For the first time in 63 days – since Oct. 28 – the Detroit Pistons have won a basketball game. The win on Saturday, Dec. 30, ended the Pistons NBA-tying streak of 28 consecutive losses. During the streak, Detroit surpassed the single-season loss streak of 26 straight games, as well as the Cleveland Cavaliers’ record of 28 consecutive losses, which happened over the course of two seasons.
But the Pistons capitalized from solid three-point shooting and a short-handed Raptors team, plus another dominant second-half performance from Cade Cunningham, to notch a 129-127 over the Toronto Raptors.
Hours before the game, the Raptors and New York Knicks finalized a big-time trade that sent its seventh year starting forward OG Anunoby to the Knicks along with backup center Precious Achiuwa and Malachi Flynn. In exchange, the Knicks received Canadian-born RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley, and a 2024 second-round draft pick that the Raptors got from a previous trade with the Pistons.
Anunoby, considered one of the league’s top wing defenders, made the NBA All-Defensive Second Team and led the league in steals last season while averaging 16.8 points per game and shooting 38.7% from three.
Before the game, Pistons Head Coach Monty Williams said the personnel their opponents put on the court shouldn’t matter, so he told his team not to focus on the fact that Toronto would be shorthanded.
And tonight, the Pistons played like a good team. They shot well from three (43% on 12-of-28), they limited turnovers (11), they got to the free throw line and capitalized by making a season-high 35-of-40 attempts, and they moved the ball well en route to 29 assists.
The Pistons had six double-digit scorers, including all five starters plus Alec Burks who posted 16 points off the bench. Cunningham led the team with 30 points and 12 assists, while Jalen Duren had 18 points to go along with 17 rebounds, and Bogdanovic had 19, Jaden Ivy had 12, and usual-reserve Kevin Knox II score 17.
Late in the game, the Pistons were in a situation they’re not very familiar with this season: having to protect a late-game lead to secure the win.
Detroit put itself on the winning end of a 110-99 scoreboard with 5:50 seconds left after Cunningham and Jaden Ivey knocked down back-to-back three-pointers to extend the home team’s lead from five to 11 points. They retained a 10-point lead, 122-112, with 45 seconds remaining, but the Raptors refused to quit.
Over the next 38 seconds, Toronto played tough defense, forced some poor decisions from the young Pistons, and were able to bring it to a five-point game with seven seconds left. Gary Trent knocked down a corner three with two seconds left, but Ivey successfully inbounded a pass to Bojan Bogdanovic, who ran out the clock to secure the win.
After the game, Williams was elated.
“I’ve been in a ton of locker rooms my whole life and that (scene) was a first for me. It wasn’t relief, it was kind of just like ‘thank God. Finally.’ Guys were screaming. I was almost in tears. I’m just so happy for our guys. I’m happy for everybody in the locker room. Sometimes it just takes a win like that to get things started,” he said.
“It was pretty cool. I just have so much respect for our team. The way they come in every day. I think some people may have thought they were OK with losing, but they came in every day with a great spirit, and they wanted answers, and they were trying to get better. We always had our joy because we knew that if we put it together, we could win not just one game, but put many wins together.”
Cunningham echoed Williams’ words, saying that his face hurt and that he was losing his voice from celebrating so much with the team in the locker room after the final buzzer.
“I’m cheesing right now in this interview. It’s been a long time coming and I don’t want to go back to where we were,” he said. “This game just felt solid throughout. We had a couple lapses, but we picked ourselves up faster than normal.
“It’s been a long, long stretch with all these losses. I’m just happy to be a part of a group of guys who don’t quit. They bring it every day and stay positive and don’t quit. I couldn’t be happier for the group. It’s been weighing on us heavy everywhere we go for two months. It’s unreal for it to have been that long. To finally get over that hump, now it really begins so we’re going to see who we’re going to be.”
The game seemed to be in the Pistons control toward the end of the first quarter. After the starting unit’s slow start, Burks provided a spark off the bench.
Burks and fill-in starter Kevin Knox II – starting in place of the injured Isaiah Stewart – had the hot hands for the Pistons in the first half, as the two combined to score 21 points on 6-of-9 from the field and 4-of-5 from three. Duren was one basket shy of a first-half double-double, as he poured in eight points to go along with 11 rebounds in the first half. And while Cunningham shot just 1-of-8 for four first-half points, he added five assists.
A combination of tough defense by the Pistons and poor shooting by the Raptors led to Detroit having a 52-44 halftime lead. In that first half, the Raptors shot just 35% from the field and 36% from beyond the arc. Dennis Schroder was the only Raptor to score double figures in the first 24 minutes, as he notched 14 points.
After Siakam notched just eight points in the first half, he powered through the Pistons’ third-quarter defense to post 20 points in the quarter. The Pistons found it hard to contain him, throwing several defenders his way, but he was able to take smaller defenders into the paint and take bigger defenders off the dribble. But Cunningham did his best to keep pace with the Raptors’ all-star forward, posting 12 points and six assists in the quarter before being forced to the bench after picking up his fourth foul of the game.
The Pistons took a 90-86 lead into the fourth quarter and the teams remained close until Cunningham and Ivey hit back-to-back three pointers to push the Pistons’ lead to 110-99 with just under six minutes remaining, and Toronto was unable to claw its way back from the 11-point deficit.
The Raptors had four scorers on the night to put up at least 22 points, with Pascal Siakam scoring 35, Gary Trent Jr. notching 24, Scottie Barnes going for 22, and Dennis Schroder adding 30.
The Pistons begin a four-game West Coast swing starting Jan. 1, when they have games against the Houston Rockets, Utah Jazz, Golden State Warriors, and Denver Nuggets prior to returning home to Little Caesars Arena on Jan. 9 to take on the Sacramento Kings.
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