Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’ll admit I didn’t realize the Pistons had been this bad for almost two decades.
In today’s SI:AM:
💥 Huge gambling report
🏀 Pistons winning again!?
⛹️♀️ Women’s POY contenders
Deeeeetroit basketball
It’s been really rough to be a Detroit Pistons fan lately—but that seems to be changing.
The Pistons haven’t made the playoffs since 2019 and haven’t won a postseason series since ’08. Since then, they’ve been the worst team in the NBA. Over the past 17 seasons, no team in the NBA has lost more games than Detroit has. The Pistons are 498–830 since the start of the 2008–09 season, 16 more losses than the next closest team, the Sacramento Kings. And Detroit has been especially bad of late, averaging 18.8 wins per season over the past five years, also the worst in the NBA over that span.
So it’s been a dark couple of decades for Pistons fans, but there is hope on the horizon. A 106–97 win over the Los Angeles Clippers on Monday marked Detroit’s seventh consecutive victory, the franchise’s longest winning streak since '14–15. And the streak is no fluke. With Monday’s win, the Pistons are now 32–26 on the season, good for sixth place in the Eastern Conference. They haven’t just put together a good seven-game stretch, they’re having their first respectable season in a long time.
“We are still working our way to becoming the team that we want,” coach J.B. Bickerstaff said after Monday’s win. “Every opportunity is just a challenge for us to sharpen our tools, and when you do it against the better teams in the league, it gives you a baseline of where you stand, where you can improve, and what you do well.
“They’re just great opportunities for us to play against the best, challenge ourselves, learn from it, and hopefully get better game by game.”
SEVEN IN A ROW pic.twitter.com/BVMagPrPXh
— Detroit Pistons (@DetroitPistons) February 25, 2025
So how have they pulled themselves out of the doldrums? All those dismal seasons gave the Pistons a bunch of high draft picks, and the team mostly made the right decisions. Selecting Killian Hayes with the No. 7 pick in the 2020 draft proved to be a disastrous choice (he averaged 8.1 points per game over four seasons before being waived last year) but the Pistons have hit on their other picks. The biggest coup was selecting Cade Cunningham with the No. 1 pick in the 2021 draft. He’s already proven to be the best player in that class and was rewarded in July with a five-year, $224 million max contract extension. Jaden Ivey (the No. 5 pick in ’22) has also lived up to the hype, while Ausar Thompson (No. 5 in ’23), Marcus Sasser (No. 25 in ’23) and Ron Holland (No. 5 in ’24) have been solid rotation players early in their careers.
Cunningham, who was selected to the All-Star team for the first time, is the engine behind the Pistons’ success this season, having more than proved he’s worthy of that big extension he got over the summer. He’s averaging 25.8 points, 9.5 assists and 6.3 rebounds per game—all career highs. He ranks 10th in the NBA this season in scoring and third in assists per game. The leap forward he’s taken this season has been aided by a vastly improved supporting cast assembled by new president of basketball operations Trajan Langdon. The Pistons have bolstered that core of high draft picks with young players acquired via post-draft trades (Isaiah Stewart and Jalen Duren) and veterans like Tim Hardaway Jr., Tobias Harris and Malik Beasley. The result is the best roster Detroit has had in years, and it’s paying off in a major way. Monday’s win over the Clippers was the Pistons’ 32nd of the season, eclipsing the number of games they’d won over the previous two seasons combined (31).
The dramatic stratification of the Eastern Conference means that even though the Pistons are only six games over .500, they’ve begun to separate themselves from the pack of mediocre teams battling for spots in the play-in tournament. As it stands now, the Orlando Magic would be the top seed in the play-in, sitting in seventh place at 29–30, 3.5 games behind Detroit. If you asked them last year, the Pistons would have been thrilled just to be in contention for the play-in, but their win streak has them in position to earn an outright spot in the first round. Hell, it isn’t even out of the question that they could have home-court advantage in that first-round series, considering that they’re only one game behind the fourth-place Milwaukee Bucks.
Given how terrible the past several years have been for basketball fans in Detroit, it’s a very pleasant surprise that the Pistons have been able to turn things around so dramatically this season. They’re still a long way off from being contenders in the East, but the comeback has to start somewhere.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- Michael Rosenberg and Pat Forde have a blockbuster story on the federal investigation into a gambling ring that has allegedly uncovered widespread point-shaving in college and pro basketball.
- Forde also wrote about the awkward start to the coaching carousel season in men’s hoops.
- Emma Baccellieri evaluated the cases for each of the top women’s basketball Player of the Year contenders.
- If you’re watching any spring training baseball, you’ll get to see the likely future of the way balls and strikes are called. Jimmy Traina loves the ABS challenge system and thinks it should be implemented as soon as possible.
- Ronnie Stanley is one of the best free agents available this offseason. Matt Verderame identified three potential landing spots for the Ravens offensive tackle.
- The Kansas men’s basketball team is unranked in the AP poll for the first time in over four years.
- Longtime Guardians owner Larry Dolan has died.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. Jorge Soler’s towering home run.
4. Brice Williams’s heads-up play to come up with a steal after missing a three.
3. Russell Westbrook’s effort on this impressive defensive play.
2. Quinton Byfield’s nasty backhand assist.
1. The Timberwolves’ comeback from down 25 in the second half to beat the Thunder in overtime.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | The Pistons Are Finally Respectable Again.
