The worst team in basketball just set a record for ignominy, and nobody who watched it was shocked. Everyone knew another loss was coming. The only question was by how much.

The L.A. Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons by 26 on Wednesday night at Little Caesars Arena. It could’ve been 40. But sportsmanship compelled Lakers coach Darvin Ham to pull LeBron James, Anthony Davis and D’Angelo Russell long before the 48 allotted minutes expired. (Also, he wanted to rest his stars.)

At least they played — or just showed up, which is more than you can say for the Pistons, who lost their 15^th straight — that single-season franchise record — and are now a game clear in the race to the bottom of the league. But wait, it gets worse:

The Pistons have lost 39 of 43 games, dating back to February's trade deadline. If they play the rest of the season at this abysmal — and embarrassing — pace, they’ll win 7½ games this year. (NBA teams can't lose fractions of games — but this Pistons team might find a way.) Even if they win, say, 10 games, a change has to come.

LISTEN UP: 'The Pistons Pulse': Where do they go from here as losses pile up?

Tom Gores will have no choice. The unwritten rules of public relations will force the owner's hand, and Troy Weaver, the team’s general manager, will have to go.

Moving on from him now won’t do much other than provide a bit of red meat for the Pistons' most demoralized fans. Besides, the last thing this young team needs is more uncertainty, at least for the moment.

But at the end of the season? If this mess doesn’t get at least a little better? How can Gores justify letting him run another draft? Or spend the considerable funds the team will have under the salary cap?

He can’t.

Weaver has had more misses than hits, but he’s also paying for everything that came before him: the decade-plus of losing, the lack of even a single playoff victory since 2008, the full teardown that should've happened years ago.

He's really only responsible for the last 3½ years of that history. But then he hasn’t helped himself by comparing what he’s trying to build to the iconic teams of the Pistons’ past. He calls it a restoration — he hasn’t even secured the building permits.

He'd have been better served by calling this a teardown, or at least a total rebuild. Instead, he has routinely harkened back to the Bad Boys of the '80s and 90s and the Goin' to Work squad of the early 2000s, aiming to build a team in that image.

Admirable? Sure. Risky, too.

He's paying for it now, especially since his latest team folds at the first sign of adversity. More damning is the team's recent effort even before the adversity shows up. In early November, when the losing streak was only a few games old, the Pistons were competing, then losing. Now they look lost from the outset. On Wednesday, they didn't play like they wanted to be on the court. Unsurprisingly, fans booed.

“They want something to cheer about,” said Monty Williams, a head coach who has been through rebuilding jobs before, but never anything like this. He understands why there were boos: “We have to give them something to cheer about.”

Williams is Gores’ hand-picked coach, requiring almost $80 million to convince him to come to Detroit. And though the money doesn’t affect team building, Williams isn’t earning his money. And he’ll be the first to tell you.

“I think this group struggles with adversity,” he said after Wednesday's loss. “Anytime you have practices we have, you have the spirit we have in the locker room, anytime you run up against some adversity to start the game you can just see the countenance, the spirit of the team start to diminish.”

In other words, the team lacks mental toughness, at least relative to NBA standards. That’ll happen with young teams, and young teams that are missing a chunk of their veteran leadership (not to mention their veteran scoring).

This is adversity, too.

“The one thing you can’t do is run from it,” he said. “My job is to show them what (fighting through it) looks like. And I just haven’t done it yet.”

That’s a heckuva admission. It’s also a heckuva challenge. Williams deserves credit for saying it. He also deserves to be held accountable until he can figure it out.

As for the injuries and roster imbalance because of those injuries? Williams doesn’t want to make excuses. Nor should he.

But there are a few: They miss Bojan Bogdanovic. Not only was he the team’s leading scorer last season as well as the team’s best shooter this season, but he’s an adult. He's also a secondary playmaker, and his scoring — and the threat of scoring — would open up the court.

No, Bogdanovich is neither a savior nor an All-NBA first-teamer (or even a third-teamer). But he’s a good player, even at age 34, and Weaver was counting on him to help free up and guide the youngsters, particularly Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren.

Whatever either eventually becomes — and there are concerns about what that will eventually be, particularly considering Cunningham's increased turnovers this season — the pairing of point guard and big man showed a promising pick-and-roll combination the first week of the season.

Then Duren got hurt. By the time he returned, teams were ready to adjust, and began closing off driving lanes by blitzing Cunningham or sagging behind Duren, unafraid to leave the “shooters” on their own.

“The spacing on the floor isn’t great for those guys,” WiIliams said. “And when they take that pick-and-roll alley away to the basket, guys on the back side have got to knock down shots. That’s just NBA basketball. Anytime the paint is crowded, it’s going to be pretty tough for Cade and Jalen to be efficient. So, we got to get guys in there than can knock down shots.”

Even Bogdanovic alone might night be enough shooting to unlock Cunningham and Duren’s potential; that’s a problem that’s on Weaver. But his return should surely help.

How much is tough to say. Enough to help find a few more wins? To avoid any more historic losing streaks? If he can stay healthy? Maybe.

If not, if he doesn’t make a difference? Then Weaver shouldn’t be back next fall. A franchise has to have some hope, and this one hasn’t had any in a long, long time, except for a brief few days to start this season. Back then, even without a full roster, the youngsters showed the spirit that sent a little jolt through the heart of this basketball-loving town.

Then they lost a big lead to Portland. They haven’t fully found it since.

“We haven’t been able to come out of that,” Williams said. “We had that vibe the first week. We played really well. And then we had injuries and all that stuff and it threw our rhythm off. But those are just excuses. You can make excuses or progress, but you can’t (make) both. We have guys that are capable, they’ve shown it.”

And when they show it, as they did to open the year?

“The city was excited,” he said. “I know what this city wants. I’ve been here as an opponent. When you play hard and you defend, and you get after people, they’ll never boo you. They’ll always be behind you, win or lose. And our guys have to understand that.”

Until they play hard and defend and get after people, nothing else matters, not even the return of Bogdanovic. If the young guys can’t consistently compete — and they did anything but on Wednesday night — then what’s the point?

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Pistons running out of options as losses pile up