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Tayshaun Prince realizes that his Detroit Pistons are coming close to being a complete team.

But they’re not there yet, thanks especially to poor fourth-quarter performances in key games.

That includes an 85-82 NBA loss to the Chicago Bulls when the Pistons couldn’t hang on to what seemed to be a safe fourth-quarter lead. That’s been happening one too many times this season, and Prince knows it.

“Lay-ups. We just did (not) contest them,” he said. “They got in the paint and back in the game that way. We let them start in the third quarter but we responded to them and didn’t let them get back in it. We didn’t match that energy in the fourth quarter and it cost us.”

But in all due to respect to Prince, as a senior leader on the team, he needs to personally fire the troops up and get that re-energizing that the team needs. Joakim Noah saved the ball late in the game to set the Bulls up for the winning play. He had the type of energy that the Pistons just aren’t showing.

“We have to match their energy for four quarters,” Prince said. “We did it for only 3 ½ tonight and you see what happens. The last 2 or 3 times we have played them we had leads through three quarters. We should have had wins. We talked about that before tonight’s game. Their energy was there and they played off that to a win.”

Prince needs to take charge and make sure his teammates don’t have any letdowns late in the game. If he doesn’t, then his team won’t make the playoffs.