How the Pistons Became the NBA's Best Story [FREE]
After winning eight straight, Detroit is on pace to improve by an astounding 31 wins this season. Will the Pistons also get homecourt advantage?
This is the free, updated version of a column first published on Jan. 20.
Last season, the Detroit Pistons lost 27 games in a row and finished with 14 wins. It was their fifth straight season of 23 wins or fewer.
This season, they are on track to qualify for the playoffs directly, skipping right past the play-in tournament.
Let’s answer a few key questions about what fueled the massive turnaround in Motor City:
How surprising is Detroit’s success?
Vegas didn't quite know what to do with this team. Obviously Detroit would be expected to exceed last season's 14 wins — because it would be extremely rare to project a team for so few wins.
But by how much?
Ultimately, the bookmakers and bettors settled on an over-under line of 25.5 wins, which these Pistons are totally smashing, as seen in the chart below:
In the past 28 seasons, only five teams have increased their winning percentage more than the Pistons are projected to do — from .171 last season to .548 this season.
Key reasons for the turnaround?
Last season, Detroit would have broken the NBA record for most players in a season if not for Memphis — the Pistons played 31, while the Grizzlies played 33.
Many of those Pistons aren't even in the league anymore.
Two of them played more than 1,000 minutes each despite being among the worst players of the play-by-play era (since 1996-97): Killian Hayes, recently signed to a 10-day contract by the Brooklyn Nets, has a career RAPM of -5.9, landing him in the third percentile in my 29-year RAPM analysis. Former Golden State lottery pick James Wiseman, now on the injured list for the Indiana Pacers, ranks 2,655th of 2,656 players in that 29-year span. That's right: Only one player in the last 29 years has had worse impact on the game than Wiseman.
One way to improve quickly — going from horrible to merely bad — is to stop playing guys like Hayes and Wiseman.
But for Detroit to zoom into playoff contention, it needed to bring in players who would complement the young core of Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Ausar Thompson, Isaiah Stewart, and Jalen Duren.
Here are four ways they’ve done it:
1. A change in the front office, with a shift in philosophy
In the offseason, the Pistons replaced Troy Weaver with a new general manager, Trajan Langdon, who immediately took a more aggressive approach: The rebuild was over.
Going forward, Detroit would focus on being competitive right away, future lottery balls be damned. That's despite owing their 2025 first-rounder to Minnesota, protected only for picks 1-13.
2. Better spacing
While it wasn't exactly the most difficult puzzle to solve, Langdon and the rest of the front office correctly identified one major issue that plagued them last season: lack of spacing.
Detroit was 26th in 3-point percentage last season. What’s worse, the Pistons were 27th in 3-point attempt rate. That’s a nasty combination that encourages opponents to ignore the perimeter.
By packing the paint and cutting off drives, opposing teams took away some of the few offensive strengths for the Pistons. Cunningham has the size to overpower smaller guards down low, while Ivey and Thompson have tremendous speed. But those skills are not of much use when the paint is closed down.
So Detroit brought in three veterans who can shoot: Tobias Harris, Malik Beasley, and Tim Hardaway Jr.
🏀 Harris was criticized greatly in Philadelphia for his inability to fulfill the high expectations of a max contract, but he’s a capable shooter and player.
🏀 Beasley is now with his sixth franchise in nine seasons, but he was exactly what the doctor ordered: He’s shooting 42.5% from 3-point range and takes the NBA's third-most 3s (attempts per 100 possessions), right behind LaMelo Ball and Steph Curry.
🏀 Hardaway isn’t a darling of advanced stats — and the trade acquiring him from Dallas for Quentin Grimes was a questionable one — but he spaces the floor by putting up 10 3s per 100 possessions.
3. Internal improvement
Several young Pistons have done what young players tend to do: Get better.
Cunningham, the Pistons’ franchise player, is posting career highs in 2- and 3-point percentage plus scoring, assists, and blocks per 100 possessions. More importantly, his on-off numbers are easily a career best.
