5 reasons why the ‘boring’ Detroit Pistons are worthy of your attention (and Shaq’s too)

Hall of Famer, TNT commentator and G14 classification enthusiast Shaquille O’Neal recently made some waves with a pair of unflattering statements about the fightin’ Detroit Pistons.

First, Shaq dismissed Detroit as a boring team unworthy of attention because they were “four games under .500” (Note: they are eight games over .500) and “not winning no f***ing championship.”

Then, during TNT’s “Inside the NBA” on Tuesday, Shaq appeared to offer an olive branch to the Pistons and their faithful, praising All-Star guard Cade Cunningham and the team’s general willingness to “play hard” under head coach Chauncey Billups.

Just one problem with that: While Chauncey Billups was synonymous with the Pistons throughout the 2000s, leading the franchise to six straight Eastern Conference finals appearances, a pair of NBA Finals and the 2004 NBA championship, and while he is currently an NBA head coach, he is not the coach of the Detroit Pistons. Billups, in fact, coaches the Portland Trail Blazers. J.B. Bickerstaff coaches the Detroit Pistons — and has done so with such aplomb that he’s probably going to wind up at or near the top of a lot of Coach of the Year ballots come season’s end. (Though presumably not Shaq’s, if he has one. Is he going to get one? Do those come with G14 classification?)

When his commentator colleague Candace Parker called out the mistake, Shaq responded by … reasserting that the team he was just praising was beneath his notice.

“You know, first of all, I don’t watch Detroit,” he said. “How about that?”

Yeah. How about that?

In any event: Perhaps you, like Shaq, haven’t gotten around to checking in on the Pistons all that much this season, owing partly (maybe mostly) to the fact that they haven’t had the benefit of playing on national television all that much this season. Well, I’ve got some good news: They’re going to be getting at least another handful of national TV games in about a month or so, because the Pistons are on pace to make the playoffs for the first time in six years.

You’ll probably want to brush up on them before then. So: In honor of a team that sits eight games over .500 for the first time since January of 2009, here are five things worth knowing about the 2024-25 Detroit Pistons, who’ve been one of the best stories in the NBA all season long … even if not everybody’s been following it.

1. This is one of the most dramatic turnarounds in NBA history.

One reason why the general audience might be a little slow to pick up what the Pistons have been putting down? The last time they heard anything about Detroit, it was about how last year’s Monty Williams-led model was threatening to set a new NBA record for consecutive losses, futility and embarrassment. What a difference a year makes: Williams is gone, Bickerstaff is in, and the Pistons have left those bad old days behind.

The 2023-24 Pistons won 14 games all season. The 2024-25 edition tied that mark on Boxing Day, and doubled it before the All-Star break.

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Detroit enters Thursday’s matchup with the woeful Washington Wizards at 37-29 — 23 more wins than last season, with a winning percentage a whopping 39% higher than last season. By both total and percentage, that is, by far, the biggest turnaround in the league this season, topping the Memphis Grizzlies (15 more wins, +30.7%), Cleveland Cavaliers (seven more wins, +26.1%) and the aforementioned Trail Blazers (seven more wins, +16.2%).

(In fairness to Shaq, we really should like what Chauncey’s doing there. We just also have to know where “there” is.)

If the Pistons maintain their .561 winning percentage, they’ll finish with 46 wins — a 32-win year-over-year improvement. That would tie the 1979-1980 Boston Celtics (who added rookie Larry Bird) for the fifth-largest single-season turnaround in NBA history — behind only the 2007-08 Celtics (who traded for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen), the 1997-98 Spurs (who drafted Tim Duncan and got David Robinson healthy), the 1989-1990 Spurs (who drafted Robinson), and the 2004-05 Phoenix Suns (who signed Steve Nash).

A cynic might ding Detroit by arguing that it had nowhere to go but up after last season, and that any climb is going to look more impressive when you start several sub-basements below everybody else. A less jaundiced eye, though, might see this glow-up as even more impressive than those top-five turnarounds precisely because these Pistons didn’t add any Hall of Famers. They just signed Tobias Harris and Malik Beasley, traded for Tim Hardaway Jr., handed Bickerstaff a roster full of untapped potential, and trusted that he could get more out of it. The results speak for themselves: This year’s Pistons are on pace to finish with the highest winning percentage the franchise has seen since the late Flip Saunders’ final year on the bench back in 2008.

“[Bickerstaff] kind of keeps us on track and lets us know how, since day one, we’re not just out here to do this,” Pistons center Jalen Duren recently told reporters. “We’re trying to make some noise. We’re trying to become a better team. And he’s carried that all season. He’s the guy who’s set the tone for the culture.”

He’s not the only one:

2. Cade Cunningham is playing like the prospect he was projected to be.

There are two players in the NBA this season averaging 25 points and nine assists per game. One of them is Nikola Jokić, who might be on the way to his fourth MVP trophy. The other is Cunningham, the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, who has responded to playing in less congestion thanks to the presence of legitimate floor-spacers like Beasley, Harris and Hardaway by turning in the most composed, controlled and flat-out best play of his career, and who might be on the way to his first All-NBA appearance.

With more shooters and finishers on the other end of his passes, only Trae Young and Jokić average more assists or points created via assist than Cunningham; only Jokić and LeBron James have posted more triple-doubles. With more openings to penetrate off the dribble, he’s driving to the basket more often than anybody besides Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Brunson, Young and Zion Williamson, and generating points on 71.5% of those drives, by far a career-high. And when defenses try to play him for the drive by sagging off or ducking under ball-screens, he’s become devastating in the pull-up game, whether from midrange (where he’s shooting a career-best 47%) or beyond the arc, where he’s made 81 pull-up triples — more than double last season, and nearly as many as in the past three seasons combined.

