On Tuesday night, the Pistons made NBA history with a 118-112 loss to the Brooklyn Nets. This loss makes history as it marks the 27 consecutive defeats for the Pistons and sets a new NBA single-season record. Since October 28, the past tense has not seen a single win. The win they made over the Chicago Bulls was just a second win for the team in their first three games to kick off the 2023–24 campaign.
Even the win against the Chicago Bulls was the second, but it was also two months before the World Series had even ended, followed by the college basketball season having its kick-off season. The losing streak has disappointed the fans, and it holds the power to harm the Pistons as it already ranks among the worst in American professional sports.
Detroit Pistons make a history of a “27-loss streak.”
The Pistons have again fallen to the Nets in the Tuesday game, which marks the history of a consecutive 27-game losing streak. The Pistons losing streak now already ranks among the worst in American professional sports.
Though the Pistons have yet to set the NBA’s all-time record, the Philadelphia 76ers still hold this honor, as in history they’ve lost 28 games straight. The Philadelphia 76ers’ losing streak was set over two seasons. In the 2014–15 season, the team lost 10 games at the end of the season, followed by 18 straight losses at the beginning of the next.
This losing streak of the Pistons has already become superior to the longest losing streak in the MLB, the NHL, the WNBA, and the post-merger NFL. The one that they’ve still not surpassed is college football, where Northwestern holds the streak of losing 34 straight games from 1979–82, and women’s college basketball, in which Chicago State lost 59 straight games from 2016–18.
The start was great, but it didn’t end the same
In Tuesday night’s game, the Pistons had a great start as the game opened with an outburst of 9-1 to kick off a 22-8 run that had caught the Nets off guard, but sooner, the Nets got a hold of it, and by halftime, they took a seven-point lead.
Cade Cunningham played quite well, as he kept the Pistons in the third quarter through his game. He had dropped 16 of his 41 points in the period, whereas the Nets used a 13-0 run spanning for around 3 1/2 minutes late in the fourth quarter to pull away. Cade, with 57 seconds left off a layup, had cut the game to two points, but Dorian Finney-Smith made a smooth move by drilling a contested corner of a 3-pointer over Cade to keep the Pistons at bay, followed by sealing off six points to win.
Cade led the Pistons with nine rebounds and five assists to make 41 points. He made a shot of 15-of-21 from the field and scored all but four of his points in the second half. Since Jerry Stackhouse in 2001, Cade is the first Pistons player to win two 40-point games within a single month.
In Tuesday’s game, among other Pistons players, Bojan Bogdanovic added 23 points to the game, and Alec Burks finished it by adding 15 points off the bench.
The Brooklyn Nets had already defeated the Pistons on Saturday, and then following Tuesday’s game, from the Nets side, Cam Johnson led the team with 24 points after he made a shot of 9-of-13 from the field. Mikal Bridges had added 21 points, and Cam Thomas had finished it with 17 points. As a unit, the Nets made a shot of 50% but had just shot 62% from the free-throw line.
After the 25th straight loss, the fans at Little Caesars Arena had chanted “sell the team,” looking forward to which the owner of Pistons, Tom Gores, had vowed a “change.” It’s still uncertain whether it meant that the general manager, Troy Weaver, would still be seen ahead or if there would be a split with Williams, who had just signed his first season with the team, which marked the largest coaching contract at the time in league history.
Regardless of all the controversies and losses, the Pistons have an upcoming game on Thursday night with the Boston Celtics at TD Garden. Now it’s a question of whether they will win it or lose it and can make a tie with the 76ers’ all-time record.
