A night after playing their best third quarter of the season, the Detroit Pistons delivered their worst.
The Chicago Bulls scored 17-consecutive points coming out of halftime and handed the Pistons a 133-87 blowout loss at United Center on Tuesday. The Pistons (9-31) started strong in the first quarter, but looked lifeless in the second half on the second night of a home-road back-to-back against the Eastern Conference’s best team.
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After outscoring the Utah Jazz by a season-best 17 points in the third quarter on Monday en route to overcoming a 22-point deficit, the Pistons were outscored by a season-worst 22 points in the third by the Bulls.
The 46-point loss is Detroit’s worst loss of the season.
Josh Jackson led Detroit with 16 points off of the bench, and Saddiq Bey scored 14. Isaiah Stewart tallied 11 points, seven rebounds and four blocks, and Killian Hayes added eight points, five assists and four steals. The Pistons shot just 33.7% from the field, was outrebounded by Chicago, 61-41, and had 18 turnovers to just 17 assists.
Six players reached double figures for the Bulls, and Nikola Vucevic led all scorers with 22 points to go with eight rebounds and four steals.
Season-worst third quarter dooms Pistons
Detroit was in control early, using a 9-0 first quarter run to take a 22-14 lead with 3:43 to play in the period. Stewart was the Pistons’ best player in the opening stanza, scoring tallying 10 points and collecting five rebounds in just over nine minutes.
But the Bulls woke up toward the end of the quarter. DeRozan completed a 3-point play with 10 seconds left in the first to give Chicago a 28-27 advantage. A 16-5 Bulls run in the second quarter gave them a 14-point advantage, but the Pistons managed to cut it to single digits before halftime. Bey made the first of two free throws with 0.4 seconds left, and Jackson managed to tip in Bey’s second free throw attempt to cut the deficit to 61-52.
It would be Detroit’s final burst of momentum Tuesday night. The Pistons missed their first seven shots after halftime, and the Bulls opened the third quarter, after a Zach LaVine missed dunk, with a three-point play by Lonzo Ball, followed by two LaVine free throws, then a Vucevic 3 and two Derrick Jones Jr. 3-pointers, all on consecutive possessions. Another Vucevic 3 extended the lead to 26. Detroit didn’t score its first bucket in the period until Cunningham found a wide open lane for a dunk with 7:48 on the clock.
The Pistons shot just 4-for-21 overall, 1-for-11 from 3 and turned the ball over five times in the third. It was a night-and-day difference from their third-quarter effort against the Jazz on Monday, which saw them make 13 of 22 shots and 8 of 12 3-pointers.
Contact Omari Sankofa II at osankofa@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @omarisankofa. The Free Press has started a new digital subscription model. Here’s how you can gain access to our most exclusive Pistons content. Read more on the Detroit Pistons and sign up for our Pistons newsletter.