that is as bad as they usually are. some light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a premium draft pick. The Pistons have had enough of it, but the one dividend they've paid is that they've made it all the more disturbing how a team can be so atrocious. The decline has been long and slow for a franchise that still isn't all that far removed from spending much of the 2000s as one of the league's marquee teams. But this season has been a leap into new depths of egregiousness for one NBA club.
What went well? Very little of course. But what went wrong has multiple facets.
The Pistons struggle with almost every part of being a functional basketball team. They are 28th out of 30 teams in offensive efficiency, scoring 107.8 points per 100 possessions. They rank 26th in defense, with 119 players. There are worse teams at preventing and making baskets, and even in overall scoring margin, the Pistons aren't the worst team in the league. (That would be the San Antonio Spurs, led by wunderkind rookie Victor Wembanyama, with minus-12.1 points per 100 possessions.) The Pistons (minus-11.2) are even within striking distance of the Charlotte Hornets at minus-10.6.
But the Hornets have won seven games. Spurs have won four. The Pistons are 2-28 because they have been cartoonishly and cataclysmically bad at the ballpark. In matches with a scoring margin of five points or less in the last five minutes, Detroit is 1-12. That's by far the worst mark in the NBA, not just this year but in any recent year. Typically, in such games, even the worst team wins 25 or 30% of them, but the Pistons can't buy a win in critical time. Arithmetic and spirituality suggest the Pistons will eventually catch a break when it matters most, but faith is hard to come by.
There are some bright spots hidden beneath the rubble. The brightest is 2021 No. 1 overall draftee Cade Cunningham, the 6-foot-4 guard who is certainly keeping an eye on the team while scoring 23 points and dishing out seven assists a night. Cunningham even has one or two promising players around him, like 2022 first-round pick Jalen Duren, a center averaging 13 points and 11 rebounds. But Duren has lost half his season to injury so far. Bojan Bogdanovic, the top scorer, played in 11 of the 30 matches. Veteran shooters Alec Burks and Joe Harris have also missed significant time.
The Pistons are the league's second-youngest team with an average age of 23.4 years, not much older than a few college outfits. Combine the youth and inexperience with the injuries and poor play in clutch moments, and you get a recipe for a bad ball club. But even the worst teams don't lose 27 in a row, and it takes longer to piece together how the Pistons got to a place where that was even possible.
Ask their loyal remaining fans what went wrong and you might get a thousand answers. But many revolve around coach Monty Williams, who signed a recording contract worth $78.5 million to join Detroit this offseason. Williams doesn't fit the pieces he has together, and reportedly he has not easy to deal with with talented young guard Jaden Ivey. The Pistons have a disjointed look under the coach, who had to add some structure and creativity after four terrible years in a row under former coach Dwane Casey. Given his contract, Williams will likely get some time to right the ship, but his tenure is off to such a terrible start that it will be an uphill battle to make anything of it.
Like Casey before him, Williams is dealing with the fallout of poor roster making by Pistons executives. General manager Troy Weaver, who took the job in 2020, did well to bring in Cunningham. But that was easy enough when lottery balls landed the top draft pick in his lap. Weaver's current roster doesn't make much sense, lacking a go-to scorer outside of Cunningham and not having great shooting options for veteran guards in open space. The Pistons could have traded some of their current veterans for draft picks last year, but didn't, apparently hoping they could be competitive this year. Even though Weaver was wrong, he didn't stop his team from having great lottery odds again. Team owner Tom Gores sounds done to quickly find a new GM.
As far as poor management being the problem, the Pistons are the opposite of their old selves. The franchise has had several long, uninterrupted streaks of postseason appearances. It won back-to-back championships in 1989 and '90, and added another in 2004. The latter came in the midst of a streak of six consecutive seasons in which it made at least the Eastern Conference finals, with three different coaches calling the shots had. team of that time.
In the glory years, the Pistons had exceptional grit and defensive prowess, pairing shot blocker Ben Wallace with tough, skilled guards Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton. Those Piston teams had great supporting players coming off the bench, like forwards Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess. The old Pistons had talent, but they also had an identity. Today's team may have some talent, but if it has an identity other than that of one of the worst teams ever, it has yet to show itself.