AUBURN HILLS -- There's not much left to say about the Detroit Pistons.
That's a bad sign on the day after Thanksgiving.
"We should be better than this," Stan Van Gundy said after Friday's 104-88 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks. "We have to find a way to do this."
Van Gundy's post-game press conference only lasted 90 seconds, and his players didn't have much more to say.
"We trust each other, and we're all trying to do the right things," said D.J. Augustin. "It's just not working right now."
The loss was Detroit's seventh in a row, including two to Milwaukee in four days. The Pistons are now 10 games under .500 (3-13) before the end of November, the first time Van Gundy has seen that since the Heat were 25-36 on March 2, 2004. It also matches the longest losing streak of his career, set by that same Miami team in his first seven games.
A first glance at the box score shows some promising trends. Andre Drummond had 26 points and 20 rebounds in his best game of the season, while Kentavious Caldwell-Pope scored 21 and Josh Smith had 13 points and nine assists.
Once you look deeper, though, it becomes obvious how Detroit lost. Smith turned the ball over six times, and only had four rebounds, while Greg Monroe only managed three shots in 23 minutes and Augustin went 1-for-7 from the floor.
"They were doubling Greg every time he got the ball, so we had to look for some other places to go," Van Gundy said. "Andre got the ball and so did Josh. We just didn't play enough defense."
The biggest factor, though, came when both teams took their starters out of the game. Even though the Bucks were missing John Henson and Zaza Pachulia, they had a 69-13 edge in bench scoring. While the Milwaukee reserves were hitting 13 3-pointers in 22 attempts, Detroit's went 1-for-10, and Caron Butler and Jonas Jerebko went scoreless in 31 combined minutes.
"When it was our starters against their starters, we were fine," Van Gundy said. "But their bench just strafed us. You look at the 3-point shooting they had -- none of those guys were shooting that well coming into the game. We just couldn't do anything to stop them."
This is an extremely bad time for the Pistons to lose the ability to guard the 3-point shot, since their next game is against the best shooting team in the NBA -- Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson's Golden State Warriors.
"We tried just about everything defensively," Van Gundy said. "Tonight, nothing worked."
If that's also true on Sunday, things could get even uglier than they are now.
