This Year's Pistons Have A Chance To Be The WORST Team In Detroit Sports History

I’m trying to get into the Detroit Red Wings. I really am, but I can’t ignore the Detroit Pistons right now. I can’t look away from this train wreck. It has become fascinating. I don’t know how much longer it will be that way, but for the time being, it’s as fascinating as it gets. Last night, the Pistons lost their 16th consecutive game, continuing a franchise record. They just completed the month of November without a single victory. I will go out on a limb here and say that that’s the first time that’s never happened to this organization. Keep in mind both Michigan and Michigan State football, two teams without head coaches, won games in the month of November with way fewer opportunities, yet somehow, the Pistons couldn’t squeak one out. There’s a chance this team might not win a game until like, I don’t know, next year? But something occurred to me last night. If they’re going to be this bad, they might as well go out. There is a chance that we see history. This Pistons team may be the worst in Detroit sports history. 

The ranking of the worst Detroit sports teams of all time is pretty simple. There’s been some real doozies. I mean shit, the Detroit Lions have been playing here for decades, but there are really two choices. There’s the 2003 Detroit Tigers, who I maintain are still probably the worst baseball team of the modern age, though they didn’t break the all-time losses record. The expansion Mets still hold that. I can’t put that team at number one because, as I said, they didn’t break any records, and that team bizarrely aged well. Three years later, the Tigers found themselves in the World Series, so bizarrely, all that pain and torment was kind of worth it. They’re easily second on the list, but the worst Detroit sports team of all time is the 2008 Detroit Lions. They were the first NFL team ever to go 0–16. We have a long way to go before I can make any claim that this year‘s Pistons will go beyond that, but if we’re just looking at the timeline, I think you can already make an argument that this year‘s Pistons are more depressing than the 2008 Lions.

There’s no draft lottery in the NFL, so the Detroit Lions at least guaranteed themselves the number one overall pick. They used that pick to draft Matthew Stafford. While Stafford never won a playoff game here, the Lions were at least semi-interesting during his tenure. He broke every Lions quarterback record in the book. Rod Marinelli was the coach of the 2008 Lions. He was let go almost immediately after their winless season ended. The 2008 Lions were a tragedy, but at least it led to a new era of Lions football. I’m not saying it was a good era. They’ve only been to the playoffs thrice since that 0-16 season, but at least there was hope for greener pastures. There is not a whole lot of hope right now with the Pistons. Even if you fire your GM, which I don’t think they’re going to, you’re still stuck with one of the worst owners in sports. Monty Williams is not a head coach who’s on his way out. He’s a head coach that just got hired. I’m not blaming him for what’s happened, but the Pistons made him the highest-paid coach in the NBA, and yet this team struggles to make a layup. 

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I’ve been a Detroit sports fan all my life, and this is the most hopeless I can remember any Detroit organization being. I’m not crazy about Chris Ilitch as an owner, but at least he finally owned up to the fact that the Tigers front office was crap and let everybody go, thus beginning a new era. There was at least some acknowledgment of the situation. But I don’t know if Tom Gores knows how to spell “Piston,” so I have a little faith in a shake-up. At this point, let it all burn. Lose 75 games. Hit rock bottom, then go below that. It may be the only way that this thing ends up getting fixed.