You can quibble over Cunningham’s shooting efficiency: 51% on 2-pointers and 36% from 3, marks that establish the gap between where he is and where Luka Dončić, a similarly styled big processing point guard, was at a similar stage of his career. And while that is a big gap, it’s also one between “top MVP candidate” and “All-NBA-caliber huge-usage centerpiece of a team with a real shot at home-court advantage in the opening round of the playoffs.”

Which means that Cunningham has already bridged another very important gap: the one between the seemingly limitless promise he flashed as a prep prospect and the underwhelming-for-a-number-of-reasons results of his first three seasons as a pro. What Cunningham’s producing right now represents potential actualized; a promise, kept.

3. Ausar Thompson is an absolute menace.

Hey, you know how much you’ve enjoyed watching Amen Thompson tear it up down in Houston? Well, fun fact: They made two of him!

Ausar Thompson missed the first month of the season recovering from a frightening blood clot issue that curtailed his rookie campaign and kept him on the shelf for more than eight months. After a few weeks of ramp-up time, Bickerstaff slotted the 6-foot-7 havoc-wreaker into the starting lineup, where he promptly began … y’know … wreaking havoc.

He’s averaging 16.2 points per 36 minutes on 57.6% shooting over his last 30 games, to go with 8.2 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 3.2 steals, 1.0 blocks and 6.3 deflections — all while guarding the nastiest big wings and on-ball threats the opponent has to offer. Detroit’s gone 20-10 in those 30 starts, outscoring opponents by 8.3 points per 100 possessions with Ausar on the floor, and allowing just 107.7 points-per-100 — a near-Thunderian rate — with him flying all over the court like a banshee.

If what you like most about basketball is hyper-athletes sprinting everywhere they go, playing physical and uncompromising defense, making the extra pass and eschewing 3-pointers in favor of flinging himself relentlessly at the basket, then I suggest you check this young man out. He might just be your new favorite player.

And if you’re not sick of 3-pointers …

4. Malik Beasley’s shimmy is a truly delightful celebration.

Legendary choreographer Martha Graham once said that dance is the hidden language of the soul. Well, your man Malik Beasley has spent all season revealing the words buried deep within his soul to opponents. It seems to be saying, “Hahahahaha — check this s*** out.”

There’s an irrepressible childlike joy to Beasley wiggling his hips in the general direction of his foes after knocking down a big 3-pointer. And if it seems like he’s getting better at it as the season goes along, it might be because he’s had plenty of practice: The ninth-year veteran has drilled a league-leading 259 triples this season, launching more than nine long-balls per game and connecting on nearly four of them, a 42% clip — all career highs.

Beasley has proven a perfect complement for Cunningham, an ever-present threat either spotting up opposite Cade as a target in the pick-and-roll or as a ghost screener in a small-small two-man game that can tie opposing defenses in knots. Send two to the ball against Detroit at your own peril. Before long, the ball’s probably going to land in the hands of a player who’s blossomed into one of the league’s premier perimeter marksmen, and a below-the-waist shimmy is soon to follow — much to his head coach’s chagrin.

5. They’ve been legitimately good for a while now.

Scoff if you must at celebrating a team that’s a mere eight games over .500 in a league where the Cavaliers, Thunder and Celtics exist. (It’s worth noting that more than half of the NBA’s teams wish they were eight games over .500, but I digress.) Since mid-December, though, Detroit is 27-13 — tied with the Knicks for the fourth-best record in the NBA in that span, behind only Cleveland, Oklahoma City and the Lakers, and a 55-win pace over the full season.

The Pistons rank 10th in offensive efficiency and third on the defensive end over that 40-game stretch — one of six teams in the top 10 on both sides of the ball. Over the past six weeks, that’s up to seventh and third, thanks in part to the bruising interior intimidation and elite rim protection of Isaiah Stewart: Among 216 players to contest at least 100 shots at the basket this season, Beef Stew ranks second in defensive field goal percentage allowed, according to Second Spectrum, holding opponents to just 45.5% shooting on point-blank trie

Since the start of February, only Cleveland and Oklahoma City — the two best teams in the league, two historically excellent regular-season squads — have a better net rating than Detroit. The Pistons won 14 games last season. Their preseason Las Vegas over/under was 24.5 wins. They enter Thursday’s play neck-and-neck with the Bucks and Pacers in the running for fourth, fifth and sixth in the East; multiple postseason projection models now have them as not only a near-certainty to finish above the play-in, but with a better-than-20% shot at fourth.

Skeptics can dismiss Detroit as an also-ran fattening up on soft-serve competition, owing to its 10-19 record against opponents above .500 and its 27-10 mark against those below. Recent wins over the Clippers and Celtics, though — and tight losses to the Cavs and revamped Warriors — suggest that they’re capable of more than just gatekeeping, which is something nobody could have predicted back in October … and which is kind of what we’re all looking for when we tune in on any given night, right? Something unexpected, something fresh and new — a zag from the chalk, a burst of blood in the chest.

Surprises like these Pistons don’t come around all that often. It’s worth celebrating and savoring them when they do … even if it means having to learn some new names, and figure out who, exactly, is coaching them.