Mired in a stretch of back-to-back games with little time for practice, the Pistons have little recourse but to talk their way out of a losing trend.

A 104-90 loss to the Celtics on Friday night left the Pistons with two victories in their past 14 games as they return to the Palace tonight to play the Charlotte Hornets, the second time this week Detroit has played two games in two days.

Starting forward Michael Curry pointed to long lapses of lethargy as the problem.

"We've played 24 minutes out of the 48, or 30 minutes out of the 48, and we have to get somewhere up around 40, 42 minutes where we're playing very good basketball," Curry said. "You're going to have some down time, but we have to get to where we're playing more consistent basketball over a greater period."

Ben Wallace said, "Everybody in here knows that as a fact. We've been playing in spurts. We haven't put together a great game."