The Pistons lost for just the seventh time this season on Friday, falling to the Jazz, 131-129. Utah scored 44 of its points in the third quarter and Detroit coach J.B. Bickerstaff was disappointed with the club\u2019s defensive effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiscipline. Execution. Commitment to who we are. Forty-four points in a quarter is unacceptable,\u201d he said, per Hunter Patterson of The Athletic (Twitter link<\/a>). \u201cI know we ask a lot of our guys, and most nights they give it to us. Tonight was one of those nights where we were loose from the start.\u201d<\/p>\n Star guard Cade Cunningham<\/a> agreed with that assessment, Omari Sankofa II of the Detroit Free Press tweets<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t the level that we should be playing at. We know we\u2019re better than this,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s in our standard. We\u2019ve just gotta go back to the drawing board, figure out what that is that\u2019s taking away from our defense. Come back better, we\u2019ve gotta be better.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s more from the Central Division:<\/p>\n The Bulls reserves scored 59 points in their 109-102 win over Philadelphia on Friday, stretching Chicago\u2019s winning streak to five games. \u201cEven if we lost a couple [of games], we were still trending in the right direction,\u201d big man Zach Collins<\/a> said, per Kyle Williams of the Chicago Sun Times<\/a>. \u201cEverybody\u2019s kind of having a good run right now. We\u2019re crashing the glass a little bit more, just playing a little bit harder and obviously that\u2019s easier when things are going well. We\u2019re winning games and the vibes are high. So we just got to make sure we keep doing those things here.\u201d
\nOne Bulls player who didn\u2019t leave the bench was forward Patrick Williams<\/a>. He was listed as questionable coming into the game with an illness but suited up. Williams averaged just 7.8 minutes in the previous four games, Joel Lorenzi of The Athletic tweets<\/a>. Williams is in the second year of a five-year, $90MM extension.
\nThe Cavaliers\u2019 tendency to give up offensive rebounds at key times was apparent when they blew a 17-point lead on Christmas Day while losing to the Knicks, Joe Vardon of The Athletic<\/a> notes. \u201cI think it starts with mentality,\u201d coach Kenny Atkinson said. \u201cI know everyone says physicality, physicality. I think it\u2019s your mental focus. And there\u2019s a difference. You got the scrum rebounds and you got the ones where guys came in from the corner, and I don\u2019t know who missed that Towns one, but those are the ones, the mindless ones, it\u2019s not physicality to me. It\u2019s like, \u2018Are you focused? Are you seeing your man? Are you going to crash? Are you gonna get a hit first?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pistons lost for just the seventh time this season on Friday, falling to the Jazz, 131-129. Utah…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,909,296,188,3860,1648,3627,6,6140,297,4104],"class_list":{"0":"post-499546","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-pistons","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cade-cunningham","10":"tag-detroit","11":"tag-detroit-pistons","12":"tag-detroitpistons","13":"tag-j-b-bickerstaff","14":"tag-kenny-atkinson","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-patrick-williams","17":"tag-pistons","18":"tag-zach-collins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115792993747361880","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}