DETROIT – The Detroit Pistons hit a record streak unworthy of celebrating on Monday, Dec. 11, when the team lost its 20th consecutive game, this time a 131-123 contest to the Indiana Pacers at Little Caesars Arena.
The night belonged to Pacers guards Tyrese Haliburton and Bennedict Mathurin, and their starting center Miles Turner.
Coming off a runner-up finish in the NBA’s first-ever In-Season Tournament, it would’ve been easy for the Pacers to be lagging from both the Las Vegas trip and the tough loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, but Indiana’s trio combined to score 67 points on 57% shooting, dish out 25 assists, and reel in 19 rebounds. Mathurin notched season-high totals in points (30) and assists (8), and Haliburton put up a 14-point, 16-assist double-double, despite the Pistons forcing him into committing seven turnovers, which are tied for the most he’s committed in a single game.
With solid play from Cade Cunningham and a jolt of offensive energy from Jaden Ivey off the bench, the Pistons took a 36-33 lead after the first quarter. But Indiana stormed out the gates to start the second quarter on a 12-4 run to take a 45-40 lead. After the teams exchanged baskets, a third Buddy Hield first-half three-pointer extended the Pacers’ lead to seven points, 50-43, with just over eight minutes left in the first half.
But the Pistons would put together a second quarter rally of their own that included two three-pointers from reserve forward Isaiah Livers and another from Bojan Bogdanovic. The run gave the Pistons a short-lived 61-57 lead before the Pacers ended the second quarter on a 9-0 run and a 66-61 halftime lead.
“I don’t think it’s hard for us to get out of (these holes), we just have to maintain getting out of it for multiple periods of time,” said Pistons rookie forward Ausar Thompson. Thompson scored 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting and grabbed six rebounds for the Pistons. “To start the second half, they went on a run. We stopped it. We went on our own run. Then they went on their own run and (our) starters came out, so we didn’t really accomplish much. We put the bench in a bad position.”
The third quarter went much like the second quarter did for the home team, as both the Pacers and Pistons posted 32-point quarters to keep it locked at a five-point Indiana lead, 98-93, after three quarters.
“Indiana’s a really good team. They’re not some slouch team where you can do the same thing all night then expect to close the game out. I thought the way we closed halftime, that was something that sort of took the wind out of our sails really quick,” Pistons Head Coach Monty Williams said after the game.
“I think we’re still learning that everything we do in the meat of the game puts a lot of stress on the end (of the game).”
That stress showed at a pivotal moment in the fourth quarter when the Pistons were still within reach at the 5:34 mark after a Thompson floater pulled it to a 117-110 game. Over the next two minutes, though, Haliburton put his foot on the gas, scoring seven points in the midst of a 12-4 Pacers run to put the visitors up 129-114 to effectively shut the door on a Pistons comeback opportunity.
“I just think that we’re starting to figure out that we can score and space the floor properly. I’m learning how to use certain guys on the team…. As much as this losing hurts all of us – and it hurts like you can’t believe – I still see a lot of growth and I’m encouraged by some of the things I saw tonight. Now we’ve got to try to build on it and then get to a place where we have the lead, keep the lead, and close.”
With the loss, the Pistons become just the eight team in NBA history to lose 20 straight over the course of the single season, and the first to do it since the 2020-21 Houston Rockets. The streak is also just one loss away from the Pistons’ franchise record of 21 straight losses, which they suffered over the course of two seasons, and it’s just seven losses away from the NBA’s longest-ever losing streak of 28 games set by the Philadelphia 76ers over the course of the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons.
The Pistons could break their losing streak at home on Wednesday, Dec. 13, when they play the 76ers at LCA.
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