ATLANTA — Here’s the thing: Fans of any non-elite team always want to talk about tearing down and rebuilding. In their minds, a quick draft means lottery fortune and then a quick return to glory. But sometimes rebuilding doesn’t work that way. Sometimes teams don’t hit stardom and end up wandering the desert for years and years.
Mismanagement and staff mistakes are also big reasons. But here’s the simple fact of any rebuilding situation: Until a team hits on a star player, the rebuild hasn’t even begun. Even a club like Houston, which emerged from rebuilding its cocoon with the help of several free agent signings this offseason, can’t make that leap without at least one local success (center Alperen Shengyun) playing at a high level.
I bring this up because I saw the Detroit Pistons lose a basketball game on Monday night. As it turns out, this is not a rare occurrence. 24 of them have been lost in a row, just two short of the NBA record for a two-season streak and four shy of the all-time point blank mark in two seasons for the streak-era Philadelphia 76ers. Since the 2023 All-Star break, Detroit has played 50 regular season games and is an unfathomable 4-46. With a minus-12 scoring margin, this is one of the worst teams in basketball history.
Next up for the Pistons is a home game against a struggling Utah Jazz side on Thursday, which some are already jokingly saying is a “must-win” game for Detroit, as a game against Brooklyn gives them some chance to break the streak. . The schedule after that is terrible; When the Pistons host the San Antonio Spurs on Jan. 10, it’s unthinkable that they might be snapping a 34-game losing streak.
What’s even more painful for Detroit is that the Pistons are theoretically in the 4th year of a down-to-earth rebuild, forced to step in with limited assets after the disastrous Blake Griffin trade. They haven’t won a playoff game since 2008. After three long seasons of going 60-176 overall, everyone is ready for a change.
But emerging from the build-up doesn’t depend on you missing out. In fact, that often gets in the way of trying franchises with short-term payouts.
Instead, getting out of this black hole depends on skill. And despite four years in the lottery and three years of cap space, what Detroit got is a precious little. In many ways, the Pistons are still a 1st year team in a rebuild.
The crux of the problem is that the Pistons have had eight first-round draft picks since their 2019 reboot and have yet to land a star. In the year Winning the lottery in 2021 got them Cade Cunningham, a solid player who could probably play in a balanced role, and trading up in the 2022 lottery got them a promising and athletic center in Jalen Duren. The combination of the two could be something in the pick-and-roll game, but Duren missed half the season with an ankle problem while shining brightly as the Pistons won two of their first three games by double digits. (I swear, this really happened.)
For one night, at least, Cunningham seemed to think the player Detroit would be him. He hit the Atlanta Hawks with a career-high 43 points on 16-of-24 Monday; While the Hawks’ defense was Swiss cheese, he had some A-ha plays along the way, including a pick-and-roll sweet split that gave him an easy walk down the lane for the dunk.
Cunningham’s struggles to find separation and switch problems have put a ceiling on him, giving him opportunities he may never have had. That boyBut it should be better than the first season.
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In the past, it’s not that the Pistons have drafted terrible players, but that they’ve consistently brought in the type of player that can bring them back to relevance. Original Sin left the 2020 draft with Killian Hayes, Sadiq Bey and Isaiah Stewart. What does it mean to take Hayes over Tyrese Halliburton, especially if the four teams that pick after Detroit do the same thing? Later in the draft, Stewart and Bey showed good value for their picks (16th and 19th), but didn’t hit the way Tyrese Maxey (21st) and Dezmen Bane (30th) did.
A similar story can be told from their following drafts. Detroit landed Jaden Ivey with the fifth pick in 2022, and while he’s struggled with perimeter consistency and hasn’t locked in as a defender the way one might expect, he’s not a bust. He had 15 points, eight rebounds and four assists on Monday. Duren, one of the best alternate picks at that position, is already on the Pistons after Detroit traded future protected picks to grab him at 13 — arguably the best trade of the Troy Weaver era.
Instead, the biggest issue with that draft was that the Pistons went into the top four and couldn’t get someone better. The same thing happened to Victor Wembanyama’s Lottery in 2023, which saw them drop to fifth place despite having the league’s top record. Aussar Thompson and Marcus Sasser have each had their moments, but this time, they aren’t the guys who will single-handedly end Detroit’s playoff drought.
As luck would have it, Detroit’s one-year lottery win in 2016 was a surprise. The first two players on the board in 2021 are Cunningham and Jalen Green instead of a certain All-Star. Sure, with 20-20 hindsight, they could have traded for Scotty Barnes or Franz Wagner, but no one suggested it at the time.
Clearly, Detroit didn’t help itself with other decisions. Bain’s move to James Wiseman was highly questionable amid the vacuum and confusion on a roster that had two young, productive centers in Duren and Stewart (now shoehorned into four and struggling). Trading the rights to two seconds and Trey Lyles to overpay Marvin Bagley was a similar head-scratcher. The Pistons let Bruce Brown walk for nothing and have failed to facilitate cap space in recent seasons. The only real win was signing Jeremy Grant as a free agent and flipping for a first-round pick two years later.
Of course, they won’t. This is bad Combining bad decisions without bad luck. The Pistons’ lackluster shooting would have been better if Bojan Bogdanovic had played more than eight games and Alec Burks hadn’t turned into a pumpkin. (Side note: Both players are in their 30s and had to be traded before this season, but the Pistons at last Jumping up the ladder.) With Cunningham checking out, their ball handling will be greatly diminished by a healthy Monte Morris. Despite their strong interest in centre-backs, losing Duren was a physical blow to ensure there were enough replacements in the back line.
The horror record aspect is a high lottery pick, but if you’re hoping for the Hunter to come in the upcoming draft, I have bad news for you. As I’ve written recently, scouts are extremely low on the one-and-done crop this season and won’t see stars who can’t escape the 2024 lottery.
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All of this is to say that the Pistons’ drought may be nowhere near over. They won’t. This Bad (ummm .. right?) when they’re healthy and have another year of experience, but it’s hard to see them getting any better anytime soon.
And in fact, that is not the case It is what he said. Unusual. The Sacramento Kings went 17 years before losing in the first round a season ago. The Minnesota Timberwolves went 14 years, then back in the water for three, before finally re-emerging last season. The Washington Wizards, reeling at 4-22, haven’t had a winning record since 2018, the Charlotte Hornets haven’t made the playoffs since 2016 and the Spurs haven’t been in half a decade. None of these three look any closer than they did a few years ago. Even the mighty Lakers had four consecutive 50-loss seasons, which only ended because the greatest player of all time decided he wanted to try living in LA.
When fans have a sugar-plum view of what a rebuild looks like, when their team loses three times in eight days by 32 points (something like this last week against Detroit) and they can’t move right. The class when the Clippers give a superstar and five first-rounders or get Jaren Jackson Jr., Ja Morant and Bane in consecutive drafts. But those are the young ones.
With teams wondering why they’re fighting a rebuild tooth and nail, waiting until the situation seems hopeless and there’s no other way out, this year’s Pistons are the reason why. Especially in a league with flat lottery odds, the reward for completing a full run is limited. Sometimes rebuilding means a couple of enthusiastic years followed by a spring-boarded return to relevancy by hitting stars in the draft, but more often, it means something more serious. The 2023-24 Detroit Pistons are a perfect example.
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(Pistons coach Monty Williams photo: Jason Miller/Getty Images)