Motor City Badhouse

The Pistons almost certainly will break the franchise record for most losses in a row. In fact, they might demolish it.

Ronnie Lee’s nickname was “Kamikaze.” And with good reason.

Lee, a point guard, couldn’t throw a basketball into the ocean to save his soul, and as a passer? Let’s just say that he was no John Stockton.

But they didn’t call Ronnie Lee “Kamikaze” for his hoop skills.

The nickname was borne from Ronnie’s propensity to dive for basketballs.

No one hustled more than Ronnie. It was as if he knew that he had to make up for his lack of skills with hard work.

There was nothing that Ronnie wouldn’t do to save a wayward basketball—nowhere he wouldn’t go, including the press table, the expensive courtside seats and even into the lap of Pistons owner Bill Davidson, whose seat was located underneath the basket nearest to his team’s bench. (That happened, by the way).

Ronnie Lee, from the University of Oregon, was acquired by the Pistons in January 1980 from the Atlanta Hawks for Jim McElroy. Ronnie was the first round pick of the Phoenix Suns in 1976, but once the Suns and the rest of the NBA found out that he couldn’t shoot, he bounced around the league just like the basketballs he tried to save.

Until he landed with the Pistons, where he sort of found a home until he was waived out of the league in 1982. With the Pistons, his shooting percentage by season was 39, 35 and 36. But he saved a lot of basketballs!

The Pistons of 1979-80 played in the cold, drafty Silverdome in Pontiac on a basketball floor laid over a portion of a football field, with a huge blue curtain hiding the rest of the cavernous facility. I attended a few games that season. On each occasion, there might have been 4 or 5,000 foolhardy fans with me.

The team won 16 games and lost 66. In the games I saw in person—and in many of the home games, the Pistons gave their opponents a battle before collapsing into defeat in the fourth quarter.

Sound familiar?

Coach and de facto GM Dickie Vitale got fired after a 4-8 start. Assistant Richie Adubato finished the season and went 12-58.

Before the season, Dickie traded for Bob McAdoo, shipping two first round picks and M.L. Carr to the Celtics for Mac. The Celtics leveraged those picks to add Robert Parish and Kevin McHale to their roster, along with role player Carr.

As a result, the Pistons had no first round picks in 1980 or ‘81.

New GM Jack McCloskey made trades mainly so he could cobble together draft picks. He swapped Bob Lanier to the Bucks for Kent Benson and a #1 in 1980. Along with getting Ronnie Lee from Atlanta, Jack got a second round pick in ‘80 as well.

Richie Adubato was blunt in his assessment of Jim McElroy as the team’s starting point guard.

“(McElroy) can’t play the position.”

That was before the Pistons traded him.

Ronnie Lee couldn’t play it, either, but his hustle and Kamikaze nickname ingratiated himself with the smattering of Pistons fans who braved the cold and drove up I-75 in the winter of 1980.

One night, a contest was held before the game. Fans were asked to vote on how many times Ronnie Lee would dive for a basketball that night. I know this to be true because I was at the Dome on this occasion.

After the game, the number was revealed vis a vis the famous Chicken, who re-enacted every one of Ronnie’s dives in front of the folks who chose to stay after the game. I can’t remember what the number was. I do remember that the Pistons lost the game.

Ronnie is 71 years old now and I’d love to know what he’s doing today.

But it says something that more than 40 years after pulling on a Pistons jersey, Ronnie Lee still resonates to the basketball old-timers in Detroit, of which I’m a card-carrying member.

The ‘79-80 Pistons lost their last 14 games of the season, and proceeded to lose the first seven games of the following campaign, for a crooked lined 21-game losing streak, the longest in franchise history, albeit spread over two seasons.

Ronnie Lee is a delicious anecdote from that bunch of basketball bunglers.

That 21-game streak is in serious jeopardy.

The 2023-24 Pistons have, at this writing, lost 17 straight games. Unless they’ve lost another by the time I finish this column. I wouldn’t put it past them.

They’ve obliterated the old single season losing streak record and the punch line is that I’m not sure when they’ll next win a game.

Last Monday seemed to be their best chance.

The 2-win Washington Wizards visited Little Caesars Arena and this was the Pistons’ shot to end their misery. But the Wizards whipped them, 126-107. A new low in a season full of them.

Back in the mid-1960s, with the Pistons gasping for air, their PR department put out a press release to announce a player move. The release started with the words, “Woe is us.”

True story.

Today?

The absentee owner is nowhere to be found. The GM seems incompetent. The coach stands on the sidelines with his arms folded.

Worse, the players seem to have checked out.

No one can shoot the basketball with any consistent accuracy. Their one so-called star gets triple teamed every time he drives the paint.

Where’s Ronnie Lee when you need him?

The Pistons, after a couple of weeks of enthusiasm to start the season, nowadays lose with no guts, no honor, no fight. Oh, on occasion, like on Saturday night against the Cavaliers, there’s a glimmer. But then there’s a turnover, or a back-breaking put-back basket by the opponents and the glimmer is snuffed out.

The Pistons are 2-18 and you can make a case that they might not achieve the 9-73 mark of the ‘72-73 Philly 76ers.

That 1979-80 team wasn’t any good, either, but they played hard. It was a different NBA back then, granted. Much more physical.

But that roster was made up of aging veterans, journeymen and CBA players masquerading as NBAers. Maybe that’s why they played as if they knew their NBA days were numbered.

This version of the Pistons have their whole basketball lives ahead of them. At least the “core” does. They’re still babies. Yet they too often appear to be uninterested.

Last week, after the Lakers demolished his team at LCA, coach Monty Williams was frank.

“Any time we run up against some adversity to start the game, you can see the countenance, the spirit of the team start to diminish,” he told reporters.

“I haven’t gotten our guys to consistently have the fight, the stamina, to push through."

I don’t recall Williams’s predecessor, Dwane Casey, ever making such an admission. Because it wasn’t true.

Williams comes to Detroit with a reputation of having a doghouse. Of being stubborn with certain players. Of trying to motivate through punishment.

All of the above applies to the strange case of Jaden Ivey.

For whatever reason, Williams is withholding minutes from Ivey, who started 73 games last season and was widely seen before the season as one of the Pistons’ young core who the franchise would build around.

Instead, Ivey’s minutes are sometimes in the teens.

Williams hasn’t addressed the Ivey situation directly, and it’s being reported that the whole thing is creating some tension within the team.

As for owner Gores, we don’t know what he thinks because he doesn’t talk. He spends his time in Los Angeles. Must be nice.

GM Troy Weaver has created his roster like this: Imagine going to the grocery store and grabbing items off the shelf that look delicious. Then when you get home, you have to make a meal out of them. But you can’t, because they don’t go together in a meal.

The Pistons have lost 42 of their last 46 games.

Woe is them!