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Pistons rally back to take late lead, but Suns grab 2-point win

Stan Van Gundy knows at times like these, the competition is as much between the ears as it is between the lines. The Pistons endured another soul-crushing loss Wednesday. They came back from eight points behind at 1:52 to play on three 3-point shots – the last from Kentavious Caldwell-Pope with 34 seconds remaining to put them ahead by a point – and had the chance to win it on his open triple with less than five seconds left.

But it missed and they lost again, dropping them to 3-9, Eric Bledsoe's driving layup eight seconds after Caldwell-Pope's rainbow momentarily dissipated the gloom proving the winner.

"Right now, it's just a matter of getting guys to really hang in there and keep fighting through stuff," Van Gundy said.

For as much as they believe they could just as easily by 9-3 with a little providence and a friendly bounce or two, human nature opens them to the possibility of caving to a "here we go again" mentality that can – and often has – besieged teams without any recent history of success to draw upon.

"We're a little frustrated," Josh Smith admitted. "But, at the same time, we're motivated that we can get the job done. We just have to stay with what we've been doing, kind of tweak little things, and try to keep moving in the right direction. And we need to start getting wins."

The glaring – and largely inexplicable – numbers from the stat sheet, following the pattern of the first 12 games, was the inefficiency of Pistons shooting despite getting the shots coaches from the time of James Naismith and Phog Allen have designed offenses to create.

The Pistons outscored the Suns, a spread-the-floor devotee team, 46-42 in the paint – but it required 21 more shots (53-32) to produce that narrow advantage. They did an admirable job stopping Phoenix transition (10 fast-break points) and recovering to 3-point shooters (4 of 15) and limited the damage of the three point guards that make Phoenix a unique team.

Indeed, they held Phoenix 17 points under its 105-point average, No. 6 in the NBA.

"How many did they have? Eighty-eight? Normally, that's a good defensive game for anyone," Greg Monroe said. "It feels like we're just one play away. I think that might actually be a little bit harder than losing by 10 or 15. You lose and you look at the game and it's one more play that could've been made, it makes it even tougher because you can pick out any play you want to, almost."

Monroe was among the leaders of this team who spoke optimistically a week ago, after tough road losses to two sizzling teams, Chicago and Washington, and the Pistons wound up winning at Oklahoma City and battling red-hot Memphis to the wire to finish that four-game trip. It's tougher to remain buoyant when you've lost consecutive games at home to teams, Orlando and Phoenix, not projected in the playoff field.

"Any time you lose, period, frustration builds," said Monroe, who finished with 18 points and 12 rebounds. "Especially when it's consecutive. We just have to have some resiliency right now. We have to come in tomorrow, get a good day of work, go on the road and try to get a win."

Van Gundy doesn't wear losses well, but he found a silver lining in the fight that oozed out of the unit he cobbled together in the fourth quarter. Monroe was a big part of it, as was Jonas Jerebko, whose huge offensive rebound and feed produced the Caldwell-Pope triple that briefly gave the Pistons the lead.

"I thought our guys, down the stretch, they played really hard. They didn't give in. They made some big shots, they got some big stops," Van Gundy said. "Got a big offensive rebound out of Jonas. Guys really fought hard and did a lot of good things down the stretch. I wouldn't use the word 'sorry' for them, because it's not that type of game. But I have empathy for those guys who finished and how hard they went, the effort they gave to try to get that done."

Even Smith, who sat the entire fourth quarter, went out of his way to praise the work of those players.

"You've got to go with what rotation is working at the time," he said. "That's what we went with. We just came up short. We fought back hard, though."

Brandon Jennings, as he's done in several games already, lit the fuse with a burst of energetic play that began around the time Monroe was tagged with a frustration technical foul midway through the third quarter. Jennings scored the team's last nine points of the quarter and finished with 19 points, seven assists and two steals.

"We've just got to keep playing," he said. "We're still upbeat. I'm definitely upbeat. It's still early. Something has to give. We're fighting to the end. KCP had a great look at the end. He had just hit one before I that. I told him, 'Man, if you have that look again, shoot it again.' I mean, we're right there."

Half the battle now is maintaining that belief that staying right there will eventually catapult them to the other side of the fine line that now separates winning from losing.