AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- Mediocrity doesn't look so bad to the Detroit Pistons. If they can play as well as they did in the first half against the Houston Rockets on Monday night, they can reach for higher goals.

The Pistons built a 28-point first-half lead, then nearly gave it away before holding off the Rockets 116-105 at The Palace.

Detroit heads into December with a 9-9 record after successfully beginning a stretch of eight home games in its next 10 outings.

"We'll take .500 right now but we think we're a better team," said point guard Reggie Jackson, who had a game-high 31 points and eight assists. "We've got a long way to go. We've still got to prove to ourselves that we're better than this."

They looked like a playoff team in the first half, shooting 54.7 percent from the field while holding the Rockets to 31.3 percent shooting and taking a 64-41 halftime lead. But the Pistons allowed a 19-3 run that began late in the third quarter and needed a 14-point quarter from Jackson to secure the victory.

"We played a really good first half at both ends," Detroit head coach Stan Van Gundy said. "We played no defense in the second half but we hung on and got it done."

That was an improvement over Sunday night, when his team fell apart in the fourth quarter and lost to the 4-13 Brooklyn Nets. The next step is to break past that inconsistency.

"I'd like to have four of those games back but when I looked at the schedule in the summer, with all the new guys and young guys, 9-9 would have been pretty good," Van Gundy said. "I can't complain. It's a good win and it gets us back to even. Now we've just got to try to continue to play better."

Detroit center Andre Drummond supplied 24 points and 13 rebounds despite shooting four-for-18 from the free-throw line. Rookie small forward Stanley Johnson notched the first double-double of his career with 19 points and a season-high 10 rebounds, and small forward Marcus Morris chipped in 12 points and six assists for the Pistons (9-9).

Johnson had some defensive issues, particularly in the second half, but he was instrumental in building the big lead and added six fourth-quarter points.

"Offensively, he's finding his groove," said Jackson, who scored his 3,000th point. "We're happy with what we're getting out of a 19-year-old."

Shooting guard James Harden, the league's second-leading scorer, had 29 points, nine rebounds and seven assists for Houston (7-11). Shooting guard Marcus Thornton added 18 points off the bench.

The Rockets, who had won two straight, allowed the Pistons to shoot a season-high 52.9 percent.

"It's not just how we start," center Dwight Howard said. "It's throughout the game we can't allow teams to get shots. All of us have to get better."

Houston rallied from 14 points down in the fourth to win in overtime at New York on Sunday but couldn't finish off another comeback.

"We need to understand where we are," Rockets interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. "We're a desperate basketball team. We see what we can do when we play desperate. Obviously, we're not in a panic but we need to play with a sense of urgency."

The Rockets used the "Hack-A-Dre" strategy during the middle of the third quarter. Van Gundy was forced to take Drummond out with the center misfiring repeatedly from the foul line.

Sparked by their bench, the Rockets crept within 84-73 by the end of the quarter.

Houston also scored the first seven points of the fourth but Pistons regrouped and got the lead up to double digits again with 5:48 left on a Drummond tip-in. Harden scored 16 fourth-quarter points, but it wasn't enough.

NOTES: The Pistons are the only team to use the same lineup every game this season. Coach Stan Van Gundy doesn't want to change it despite the team's spotty play. "There are one or two things we could do but for the most part, we're playing the right people," he said. "They've got to play better." ... Detroit C Andre Drummond had four 20-rebound games before Monday. The only other NBA player who has one is Houston center Dwight Howard. ... The Rockets won eight of the last nine meetings. ... Houston SG James Harden's 197 free-throw attempts before Monday were the most by a guard through 17 games since Allen Iverson shot 213 at the start of the 2005-06 season. ... Rockets coach J.B. Bickerstaff has no plans to remove struggling guards Ty Lawson and Corey Brewer from his rotation. "I still believe in Ty and I still believe in Brew," he said.