Pistons' win streak ends against Wizards

Published Feb. 12, 2012 7:40 p.m. ET

foxsports

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Give the Detroit Pistons credit. When they implode, they do it with style.

Going for their fifth straight win on Sunday, the Pistons led the hapless Washington Wizards 61-59 with 3:30 left in the third quarter.

In the next 12 minutes, though, they were outscored 39-10 as the Wizards (6-22) cruised to a 98-77 victory.

"I think, after we took that lead, we went 5-for-30 in the rest of the game," Pistons coach Lawrence Frank said. "The problems started earlier than that, though. It was tied at the half, but I think that was a little bit of fool's gold. We didn't have the intensity and the effort that we needed."

Frank was most frustrated by the way the Wizards' JaVale McGee dominated the game. The Flint native had 22 points, 11 rebounds and a very misleading two blocks.

"JaVale McGee was definitely the MVP of that game," he said. "He had eight dunks on one end, and he altered a lot of shots on the other end. He might have only gotten credit for two, but he's the No. 1 shot-blocker (actually No. 2, just behind Serge Ibaka) in the league, and you know that when you are in the paint, and it changes things."

After four straight wins, the Pistons came out oddly flat against the Wizards.

"When a guy gets eight dunks on you, it says something about your defensive effort," Frank said. "We didn't have the effort or intensity we needed all night. Even when we had the lead there, it was a little bit of fool's gold."

Ben Gordon, who had seven points on 2-for-9 shooting, agreed with his coach.

"It was evident, even in the first half when we were hanging around, that the energy and the spark weren't there," he said. "I'm not really sure why, but you have to be able to bring it every game in the NBA."

What made the loss more painful for the Pistons was that they couldn't take advantage of 21 Washington turnovers. John Wall had seven of them. Wall didn't score until the three-point play that started the Wizards' third-quarter surge, but he finished with nine points and 15 assists.

"John didn't put his head down, and sometimes he has the nature of doing that," Wizards coach Randy Wittman said. "He didn't do that today. Is this a growing-up process? Yeah, we've talked about the steps we have to make, and one of them is playing through mistakes."

Sunday, Wittman's young Wizards played through mistakes, while the Pistons didn't. Thanks to McGee and Jan Vesely, who blocked three shots, Detroit shot just 43 percent in the paint. The Pistons were even worse outside, hitting 19 percent of their shots, including 1-for-11 on 3-pointers.

Frank summed it all up:

"Between turnovers, inability to get stops, protect our paint and make shots, we got what we deserved tonight."