The Detroit Pistons have clearly shown improvement relative to their on-court product for the past three years, which is a testament to the continued development of youngsters Cade Cunningham, Jalen Duren, and Ausar Thompson as well as the stable coaching ways of Monty Williams. But it hasn't quite resulted in success in the win column just yet. And it seems as though the Pistons' frustrations are reaching a boiling point in the aftermath of their 114-106 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers in their first NBA In-Season Tournament contest.

The Pistons head coach, in particular, expressed his frustration after the game towards the sheer frequency with which Sixers star Joel Embiid got to the foul line. Embiid scored 16 of his 33 points from the charity stripe, while the Pistons had 18 total makes as a team. In the end, the Sixers finished with 35 total free-throw makes on 41 attempts, and that disparity alone put Detroit in an uphill battle all night long.

“Some of the stuff these guys are doing, they’re not shots. I want to go on record. These are not shots. We've talked about it in our competition transfer of information to the head coaches meeting that they're going to call this swinging the ball and hitting people,” the Pistons head coach said, per Omari Sankofa II of the Detroit Free Press.

Joel Embiid does have a tendency to flail around and go out of his way to seek contact even in unnatural motions just so he could get the Sixers some easy points from the charity stripe. But the Pistons felt especially hard done by this, especially when Monty Williams feels like Embiid is good enough to flourish without these frustrating tendencies.

“He's good enough,” Williams added. “Joel's tough enough to guard, and we doubled him, we frustrated him in the first half. […] That's not a shot. Our guys were frustrated by it and I can't blame them.”

But alas, superstar calls will always be a part of the NBA game, and Joel Embiid is merely bending the rules to his will, to the Sixers' benefit. This doesn't mean that the Pistons can't speak up against this and, perhaps, lessen the frequency of these frustrating occasions to help them moving forward.