The Pistons’ dismal journey to become the NBA’s worst-ever team

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Photograph: Brad Penner/USA Today Sports

The Detroit Pistons finally, formally made history on Tuesday night. Detroit lost their single-season record 27th consecutive game, the latest coming at home by a 118-112 score against the Brooklyn Nets. By falling to 2-28, the Pistons built more cushion in a perhaps inexorable quest to become the worst team in league history.

To put their woeful run in context: The 2011-12 Charlotte Bobcats won 10.6% of their games, netting out to 7-59 record in a lockout-shortened season. The 1972-73 Philadelphia Sixers won an even 11%, setting the standard for terribleness over a typical 82-game slate at 9-73. The Pistons, with a 6.6% win rate, are pacing to go 5-77. Whether it’s possible for an NBA team in the modern era to be that bad for so long remains to be seen, but the Pistons seem intent on giving the sporting world a definitive answer.

The Pistons are egregious at every facet of basketball and shockingly devoid of bright spots in a league where being as bad as they are typically reveals some light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a premium draft pick. The Pistons have had plenty of those, but the only dividend they’ve paid is to make it all the more head-scratching how a team could be this horrific. 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 plunge to new depths of egregiousness for an NBA club.

What’s gone right? Very little, of course. But what’s gone wrong is multifaceted.

Related: ‘Sell the team’ chants erupt as Detroit Pistons crash to 25th straight defeat

The Pistons struggle with nearly every part of being a functional basketball team. They are 28th of 30 teams in offensive efficiency, scoring 107.8 points per 100 possessions. They are 26th in defense, allowing 119. There are worse teams at preventing and making baskets, and even in the overall scoring margin, the Pistons aren’t the league’s worst team. (That would be the San Antonio Spurs, led by wunderkind rookie Victor Wembanyama, at minus-12.1 points…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/pistons-dismal-journey-become-nba-125457675.html

Author : The Guardian

Publish date : 2023-12-27 12:54:57

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