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Pistons suffer 12th straight road loss as Portland reverses high-scoring trend

PORTLAND – Stan Van Gundy is closing fast on 1,000 NBA games coached. No. 985, counting playoffs, was the one that most lit his fuse.

“I’ve been here four years,” he said after the Pistons lost 100-87 to the red-hot Portland Trail Blazers. “I’ve been many more years before that (elsewhere). I’ve never come in after a game – ne-ver. Might have talked about one call. Never come in after a game and talked like this. That was embarrassing. We got absolutely screwed tonight.”

The Pistons had a five-game win streak against Portland and they’d averaged 119.8 points in doing so. This is a much better Trail Blazers team defensively this season and they’ve been especially stingy during the team’s 12-game win streak, posting the league’s No. 2 defense over that time.

But Van Gundy, while saluting Portland’s effort and the all-around excellence of the winners, thought there was a little more to the story of being held to 87 points.

“They held and grabbed on every play and they got away with fouls all over the place,” he said. “They play very hard. I don’t mean to take anything away from them. But when you can get away with playing like that and get screwed that badly by the officials, your defense is going to be pretty good.”

A key point in the game came after the Pistons had cut a 17-point deficit after three quarters to seven with 3:51 to play. Al-Farouq Aminu hit a 3-pointer to push Portland’s lead to 10 and then Blake Griffin missed shots near the rim on two successive possessions. Van Gundy felt the Trail Blazers got away with manhandling Griffin all night.

“The very first back-in he makes, Al-Farouq Aminu – two forearms, no call,” he said.

Van Gundy got slapped with a technical foul with 2: 40 to play after Portland had pushed its lead back to 12. Rookie Luke Kennard was also hit was his first career technical after he argued a no call midway through the fourth quarter on a play under the basket where he attempted a layup.

“Made a cut to the basket. Could’ve gone either way, honestly,” Kennard said. “At the time, I thought it was a foul. I think frustration hit me a little bit. Can’t let that happen. Wasn’t very good timing for me to get that at that time of the game. It’s our job to be basketball players and let the coaches handle that stuff.”

Whether it was Portland’s ability to clutch and grab without penalty or sticky defense or the inability of the Pistons to find anything they could rely on to produce quality scoring chances, the lack of scoring undermined one of the best defensive efforts the Pistons have turned in, certainly during their 12-game road losing streak.

When you hold Damian Lillard (24 points but just 6 of 19 shooting) and C.J. McCollum (16 points on 16 shots and no made 3-pointers) to a combined 40 points – nine under their combined average – on 40 percent shooting, you come away feeling that should be a win.

“For sure,” Stanley Johnson agreed. “I thought we played really hard tonight. I thought we brought our stuff to the game. We played hard. Play hard, play together, play smart. That simple. You do that, it’s going to make it tough for anybody to play well against you. That’s no shade to them because they did their job. They made some tough shots and they still had a great impact on the game. But we played hard.”

Andre Drummond made his mark with 18 points, 22 rebounds and two blocked shots, but the Pistons hovered around 40 percent shooting all night, finishing at 39 percent. Griffin finished with 15 points on 6 of 17 shooting. Reggie Bullock had 13 but got off only 10 shots. Kennard and Johnson were effective off the bench, scoring 12 and 11.

Through all of that – the bubbling frustration they took into the game, exacerbated by their aggravation at the whistles and fighting uphill for virtually the entire game – the Pistons kept chasing after Portland.

“I think we fought the entire game,” Kennard said. “There were a few spurts where we let them get out, get a lead, but we fought to the end. That’s what we’ve got to do. It’s a tough one, but we fought to the end and it was really good to see that.”

“I think the guys that were out there in the closing minutes did a great job,” Johnson said. “I’m watching it from the bench like, dang, these guys … a couple calls the other way, that’s a different game, for sure. There’s no other way to call it, that’s for sure a different game. I thought we did our best.”