Pistons, up 21 on Celts, lose in OT as skid hits 28

BOSTON — When the Detroit Pistons entered the visiting locker room at halftime of Thursday night’s game against the Boston Celtics, it looked like they had a chance to not only shock the world but avoid landing in a dubious place in the history books in the process.

Detroit, which entered the game as a 16.5-point underdog after losing 27 consecutive games, found itself leading Boston — the NBA’s best team with a perfect 14-0 record at TD Garden — by 19 points.

Then the second half began. And as quickly as Detroit had taken control of the game, Boston surged right back into it. By the end of the third quarter, the Celtics had erased that 19-point halftime deficit. And despite the Pistons fighting back valiantly to force overtime, ultimately it was Boston that would claim a 128-122 victory after the five-minute extra session.

With the defeat, the Pistons tied the 76ers for the longest overall losing streak, which Philadelphia set across the end of the 2014-15 season and beginning of the 2015-16 campaign with 28 consecutive losses. The Pistons can set a new record for futility on Saturday, when they face the Toronto Raptors back home in Detroit.

“I just told them that it takes a lot of character and integrity to do what they’re doing,” said Pistons coach Monty Williams. “I’ve been in the league for a while, and I’ve seen teams give into circumstances that are less than what we’re dealing with. That was admirable; obviously, we had a tough third quarter, and the ability to fight back and have it even in the fourth was tremendous.

“I hurt for them; we feel like we’re just getting so close to not just winning one game but winning a lot of games if we play that way.”

For much of Thursday night’s contest, it looked like the Pistons would finally get back in the win column. Boston, back home after winning the final three games of a four-game West Coast swing, appeared to do exactly what Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla warned of before the game: taking its struggling opponent lightly.

“I think just the expectation of it’s supposed to go a certain way or it’s supposed to be easy,” Mazzulla said when asked what the challenge was in facing a team in Detroit’s position. “It’s just not the case.

“It’s another game, regardless of the other team’s record, and I think sometimes you get caught up in — because it’s this team, we should be up by this amount at first quarter, halftime — and it’s just not how it works.”

It certainly wasn’t how it worked Thursday, as Mazzulla’s players went out and promptly looked like a team expecting to sleepwalk its way to a victory.

Instead, Boston found itself in a dogfight with Detroit that extended into an extra five minutes after Bojan Bogdanovic tied the game with a putback with 4.6 seconds remaining in regulation. Eventually, though, Boston was able to pull away in the extra session, as Kristaps Porzingis (35 points) and Jayson Tatum (31) proved to be too much for Detroit to handle.

In so many ways, Detroit did enough to win. The league’s worst 3-point shooting team made more triples (13) than Boston (11), who entered the game as the league’s most prolific team from deep. The Pistons had 31 second-chance points, and repeatedly fought for extra shots. Detroit got strong performances from Cade Cunningham (31 points, 6 rebounds and 9 assists) and Jaden Ivey (22 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists before fouling out in overtime).

But it wound up being not quite enough to either break Boston’s undefeated start to the season at home — or to stop Detroit’s seemingly neverending losing streak.

Nevertheless, Williams lauded his team’s effort.

“With everything that this team was been through … they bring a spirit and integrity and toughness to the gym every single day,” he said. “They hear everything that people have to say about them and us because they’re on social media. It doesn’t sway them from doing their jobs but also playing to the level and standard that we talk about every day.

“We can’t do anything about the noise, we can control how we approach our jobs. And as bad as they hurt right now, I hurt for them. But I told them if we bring that kind of grit and toughness and execution, minus the turnovers, we’re not just going to win one game, we’re going to put something together. It doesn’t matter what people say, we don’t have to shut people up. We just have to continue to get better and grind and produce or put something on the floor that’s productive that our fans can be happy about.”

After the Pistons led by as many as 21 points in the first half, Boston outscored Detroit 35-16 in the third quarter to storm back, tying the game up as it went to the fourth quarter.

Yet even after almost immediately coughing up that lead, Detroit showed an impressive level of fight. The Pistons responded to the Celtics taking the lead to begin the fourth quarter by pushing themselves back out in front by as many as four points on multiple occasions — the latest being when Ivey split a pair of free throws with 4:23 remaining.

Boston, however, immediately responded with back-to-back buckets by Porzingis to retake the lead, before a Tatum layup and Porzingis 3-pointer pushed Boston’s lead to 106-100.

Ivey, however, scored six straight points — first on an and-1, and then a corner 3 — to tie the game back up with 1:02 to play. Bogdanovic then missed a wide-open 3 with 36 seconds left that would’ve given Detroit the lead, and Tatum was credited a layup with 8.7 seconds to go when Cunningham goaltended it.

Still, that left the Pistons with one more chance to tie — or win — the game. But when Cunningham’s 3-pointer missed short, Bogdanovic was there to make a putback for the tie. After Tatum missed a potential game winner at the other end, the game went to overtime.

And, from there, Boston did just enough to survive — and send Detroit home with yet another loss.