Detroit Pistons: revving up

In today’s post, we’ll talk about the Detroit Pistons season who, after a year to forget, have managed to climb to the playoff positions in the Eastern Conference. Next, we’ll analyze the changes they made during the summer and how they have affected their performance this season.

The 2023/24 season, a year to forget

If we look back a year, few NBA followers would have thought that the Detroit Pistons would be a playoff team in 2025. The Pistons began their annus horribilis by signing the highest contract ever seen for a coach, with 78 million over 6 years for Monty Williams, who had taken the Phoenix Suns to the 2021 finals (they lost to the Milwaukee Bucks).

It soon became clear that the season wasn’t going to be good, but no one imagined how bad it could get. After starting the season 3-2, they lost the next 28 games (2 entire months), establishing a new NBA historical record, which until then was shared by the Process Sixers and the post-LeBron Cavs (both with 26).

After this, the team’s only goal was to give minutes to their young players and see which ones could be useful for the future. In February, they traded Bojan Bogdanovic to the Knicks, thinking about not winning more games than necessary.

The team ended up with up to 31 players, the second most in the league, only behind the Memphis Grizzlies who were devastated by injuries. Remember that NBA rosters are 15 players, which would be enough to fill two franchises.

After this disastrous year, the Pistons decided to fire Monty Williams, to whom they will still have to pay 65 million, and secured the services of J.B. Bickerstaff, who had taken Cleveland to the playoffs in the last two seasons.

Building a solid team

The Pistons approached the 2024 offseason with the clear intention of adding veteran presence to their young core, reinforced with rookie Ron Holland. To do this, they made 3 signings:

• Tobias Harris. The veteran forward already played for Detroit between 2016 and 2018, and ensures a solid presence, especially in the regular season.
• Malik Beasley, an outside shooter much needed in today’s NBA, who arrived in Detroit after being a starter on a team with aspirations like Antetokounmpo’s Milwaukee Bucks.
• Tim Hardaway Jr, a reliable shooting guard who had been averaging around 15 points per game with the Dallas Mavericks.

In the following chart, we see how the Pistons’ young core has accounted for about half of the minutes in both seasons, but for this campaign, instead of having many residual end-of-bench players, the minutes have been concentrated in the summer acquisitions.

Among the players who have been in Detroit for both campaigns, two particularities must be explained:

• Jaden Ivey, who was the most used player last year, has been off the courts since January 1 due to a leg injury.
• Simone Fontecchio arrived in the middle of last season, which explains his increase in minutes this season.

A change in offense and defense

The change has been notable both in offense and defense, and simply by looking at the main metrics, we see how Detroit has gone from being one of the worst teams in everything to a team in the upper half of the competition.

The evolution in shooting has come from practically the entire roster and is supported by the new players we mentioned earlier, especially Malik Beasley, who is the league’s top three-point shooter with 286 successful shots from beyond the arc.

As they say lately in the NBA, defense wins championships, and in Detroit they’ve applied this, improving in all defensive categories and placing themselves in the top-10 defenses of the competition.

The star: Cade Cunningham

Without a doubt, the star of the Detroit Pistons is their point guard and number 1 draft pick, Cade Cunningham. This year he has managed to improve his numbers compared to last year, while also slightly improving his shooting percentages.

Cunningham has been an All-Star for the first time this year and is in the conversations to end up in the All-NBA Second Team, which would make him the first Piston to achieve this since the legendary Ben Wallace and Chauncey Billups did it in 2006.

What now?

The Pistons’ good year will mean they’ll finish with a positive record for the first time since 2016. It’s worth remembering that Detroit hasn’t won a playoff game since 2008, when they lost the conference finals against Garnett, Pierce, and Allen’s Celtics. Since then, they’ve accumulated 3 first-round sweeps (against Cleveland in 2009, Cleveland again in 2016, and Milwaukee in 2019).

The good performance of their young core ensures them a bright future, and they’ll enter this year’s playoffs without any pressure and eager to gain experience in these battles. There, the hunger of Cunningham, Ivey, or Duren could be the surprise factor to challenge the established teams, showing that Detroit is ready to become a threat in the Eastern Conference again.