Pistons collapse in the 4th quarter and their postseason-record skid reaches 15 with loss to Knicks

NEW YORK (AP) — The Detroit Pistons were a little more than nine minutes from ending the longest postseason losing streak in NBA history, playing with poise for three quarters Saturday night.

A mistake-filled final quarter meant the wait will go on for the Pistons.

The New York Knicks had a 21-0 run in the fourth quarter, when Detroit had more turnovers than baskets, and won Game 1 123-112.

The Pistons were in their first playoff game since 2019 and held up well for most of it, building a a 98-90 lead early in the final period.

They trailed by 13 by the time they scored again, contributing to their own collapse with mistakes they had avoided for most of the night.

“I just thought the turnovers led to easy baskets for them,” forward Tobias Harris said.

The period started with two of them before the Pistons even got a shot, a 5-second violation on the inbounds pass to begin the period, then a 24-second shot clock violation on the next trip.

All told, the Pistons had eight turnovers in the quarter that led to 11 points. Detroit shot 7 for 22 (31.8%) and was outscored 40-21 in the fourth.

Cade Cunningham finished with 21 points and 12 assists, but shot just 8 for 21 from the field and committed six turnovers.

The star guard, the No. 1 pick in the 2021 draft, is the primary reason the Pistons made the playoffs as the No. 6 seed after going 44-38, a 30-win improvement that was one of the largest in NBA history from one season to the next.

“Yeah, it was definitely learning experience. Something that I’ve never done before, I’ve never been a part of,” Cunningham said. "But also, I didn’t treat like a different game. I tried to approach it like a regular game, read what the defense gives me, and exploit that. At the end of the day, it’s basketball. It’s something I’ve been doing since I was a kid. So, I don’t switch for the environment or anything.

“But, you know, this game got away from us.”

Until it did, the Pistons were on the verge of a smashing return to the postseason, before the kind of collapse their young core had avoided so well. Detroit blew an eight-point lead in the fourth quarter on opening night against Indiana, then hadn't lost when leading by eight or more in the final period since.

So it's now 15 losses and counting since their last victory, in Game 4 of the 2008 Eastern Conference finals.

“It’s a series,” Harris said, “and you can't get too high, you can’t get too low.”

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Detroit Pistons forward Tobias Harris (12), right, attempts to dribble past New York Knicks guard Josh Hart (3), left, during the second half of Game 1 in an NBA basketball first-round playoff series, Saturday, April 19, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson (11) falls as Detroit Pistons forward Tobias Harris (12) shoots during the second half of Game 1 in an NBA basketball first-round playoff series, Saturday, April 19, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Detroit Pistons forward Tobias Harris (12), right, attempts to dribble past New York Knicks guard Josh Hart (3), left, during the second half of Game 1 in an NBA basketball first-round playoff series, Saturday, April 19, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Detroit Pistons guard Cade Cunningham (2) falls during the second half of Game 1 in an NBA basketball first-round playoff series against the New York Knicks, Saturday, April 19, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Detroit Pistons guard Cade Cunningham (2) sits after falling during the second half of Game 1 in an NBA basketball first-round playoff series against the New York Knicks, Saturday, April 19, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)