Detroit — The Pistons have reached the final week of the NBA’s regular season, and there hasn’t been much to celebrate judging by their league-worst record of 16-62.
Since Cade Cunningham went down after just 12 games, expectations declined and while wins have been hard to come by, the Pistons have focused on growth and development, which often comes with difficult lessons.
The Pistons have lost 20 of their last 21 games, and with four games remaining, the focus remains the same for coach Dwane Casey. He wants his young team to use the rest of the season as an opportunity to learn, so the fundamental concepts aren’t foreign next season.
“It’s about teaching, and learning, and growing throughout the year,” Casey said after Monday’s practice. “You don’t want to make an organization go through (a rebuild) for five, six, seven years, but that’s where we are in these last three years. We’ve made some moves to trade players. Guys (were injured). Whatever the reason was, it kept us in that rebuild and retool mode of where we were.”
The Pistons have lost nine consecutive games after Sunday’s lopsided loss to the Orlando Magic and could be in danger of tying the all-time franchise-low of 16 wins if they fail to prevail in any of their final four games, against the Heat, Nets, Pacers and Bulls.
Casey, who’s in his fifth season at the helm of the franchise, said the losses aren’t ideal, and he understands that developing the team’s young talent, including Jaden Ivey, Jalen Duren and James Wiseman, has taken precedence over the final results in games.
“From a coaching standpoint, yes, I get frustrated losing and not winning, but then the very next day, it’s like a classroom. You go back to class, go back to the lab and see where we can get better,” Casey said. “At some point, we all have to grow up and not talk about learning to read the weak-side defense. It’s got to be automatic. It’s got to be automatic to make an outlet pass without turning it over. It’s automatic to get in transition defense and know who to guard. That’s the challenge going forward.”
Following Sunday’s loss to the Magic, Pistons guard Killian Hayes said the locker room remains optimistic, despite totaling just one win since the All-Star break.
“Guys are still hungry,” Hayes said. “Obviously, it’s sucks. Mentally, it can be tough, but at the end of the day, we still have four games left. Tonight, we did a bad job of representing the Pistons. The Magic is not (26) points better than us.”
The clock is ticking on the 2022-23 season, but no matter how it ends Casey just wants his team to finish strong.
“The main thing right now is keep a cohesive unit together in the last four games,” Casey said. “Some guys are thinking ahead to the summer, but we have four games to go to make sure we finish the season the right way.”
Bagley enters concussion protocol
The Pistons will be shorthanded in the frontcourt yet again as Marvin Bagley III was ruled out for Tuesday’s game against the Heat after entering concussion protocol.
Bagley left Sunday’s game against the Magic in the first quarter after he was fouled by Goga Bitadze. He apparently took a hit to the back of the head and did not return to the game due to neck soreness.
The loss leaves Detroit without one of its best interior scorers, and Casey may have to stagger Wiseman and Duren instead of playing both alongside each other.
The injury marks another unfortunate string of bad luck for Bagley, who has missed 36 games due to injury or an illness. He averages 11.9 points and 6.4 rebounds per game.
With four games remaining, Bagley could be sidelined for the rest of the season alongside the Pistons’ other players — Bojan Bogdanovic, Alec Burks, Hamidou Diallo and Isaiah Stewart — who’ve been out indefinitely.
mcurtis@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @MikeACurtis2
Heat at Pistons
Tipoff: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Little Caesars Arena
TV/radio: Ch. 20/98.7
Outlook: The Pistons will look to break a nine-game losing streak. Miami is 41-37 and currently occupies the seventh seed in the East, which positions them as a Play-In tournament team. Detroit and Miami are tied in the season series at one game each. The Pistons beat the Heat, 116-96, in Miami on Dec. 6. The Heat returned the favor and beat Detroit on its home court, 112-100, on March 19.