Detroit Pistons' changing NBA fortunes erase dark clouds hanging over franchise

Detroit Pistons’ changing NBA fortunes erase dark clouds hanging over franchise

Posted by Admin January 10, 2025 NBA

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The Detroit Pistons, after enduring a franchise-worst 14-win season last year, have reached a .500 record this season, marking significant progress for the rebuilding team.

January hasn’t been a festive month for the Detroit Pistons this decade. But nearly a week after New Year’s Day on Monday, they were in a celebratory mood.

With their comeback over the Portland Trail Blazers, the Pistons improved to 18-18 overall — .500. It’s typically a record that marks mediocrity. Less than a year removed from a season best described as a complete disaster, it was a notable milestone for the Pistons. It deserved to be acknowledged.

“It’s huge, man,” Jalen Duren said after the 118-115 win. “It’s huge. The vets that came in, I’m not gonna say they don’t understand it, but they weren’t here. Guys who’ve been here … the guys who have been through the ups and downs of our short career, and now getting here and being .500 is huge.

“We want to keep building on it. We have a long season to go, but this is a great starting point for us starting the year off undefeated.”

A new standard has been set in Detroit. The Pistons, a season after suffering a humiliating 28-game losing streak en route to a franchise-worst 14-win season, keep engineering ways to win. An early-22 point deficit against the Blazers wasn’t enough to bury them. Fifty-three points from Anthony Edwards rang hollow in a blowout of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The Sacramento Kings, in their own arena, failed to capitalize on a 10-point lead with 2:46 remaining when an improbable 17-6 Pistons run snatched a victory.

Coach J.B. Bickerstaff won’t yet declare that the team is ahead of schedule, and there is a lot of season left. But so much has changed in a year. Before Thursday’s loss to the Golden State Warriors, the Pistons had won five straight, seven of their last eight and 10 of 13 games.

They are now 19-19 overall — 9-9 at home and 10-10 on the road. Average. A .500 record reflects that the Pistons, almost every night, have been competitive. Already, they have five more wins than last season with 44 games remaining on the schedule. A team that hasn’t won more than 27 games a season since 2018-19 is now on pace to add 27 wins to last year’s record.

“The energy is better,” Cade Cunningham, after finishing with 32 points, eight assists and six rebounds on Thursday, said. “We don’t have that dark cloud hanging over us any more, which is great.”

“It’s been a lot of fun coming in and working, trying to continue to get better and better. But honestly even when we were losing, the young core that was here, we were already talking about how we were gonna do it and the fact that we’re gonna get to where we want to go. To see it coming into fruition is cool, but there’s a long way to go to get to where we want.”

Cunningham and the rest of the Pistons’ young core is surrounded by people who weren’t around during the losing streak. The only returning veteran from last year’s roster is Simone Fontecchio, and he arrived after the trade deadline. The front office and coaching staff — save assistant coach Jarrett Jack, assistant GM George David and a few others — are all new.

The goal last summer was to give the team a needed clean slate. Owner Tom Gores made the decision to fire Monty Williams after a single season, and ate the cost of his historic $78.5 million contract. Former general manager Troy Weaver also was dismissed.

New team president Trajan Langdon and coach J.B. Bickerstaff arrived from programs that had to navigate rebuilds and found success in doing so. Everyone, obviously, is aware of what took place last season. But the young players, for the most part, are the only ones who have had to bear the pain of it.

It’s a best-of-both-worlds scenario for a team that needed to grow up. It was a character-building experience for Cunningham and his peers, who vowed to never go through such a season again. Everyone else in the building, to varying degrees, has experienced winning and is unable to frame this season against last year’s misery.

It’s easier to move forward when the context no longer matters.

“It’s been great to have new energy in the room, it’s been great to have guys that don’t care how much you lost in the past,” Cunningham said. “They’re not going for it and they’re going to bring a winning culture. That’s been huge for us. I think they see how much it means to us, all the guys that have been around and they appreciate the fact that they’re able to bring a new culture, a new feeling into the room.”

When Bickerstaff had his initial sit-downs with players, he tried to avoid bringing up the 2023-24 season. The idea was to focus on the future. But he learned that the losing streak — the longest in-season streak in NBA history — wasn’t a taboo topic.

Cunningham said he tried to catch up his new coach on everything he knew and explain what worked last season, and what didn’t work. Bickerstaff led the Cleveland Cavaliers from a rebuild to a second-round playoff team, so Cunningham understood the system and culture he wanted to build in Detroit.

After last season, the Pistons were ready for change. Players had owned up to and come to terms with what happened. It simplified things for Bickerstaff.

“They had learned a lot from it and they learned a lot about themselves from it,” Bickerstaff said. “When I got here, I didn’t feel as if there was a hangover in their minds, so to speak, but more of a willingness to move on and try to learn and be better from. That made my job easier because I was able to come into guys who were extremely open-minded about doing different things and new tasks in front of them.

“They bought in because I think going through that helped them recognize that they didn’t want to go back there, and what they needed to do to make sure that didn’t happen.”

Cunningham is in the midst of an All-Star worthy season, averaging 24.3 points, 9.3 assists and 6.6 rebounds on a team currently occupying the eighth seed. Jaden Ivey, Isaiah Stewart, Jalen Duren, Ausar Thompson and Marcus Sasser all have contributed toward winning. The veterans — Malik Beasley, Tobias Harris, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Paul Reed — have checked the right boxes on and off the court.

The locker room was quiet, and mostly empty with players strolling in-and-out, after Thursday’s loss. After Wednesday’s road win over the Brooklyn Nets, they were 19-18 and had a winning record in January for the first time in six years. Now, they’re back at .500 after losing a winnable game at home.

A .500 record marks growth for the Pistons. But, for a full day, experienced the joy of being a winning team. So .500 no longer hits the same.

The standard has changed.

“It’s definitely a sense of gratitude, being grateful,” Stewart said. “But we ain’t satisfied. We’ve been in the mud for a long time here.

“We got a taste of it and we want more.”

Contact Omari Sankofa II at osankofa@freepress.com. Follow him on X @omarisankofa.