AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- When you come home from a long 1-4 West Coast trip and you're about to head out for another four-gamer, it would be nice to get a break at home.
Unfortunately for the Detroit Pistons, the schedule maker had something else in mind. That something else was the 34-11 Miami Heat.
So it wasn't that shocking to see the Pistons with 12 turnovers and trailing by 23 at halftime.
"Are we at home? This felt like a road game, know what I'm saying?" Ben Wallace said. "It's tough, but eventually everybody's going to have to go through it.
"We can't dwell too much on the schedule, but I think it was one of those games. The way we played the first half, I can't fault the team. I gotta put it on the schedule."
The truncated 66-game schedule hasn't done any favors for anyone, but it particularly hurts a team like the Pistons, who are trying to get young players like Brandon Knight and Greg Monroe up to NBA speed with little practice time.
In the second half, the second unit found a second wind and was able to whittle a 26-point lead to nine with 8:58 left in the fourth quarter.
Then LeBron James and Dwyane Wade came back into the game and restored order for Miami.
The bench accounted for 29 of the Pistons' 73 points in the 88-73 loss to the Heat.
Damien Wilkins had nine of those points, but admitted it hardly felt like a home game.
"This felt like the last game of a road trip," Wilkins said. "Unfortunately, we go right back on the road tonight. So early this felt like one of the games on the road trip we just came off of."
Knight, who scored a team-high 18, agreed with Wilkins.
"It was just another game, really, against another opponent," Knight said. "It comes so fast, you don't really notice home and away. You kind of do, but at the same time it's just another team, a different venue, trying to get a win."
Wilkins said you try to rest as much as you can, but that can be a challenge with the relentless pace of the schedule.
Knight, however, has done everything the training staff has asked him to do, so he said he actually feels better than he did a year ago at this time, when he was playing in the NCAA tournament for Kentucky.
"My body is holding up a lot better than it was," Knight said. "I think a lot of that has to do with the training staff, them helping me throughout the season and making sure they stay on me."
The Pistons go back on the road, where they are 4-19, starting Saturday in New York. No rest for the weary as they say.
"We came back 4:00 in the morning or something like that, slept all day," Jonas Jerebko said. "Now a game today and then we're off on the road for nine days. But it's the same for all the teams.
"We love playing basketball."
Rookie feat
With his three-point basket 38 seconds into Friday night's game, Knight broke Lindsey Hunter's record for most threes by a Pistons rookie with 70. Knight's accomplished it in just 47 games.
"This is the first time I've even heard about it," Knight said. "It's not a big deal to me. A lot of that comes from my teammates finding me when I'm open and just having confidence in me to knock down those open shots."
Accomplished guest
Jerebko had a pretty special fan in attendance Friday night -- fellow Swede and Red Wings captain Nick Lidstrom. Jerebko said he left the tickets for Lidstrom.
