The Pistons have long been among the NBA's worst teams. Now it's the hottest.
The Detroit Pistons spent last season as indisputably the NBA’s worst team. Now, they’re authoring one of its most surprising turnarounds.
The Detroit Pistons spent last season as indisputably the NBA’s worst team. Now, they’re authoring one of its most surprising turnarounds.
By beating the Los Angeles Clippers on Monday, the Pistons have won seven consecutive games, the team’s longest winning streak in 10 years. It improved its record to 32-26 — one more victory than the Pistons had combined during the previous two seasons.
Detroit’s opponents during its unbeaten run have not been among the league’s upper echelon, yet that is not to discount the streak, because it was only last season that the Pistons went all of November 2023 and nearly all of December without winning a single game. On their way to a franchise-record 68 losses, Detroit lost 28 consecutive games, an NBA single-season record.
The franchise known for its championship-winning “Bad Boys” era of the 1980s had turned simply bad in recent years: From the 2019-20 season through 2023-24, Detroit won a league-worst 24% of its games. The team representing the Motor City was going nowhere: Detroit had not made the playoffs since 2019 and had not won a single playoff game since 2008.
In an attempt at a correction, the Pistons last spring jettisoned general manager Troy Weaver and fired coach Monty Williams, just one year after Detroit owner Tom Gores made Williams one of the league’s highest-paid coaches, a hiring that single-handedly reset coaching pay across the league. When Williams was fired, he was still owed a reported $65 million.
https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/nba/pistons-nba-turnaround-rcna193712
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