Few teams in basketball history have been as bad as this season’s Detroit Pistons. 

They currently sit in dead last of the NBA’s thirty-team standings, recording only six wins in 49 games. Their performance this season has been nothing short of appalling to fans. 

This season, the Detroit Pistons spent 62 days winless and solidified their place in the NBA record books for the most consecutive losses: they lost 28 straight. Finally, the young Pistons were able to squeak out a win against the Toronto Raptors, a team that had beaten them by 29 points prior, to miraculously end their seemingly eternal streak. The best chance this team has at getting a win is if Cade Cunningham drops 40 points a night, something he’s done twice this season, but both games ended in a Pistons loss, so maybe he needs to go for 50. 18 of the Pistons’ 43 losses have come by 10 points or more. They boast the second-worst margin of victory (more accurately margin of loss). 

Other statistics aren’t any more promising. Their offense ranks 26 among 30 teams. Only one team takes—and makes—less three-pointers than them. A team simply can’t win in today’s long-range league if they are unable to shoot from beyond the arc. They turn the ball over more often than 28 teams. However, it only gets worse on the defensive end. The Pistons’ defense ranks 29 among 30. They commit the second most fouls of any team, offering opponents free points at the free-throw line. Only two teams in the league get scored on more than the Pistons. A lack of aggression accounts for the fewest steals per game of any team. They can’t beg opponents for a turnover; a category in which they rank 28. 

Teams simply have their way on offense against a lazy Detroit defense. Teams run circles around a Piston before they can say, “At least we were good twenty years ago.” A team achieves a new level of bad when fans attend games wearing paper sacks over their head and chanting “Sell the team!”. Fans have lost faith in a team that was once a playoff mainstay in the early 2000s. 

Since 2010, however, the Pistons have made the playoffs twice, and rest assured they aren’t making it this year. The new focus of this team is to avoid going down in history as the worst team of all time. All the Pistons have to do to save themselves from such a title is win four of their next 33 games. While this sounds simple, their recent performances do not assure it.