The Detroit Pistons just lost to the Cavs yesterday, and they are now 2-18. They are now officially on pace to be the losingest NBA team ever; this record is currently held by the 2012 Bobcats who ended their season with a winrate of .106 (the Pistons are at .100).
However, many teams before before them have had colder starts to their season; ten 1-19 starts have happened and two 1-24 starts have happened. Detroit already missed the opportunity to really claim the worst start to a season ever, by picking up two wins so early on. The 2016 Sixers started their season by losing 18 in a row, and even they couldn't be as bad as the Bobcats in the end.
To really solidify themselves as a historically terrible team and be unambiguous challengers for the Bobcats' crown, Detroit has to lose at least 13 more games in a row, at which point they would have a worse record (through 33 games) than the Sixers, who picked up their third win on game 32.
Records are hard to break, and when a team gets out of the realm of normal sucking and into generational sucking, they really get into rarefied air that requires heroic feats of being bad at basketball to stay in.
Can they do it? Their next game against another team with a similarly bad record (the rancid San Antonio Spurs) is on January 10th, game 38. But it's so, so very hard for a team to be this bad this consistently for this long; most likely they'll scrounge up a win somewhere. Their best opportunity before then might even be on Wednesday, when they play the still extremely troubled Grizzlies.
