After 17 days, the Pistons exhaled.
  After seven straight losses, the Pistons got a victory Sunday in their final game of the 2001 calendar year, 86-80 over the Miami Heat
  "It's really a burden when you start out so well and then hit the skids," Coach Rick Carlisle said. "It's hard to quantify everything that goes wrong during a bad streak. But we knew we were going to have some tough times and we said we would not overreact."
  Accordingly, the Pistons did not overreact to breaking the streak, either.
  "It was a good win, because Miami is a better team than their record indicates," Cliff Robinson said. "Teams that understand the nature of an NBA season, and understand the ups and downs that go with it, they can deal with it and come through it better. It's just a matter of maintaining belief."
  The Pistons actually felt things shift in the second half of their loss at Orlando on Friday night.