By halving his long 2s (attempts from 16-22 feet), he’s improved his scoring efficiency markedly. If he could likewise chop his alarming six turnovers per 100 possessions — the second-worst rate in the league — we'd be talking about a top-eight point guard. Regardless, he might be on track for his first All-NBA berth.
Duren, still only 21 years old, is posting career highs in blocks and assists. For the second straight season, he’s in the NBA’s top 10 in rebounding, 2-point percentage and true shooting percentage.
Stewart isn't hitting his 3s this season, but has more than doubled his blocks compared to last season. His assist-to-turnover ratio, which had hovered around 1-to-1 for his career, is now significantly closer to 2-to-1.
Ausar Thompson, like his twin brother Amen, looks like one of the best wing defenders in the league and has doubled his steal rate compared to last season.
4. The coaching change
Monty Williams’ coaching tenure in Detroit appeared doomed to failure: After the Phoenix Suns fired him in 2023, he planned to take time off, in part to care for his wife after her cancer diagnosis. But when Detroit kept increasing the amount it was willing to pay him, and Williams and his wife got better news on her prognosis, he accepted the Pistons’ record-setting offer.
Given the circumstances, it’s understandable that Williams' attention might have been divided, and Detroit fired him after one season despite the $65 million remaining on his contract.
Whatever the reasons, J.B. Bickerstaff seems to have better command of this iteration of the Pistons. Of course, he also has a better hand to play given the aforementioned veterans brought in to help right the ship.
So, how good are the Pistons?
At 33-26, Detroit is in 6th place in the Eastern Conference. The Pistons rank 15th in the NBA in offensive efficiency, and 10th on defense.
Assessing the Pistons via the Four Factors tells us a bit more.
Their improvement from last season can be seen in their effective field goal percentage (eFG%) — the most important of the Four Factors — where they are 13th, up from 28th last season. That is greatly helped by their taking the 20th-most 3 and converting them at the 12th-best rate.
Defensively, the Pistons remain slightly below average in opponent eFG%, but they grab the second-most defensive rebounds.
Areas for improvement
In the Four Factors, a pair of offensive areas where the Pistons still find themselves among the bottom 10 in the league are turnovers and free-throw rate.
The latter might be a simple function of the newcomers letting it fly from 3 early (in the clock) and often. More 3s mean less action near the basket, where the majority of shooting fouls are generated.
The turnovers appear to be a team-wide problem for everyone that's not new to the roster: While Harris, Beasley, and Hardaway sport turnover rates below 10% — which is excellent — the majority of the Pistons’ original core still turns it over in 15% of plays or more.
Top-4 seed in the playoffs? And the likely first-round opponent?
The Pistons stand seven games over .500, with a positive net rating implying that they will, going forward, perform about like a 45-win team. That nets out to 45 wins total — 31 wins better than last season.
With Detroit on an eight-game winning streak, they're now only one game out of the No. 4 seed, while having a cushion over the current play-in teams.
Making the playoffs directly would already be quite the accomplishment, but I wouldn't blame the Pistons for setting their sights a little higher, given the run they're currently on.
According to my simulations, the Pistons would become likely to get homecourt advantage by winning 15 of their remaining 23 games.
And winning just 10 games would secure them a playoff berth with 95% certainty.
As the graph shows, more wins would result in a higher probability of a matchup with the Pacers — a scenario probably preferable to playing the Knicks.
Detroit ends its regular season with back-to-back games against one of its main competitors for homecourt advantage, the Milwaukee Bucks. Those games might shift the playoff matchups and allow us, a week before the playoffs begin, an early taste of playoff atmosphere.
No matter what the eventual outcome, the Pistons are suddenly a postseason threat again — a massive step up from “NBA’s worst team” status.
First off, dope article. 2nd, that jump in wins from Portland I found to be very interesting. Lastly you mentioned Cade cutting his long 2 attempts in half. Is he shooting more from 3 or getting to the rim more often?