There’s Down Bad, Then There’s The Detroit Pistons Hearing “SELL THE TEAM” Chants During Their 25th Straight Loss

Matt Fitzgerald·
CULTURE
·
Pistons
Bally Sports

Could’ve sworn that number of losses was a misprint? Yeah, me too. Didn’t the Detroit Pistons draft Cade Cunningham No. 1 overall not long ago? Wasn’t he supposed to be, like, The Next Big Thing? The Pistons supposedly had this promising youth movement going on to at least hang their hat on amid recent years of struggles, not to mention the huge excuse of Cunningham being limited to only 12 games last season.

Detroit made Monty Williams the highest-paid coach in the NBA. We might be quickly approaching the Hue Jackson 1-31 Cleveland Browns NBA equivalent if Monty doesn’t turn this ship around. And fast. Because fans in attendance at Little Caesars Arena saw the 2023-24 Detroit Pistons fall to 2-27 on the season in a 119-111 loss to the Utah Jazz and made their anger known.

https://twitter.com/DetroitPistons/status/1738021870971101359

Lord have mercy. Cunningham had 28 points. Can’t say he’s to blame. You just have to be concerned that this situation is going to torpedo his career before it can even launch.

At least the Lions are actually good now, right!? Oh yeah. Even their resurgence is kind of depressing when you consider that the quarterback they traded away, Matthew Stafford, has won a Super Bowl and was slinging it all over the yard again on Thursday Night Football. Imagine if the Lions and Rams meet in the playoffs and Stafford beats them. All the pressure would be on Jared Goff and that Detroit outfit.

Sorry I’m getting too far afield. It’s just…that’s way more exciting than whatever clusterf*ck is going on in Pistons land right now. Somebody go check on Motown Noah. He can’t be in great spirits about all this.

I’m literally Googling, “Fastest fired NBA head coaches” and the record holder from my Big J Journalism digging appears to be Dolph Schayes, who was let go one game into his second season by the Buffalo Braves in 1971. There’s no chance Monty Williams is the fall guy in Detroit. Again, he’s the highest-paid coach. General manager Troy Weaver has got to be on the hot seat. No free agent in their right mind would come to the Pistons under the current circumstances, and that’s largely on Weaver for his roster construction.

Bad news: The schedule ain’t getting much easier for Detroit, who was a 2.5-point favorite on Thursday.

I can’t believe an NBA team can lose 25 games in the modern era. Even with tanking. So many nights, there’s either load management or effort issues all over the place. The Pistons are embarrassing themselves harder than any major professional sports team I can recall since, well, Hue Jackson’s 1-31 Browns. There you go.

Some of these reactions had me dying. Can’t help but pass them along. The Jazz trolled the Pistons on social media, and Nerlens Noel even got in on the act to let the people know how poorly run the franchise is.

It’s often no fun to kick a bad team while they’re down — unless it’s this downright pathetic. Then by all means, let’s pile on!

Bill Simmons may have been onto something recently: Team up Cade Cunningham and Victor Wembanyama in San Antonio. No need to let talents like Cade and Wemby waste away on sh*tty teams just because their organizations are incapable of adding competent talent around them.

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