Get this:
Wayne Ellington won a game in April tonight for the first time since his North Carolina Tar Heels beat Michigan State in the 2009 NCAA title game.
Funny, but that game was played in Detroit, too, although down the freeway a bit at football's Ford Field.
More than three years later, the Wolves won an April game for the first time since April 8, 2009, two days after Ellington was named the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player
They ended an NBA record for most consecutive losses in a single month -- 27 -- by building a 23-point, third-quarter lead against a Pistons team playing its third game in three nights and then holding on in the final minute after Detroit got within five points.
The Wolves withstood Pistons backup point guard Will Bynum's dynamic fourth quarter. He scored all of his 17 points in the fourth, including 10 of those in an 18-6 run when Detroit whacked an 82-79 deficit with 4:44 left down to just 85-60 with 40 seconds left.
But the Wolves perservered, ending an 11-game losing streak that dates to a March 28 game at Charlotte by making six free throws in the final 32 seconds, by getting a standup performance from Nikola Pekovic down the stretch both scoring and rebounding and by waiting out an extended official's review with 50 seconds left.
That's when the officials looked and looked and looked again at replay and then concluded their original call that a ball had gone out of bounds off Bynum actually last was touched by J.J. Barea.
