The Detroit Pistons Are the Party-Crashers in the East
It hasn't been this good to be a Pistons fan in twenty years.
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The Detroit Pistons fell on the road to the San Antonio Spurs last night. The team has now lost back-to-back games for the first time in 2026 and just the third time overall this season. The Pistons are tied with the Boston Celtics for second in point differential at +8, only trailing the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder. Detroit can only lose six more times the rest of the way to reach the 60-win threshold. The team that lost sixty-plus games two seasons ago may very well win 60-plus this season. The Pistons haven’t won over 60 games in the regular season since the 2005-06 team that made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals. The Pistons won fifty or more games for seven consecutive seasons between 2001 and 2008. Every Pistons fan is hoping for a similar run this season as the team closes in on fifty-plus wins.
With so much attention on the NBA’s tanking problem of late, it’s easy to overlook all the great stories around the Association this season. Charlotte Hornets fans should be overjoyed about both their present and future. Toronto Raptors fans should be pleasantly surprised. New York Knicks fans should be thinking about a championship. In a season that hasn’t included one minute of Jayson Tatum, the Boston Celtics are still bona fide contenders, in what fans may have assumed might be a gap year. Out West, the aforementioned Spurs have arrived. The Phoenix Suns are eight games over .500 in mid-March. The Houston Rockets are still a top-4 seed without Steven Adams. The list goes on and on. There are great stories in so many places around the NBA.
But none better than the Pistons. Particularly if you’re a fan of the team. Former No. 1 overall pick Cade Cunningham looks to be a lead guard who will push to be in the MVP conversation for years to come. Another former lottery pick, Jalen Duran, made his first All-Star team this season. This franchise’s Expected W82 was 18.3 two seasons ago, but it skyrocketed to 59.7 this season. As of this writing, the Pistons are No. 2 in defensive points per possession, per Cleaning The Glass. If that number holds, it’d be their best team defense since the ‘07-08 Pistons. That run of excellence in the early 2000s was defined by Detroit being a consistently top-10 defensive team. With a defensive nucleus of Duren, Ausar Thompson, Isaiah Stewart, Cunningham, and Ron Holland II, you don’t have to squint too hard to see head coach J.B. Bickerstaff maintaining this level of defensive production in the years to come. When the Pistons won the 1990 NBA Finals, the team was second in defensive rating. They were second the last time they won the NBA Finals in 2004. They’re second in the NBA right now in defensive rating.
The Cade Cunningham part of the equation is fascinating. His offensive scoring numbers are down, but the team has never been better. His 50.4 eFG% is in the 43rd percentile in the NBA, per CleaningTheGlass. However, he’s in the 96th percentile in assist percentage for his teammates in the NBA, per CleaningTheGlass. He’s been a league-average shooter from deep and at the rim, but he’s still distributing the basketball at an elite level. Cunningham is in the MVP conversation at 24 years old, despite not being a super-efficient scorer. His season-long plus-minus of +415 is sixth-highest in the NBA, where he’s surrounded by winning basketball players like Derrick White, Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, etc.
The pressure is on teams like the Knicks and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the East. The Pistons haven’t won fifty-plus games in nearly 20 years. Knicks and Cavs fans saw this season as the year to get out of the Eastern Conference if they were ever going to do it, with no Tatum, or so they thought, and Tyrese Haliburton standing in the way. The Knicks made a coaching change and seemingly have the most pressure to break through of the bunch. The Cavs traded for James Harden ahead of the 2026 NBA Trade Deadline. Donovan Mitchell has been excellent in Cleveland for a while now. How do Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen fare this postseason? And yet, the Pistons sit atop the conference, in a prime position to spoil the party for both franchises.
This is not to say the Pistons fanbase won’t get antsy in the years to come if they are winning fifty-plus games but never reaching the NBA Finals. However, Detroit has a lead guard who can be the best player on a championship team. The Hornets and Raptors are great stories, but they don’t have a player like that. Most teams in the League do not. Their ceilings don’t feel the same as Detroit’s with Cunningham and Duren. Some Detroit fans, I’m sure, hope this season ends with a championship, and it very well might, but the hope is that this is just the first of many runs atop or near the top of the Eastern Conference. They can dream about another seven-year run like the team enjoyed in the early 2000s. New York and Cleveland fans are thinking about the now. Boston fans have been there, done that. Detroit fans haven’t been here in twenty years.
Detroit is the party-crasher in the East this season, and it’s the best play to be for any fanbase in the NBA right now.