The Pistons had a chance to take care of business at home with Luka Doncic out, but instead they spent most of Sunday night chasing the game.
Detroit fell to the Los Angeles Lakers, 121-116, on Nov. 8 and dropped to 6-3 overall after a sluggish start put them in a hole they couldn’t fully climb out of. Doncic was ruled out before tipoff with lower-back tightness, but the Lakers still controlled the early stretches because the Pistons were so poor offensively right away. Detroit shot 27.3% in the first quarter and gave the ball away eight times, and Los Angeles turned those mistakes into 17 points.
Austin Reaves was the one who made Detroit pay. With Doncic unavailable, he took over as the Lakers’ primary option and kept finding answers whenever the Pistons made a push.
He buried a tough fadeaway from midrange and then followed with a stepback bank shot from 3 midway through the third quarter, pushing his total to 32 and stretching the Lakers’ lead to 17, 78-61. Detroit never had a clean answer for him, and he finished with 43 points.
Still, the Pistons didn’t fold. Daniss Jenkins and Kevin Huerter dragged them back into it with big nights off the bench, while the starters struggled to get anything going.
Jenkins poured in 31 points and hit 8 of 15 from 3, and Huerter added 22 points along with five assists, five blocks and two steals. Cade Cunningham, meanwhile, had a rough one by his standards, finishing with a season-low 10 points and eight assists on 4-for-13 shooting.
Detroit’s first-half problems were glaring. The starters combined for just 14 points on 5-for-24 shooting, and Cunningham didn’t score at all before halftime, going 0-for-4 with four assists. Jenkins kept the Pistons afloat with 20 second-quarter points, capped by a buzzer-beating 3-pointer that cut a 26-point deficit down to 13 at the break.
The quiet nights from Cunningham and Duncan Robinson stood out even more because of how unusual they were. Cunningham didn’t get on the board until he hit a 3-pointer with 9:06 left in the third quarter.
Robinson, who finished with 12 points and shot 3-for-11 from deep, didn’t make his first field goal until 2:31 remained in the third. The two combined to go 0-for-9 in the first half.
Detroit did show some fight late in the third. A 20-6 run trimmed the Lakers’ lead to 84-81 with 1:03 left in the quarter, and the sequence was fueled by stops and transition chances. Javonte Green sparked it with a steal and fastbreak dunk, Huerter blocked a shot that led to a Robinson dunk in transition, then Huerter added a steal and layup before forcing a shot clock violation and finishing the possession with another layup.
The Pistons kept cutting it to one in the fourth, but Reaves shut the door with 44.5 seconds left. His fadeaway 3-pointer pushed the Lakers back ahead by eight, 112-104, and Detroit couldn’t recover.
Huerter’s night was a strong reminder of why Detroit targeted him over the offseason. The veteran wing, who signed a three-year, $27 million deal after arriving in Detroit at the trade deadline, was the Pistons’ most dependable player on both ends. He also made his mark defensively with a career-high five blocks, plus two steals, in one of the team’s best individual all-around efforts of the night.
Next up: Wizards
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