The Detroit Pistons are a Blueprint for the NBA's Basement Teams
Detroit has at last lifted itself from NBA purgatory. Their path provides a valuable lesson for teams still left behind.
As an outsider, the Detroit Pistons have hardly lived at the forefront of my mind in recent years. In fact, I don’t think they ever have.
Tuesday night’s win on the road at Madison Square Garden - tying the series at 1-1 with the New York Knicks - ended a playoff-win drought dating back to 2008. What a relief. Pistons fans are crying tears of joy. Rightfully so.
The team has been bad for years. Bad enough, indeed, to land the first pick back in 2021, a pick who is turning into a superstar rather quickly in front of our eyes. But even before that, the previous iterations of the Detroit teams were mediocre at best.
Now, I’ve long joked that there was a great sell for the Pistons teams of the mid-2010s:
“Come watch our star big man haul in 13 rebounds a night while we win 35 games under Stan van Gundy.” Whew. Pretty compelling stuff.
But wait, hang on a second. Here comes Blake Griffin at the twilight of his career. 41 wins in 2019! Little Caesar’s Arena gets its first taste of playoff basketb- anddd swept in the first round by Giannis and the Bucks. Anticlimactic.
Six years later - although the dry spell has truly gone on much longer - the playoffs finally return to Detroit later this week when the series leaves New York. And the Knicks are on upset watch. These pesky Pistons are no walkovers.
How did we get here? Well, most didn’t think we’d get here at all. At least not this season. Last year’s Pistons had the same numbers on their record as this year’s Thunder; they just unfortunately had them in the wrong order. 14 wins in 2023/24 was few enough for Monty Williams to get fired just one year into the most lucrative coaching contract in the history of the league. Enter JB Bickerstaff.
Fresh off a stint in Cleveland that saw him take the Cavaliers from the basement of the league to a bona fide playoff squad, Bickerstaff entered Detroit with very little expectation that his new team would undergo a similar transition in less than a calendar year. But he’s done exactly that.
While I’d need to do more research on the deeper reasons for Detroit’s turnaround, a couple of overarching, more general points might just provide a lesson for some other teams sitting comfortably in the draft lottery. Sadly, among those teams are my beloved Pelicans. But never mind that, it’s for another day. The Pistons have been a really cool story this year, and I’m very happy for the fans and the organisation. And while I’m still in the same paragraph where I got in my obligatory Pelicans mention, I might as well sneak in another: the appointment last offseason of ex-New Orleans general manager Trajan Langdon as president of basketball operations has proven to be a shrewd move by Detroit. Now, let’s touch on the takeaways.
1. Patience
It’s amazing what can happen when teams don’t overreact. The Pistons' rebuild felt like it was never going to end. As it turns out, what looked like rock bottom became the end of the rebuild altogether. Cade Cunningham has made incremental steps forward; there was no one-year leap like you often see with other young stars. He’s developed slowly but surely into what he is now: the centrepiece of a team threatening to take down the 3 seed in the Eastern Conference.
The same goes for some other young pieces. Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart are tough young guns in the frontcourt. Jaden Ivey has been out with injury, but he’s another impressive guard who appears to be a great use of a lottery pick in 2022. Ausar Thompson has awesome defensive versatility and freak athleticism. While his lack of shooting has been a talking point, here he is already contributing to the playoff rotation as a sophomore.
Instead of giving up on young players too early - something seen around the league - the Pistons have instead supplemented their projects with something else, which we’ll touch on now: experience.
2. Veterans
Tobias Harris took more than his fair share of criticism for the Philadelphia 76ers’ failure to reach expectations in recent seasons. But he’s filled his role quite nicely since signing with the Pistons last summer.
Malik Beasley, a sharpshooter and Sixth Man of the Year Award finalist, was another key veteran addition.
Tim Hardaway Jr, another vet who was often pinned as the fall guy at his last stop in Dallas, has also impressed since landing in the Motor City.
This trio of veterans, supplemented by the addition of Dennis Schroder near the trade deadline, have had an impact beyond the basketball court.
Veteran presence is paramount to rebuilding teams. Beyond what they can teach on the floor, they can instil in the 19-year-old millionaires they share locker rooms with other things about what it takes to win in the NBA. My Pelicans have seen that with CJ McCollum, who, since he was acquired in 2022, has taken on the leadership challenge both off and on the court as he mentors the Pels’ various young stars, headlined, of course, by Zion Williamson.
So, yes, you have to draft well, and yes, you have to spend money smartly. But that’s why front office personnel get paid: to make those decisions and make them correctly.
In the same way that something like a fortunate conference finals run can sometimes prove false and cause a team to stick with a project that isn’t actually capable of winning, the reverse can also be true. Teams at the very bottom of the NBA pyramid aren’t always as far away from turning the corner as it may seem. For an outsider, which I, alongside many of you, am, it’s nice to see a storied franchise like the Pistons turn it around in the way they have.
Once young, rebuilding teams have their own Cade Cunningham, surrounding him with a mix of high-ceiling talent and established vets with know-how can be a potent formula to take the next steps back toward contention.
Detroit’s first-round opponent has gone star-hunting in recent years while they have nurtured their own stars. Regardless of whether they pull off the upset against the differently constructed Knicks, the Pistons are at last becoming a success story on the other side of a rebuild that took no shortcuts.