Where to begin?
The Detroit Pistons are bad, and they lost 113-111 to the New York Knicks tonight.
They’re bad at the basketball stuff, and often they’re bad at the intangible stuff like 50/50 balls. I say that because I’ve never seen a team blow so many chances in such a short time when it came to plays like that.
It was bad luck meets bad officiating meets bad basketball.
Leading 111-109 with 25 seconds to go, the Pistons dropped the ball — literally — in more ways than I can count. But I’m gonna try:
First the Pistons did something good, forcing Jalen Brunson into a miss on a 3-pointer with 20.1 seconds to go. Quentin Grimes — who scored 14 points, including the go-ahead bucket prior to that shot against his former team — grabbed the defensive rebound.
Flying out of bounds, he tossed it to Simone Fontecchio (12 points) who fumbled the ball away to Isaiah Hartenstein. The ball then was tapped away by Ausar Thompson, who sprinted toward the ball at halfcourt before being undercut by Donte DiVincenzo in a play that would have been called a personal foul by an NFL ref if Ausar was a quarterback.
We’re not done yet.
The hilarity continues as the ball makes its way back inside to Hart, who makes a contested layup against an out-of-position Jalen Duren. Knicks lead 112-111. Hart misses the ensuing free throw and the Pistons just need a rebound to win.
Nope.
Hartenstein taps the rebound to Hart, who is fouled again. He makes the first, then misses the second and guess what? He gets his own rebound, again, to ice the game.
A tragically depressing way to lose a game in which you led with 12.1 seconds to go.
I don’t even know what else to talk about.
Here’s some good news.
The Pistons were led by Cade Cunningham, who scored 32 points with 8 assists and 5 rebounds. Coming off a strong set of games after the All-Star break, he scored at will for three quarters, hitting his first seven shots of the game and splashing threes like free throws.
It was his second game of 30+ points against this Knicks this year, but when Cade went cold late and the Knicks started throwing hard double teams at him, the Pistons had no count… wait that’s Grimes music.
For once the Pistons did have an answer as Grimes went nuclear in the fourth, scoring all 14 of his points against his former team. He looked good once he saw a few shots go down, and really did a nice job on both ends. There’s a lot of blame to go around when you lose like this, but Grimes did his job.
That came at the expense of Jaden Ivey, who sat the entire fourth. I was disappointed with his play on both ends as he struggled to contain DiVincenzo beyond the arc and could not find a way to put the ball in the basket.
This is one of those games that makes you want to bury your head in a pillow and scream. It’s bullshit that Ausar’s knees were removed on that play at the end and there wasn’t a call.
But that’s not why the Pistons lost.
They lost because Cade couldn’t buy a bucket late. They lost because they went small and got burnt on both of Hart’s offensive rebounds.
They lost because they’re bad.
I know that’s simplistic analysis from someone frustrated in the heat of the moment, but we’re four years into this rebuild and the team makes the same stupid mistakes they did in year one.
Let’s commiserate in the comments. This loss stung.