The Detroit Pistons face the Miami Heat and Brooklyn Nets for the final two home games of what’s felt like a very long season. Injuries, lack of chemistry and trades have boxed the Pistons away from the preseason goal of learning to compete every night. But observers still hope to see maximum effort no matter who’s playing.

“I feel like our effort was horrible tonight,” Ivey said after a 118-97 loss to the Toronto Raptors a few weeks ago. “We’ve just got to have more effort.”

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We’ve got to all look ourselves in the mirror and say, ‘Is our spirit there?’ That’s the most important thing when you step out there on the floor.”

Ivey wasn’t the only one to say something about the teams effort. Killian Hayes refused to accept how the team looked after a big loss to the Orlando Magic last game.

“Obviously, it’s sucks,” Hayes said. “Mentally, it can be tough but at the end of the day, we still have 4 games left. Tonight, we did a bad job of representing the Pistons. The Magic is not (26) points better than us.”

“Guys are still hungry,” according to Hayes as the Pistons seek to end the season on better note.

It wont get any easier trying to prove that against the Nets and Heat battling for their playoff lives. The Nets are currently the 6th seed and the Heat 7th, good enough for a trip to the NBA Play-In Tournament.

Jaden Ivey looking to Finish Strong

Jaden Ivey has had an impressive ten game stretch averaging 19.2 points, 7.4 assists and 3.7 rebounds per game. Just as impressively he’s shooting just over 37% from three on in a whopping 6.7 attempts per game. It doesn’t appear the rookie is planning to slow down as the season comes to a close, and coach Casey is here for it.

“I’m really excited about his three-point shooting because at some point, Cade is going to come back and now he (Jaden Ivey) is going to be spotted up and it’s going to help our spacing there next to him and vice versa,” Casey said. ” It’s just going to help us all around offensively.”