If you have read previous blogs you know that I am a Detroit Pistons fan and I will be through thick and thin. Right now is definitely thin. Last night the Pistons lost their fourth straight game. While the loss was disappointing it was not surprising. This season Pistons fans have had to endure more losing than we are accustomed to.
In the National Basketball Association each team plays 82 regular season games. If a team wins 50 of those games then they have really accomplished something and are probably regarded as one of the league's top teams. The Pistons have won at least 50 games in each of the last seven seasons. During that span they made it to the Eastern Conference Finals six times, the NBA Finals twice, and won the NBA Championship once in 2004. Just last season they finished with the league's second best overall record at 59 wins and 23 losses. This season has been an entirely different story so far. As of right right now we are approximately two-thirds of the way into the season and the Pistons have lost 25 games. They have already lost double the number of home games this year than they did all of last year. In November they lost three straight games and I thought the world had ended. That was before they lost five straight in January and you can imagine what I thought happened to the world then. Currently, they are on a four game losing streak with an absolutely brutal schedule up ahead. Their next seven games are against playoff bound teams with five of them on the road.
Despite all this, they have had a couple of bright spots this season. One occurred in late December and early January when they won seven in a row. The other occurred when they started the season by winning their first four games. What happened between then and now to put the Pistons in such an unenviable position? They pulled off a blockbuster trade that sent Chauncey Billups to the Denver Nuggets in exchange for Allen Iverson. Coming into this season Iverson had the third highest scoring average in NBA history. Adding someone like that can only make your team better, right? Apparently not. Chauncey Billups had been the Pistons' team captain for the last six years and won the Most Valuable Player award in that 2004 NBA Championship. Taking him out of the mix, regardless of who replaced him, was going to put the team in major transition mode. I had a bad feeling the day that this trade happened, but can one player really cause the team to plummet so fast? Probably not. Another factor is that they have a rookie head coach in Michael Curry. I do not think that Michael Curry is a bad coach by any means. He has not been a head coach in this league long enough to be judged anyway. Any rookie head coach of an NBA team is going to have his rough patches. I guess it's the "nature of the business" as they say.
Despite all the disappointing aspects of this season, there are certainly some positives. If the regular season ended today the Pistons would still be in the playoffs. They have shown signs of brilliance by beating five of the league's top six teams at various points. And fortunately, the future is brighter than the present. They have a core of very talented players with lots of time left in this league and come this summer they will have $20 million to spend to add even more talent to that core. You have to take the good with the bad and the Pistons have been so good for so long that the bad was bound to happen sooner or later. However, there is still more basketball to be played this season. You never know, maybe they will surprise everybody. In the immortal words of Chris Berman, "that's why they play the game."
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