On All Cylinders

In the midst of a recent game against the surging Orlando Magic, Cade Cunningham strolled into the lane, swapped hands a couple of times, saw Goga Bitadze and said to himself, “SELF: I will have this layup.” With an elegant spin gaining entry to the lane, he excused himself and laid an open layup in to put the Pistons up 114-97. Lay the blessed rock: check.

That this might be the best team J.B. Bickerstaff has ever coached[1] is fantastic for everyone. Detroit won that game 135-116. The Pistons are fresh off a shellacking of the unsteady East favorite New York Knicks, a month after a thirteen-game winning streak – it is neither your horse nor your flying circus that they needed overtime to beat the resilient, pre-Trae Young Washington Wizards.

Even with the Knicks’ victory over a surging San Antonio Spurs team in the [REDACTED] NBA Cup Final, Detroit looks like the serious contender in the East that has arrived slightly before schedule, as the Thunder did a few ticks over longitudinally two seasons ago. As we adjust to “ahead of schedule” increasingly meaning “exactly on time,” the Detroit Pistons have arrived. Finally, J.B. Bickerstaff has a team worth seeing through.

As of this writing, the Detroit Pistons rank in the top five of all of: net rating (7.1; fifth, reliably an indicator of a title contender); defensive rating (110.0; second); fast break points per game (18.1; third); second chance points per game (17.0; fifth); and points in the paint (57.8; second). They also lead the league in clutch wins (16).

Two seasons ago, this team won fourteen (14) games total; in the same year, they lost an league record-tying 28 games in a row. Both of Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey were on that team, as were Ausar Thompson and Isaiah Stewart, all of whom are now key contributors to this year’s model in Detroit. Last year they brought the Knicks to within a few margins of a first round upset; they’re the team that proved nobody in the East is afraid of anybody else, including a conference featuring a healthy Jayson Tatum.

At that point, the world’s interim head coach, J.B. Bickerstaff, was busy minding the fragments of a bungalow in Cleveland, a team and franchise desperately in need of anything that doesn’t identify as either of LeBron James or Comic Sans MS in order to determine its next identity[2] and/or crisis thereof. After years of plying his trade as the underling of regimes much larger than himself, Bickerstaff, at last, has a chance to leave his own imprint on a team, rather than having to act as an editor.

J.B. Bickerstaff has long been something akin to the barometer of PER among coaches – do better than him, and you tend to keep your job if you want it; do worse, and you are the scapegoat; but to be J.B. Bickerstaff, specifically, has come to mean being at the whims of crazed power up top and a public that can’t muster anything better than, “Can’t we get anyone better?” As an underling with his old man for the first Charlotte Bobcats teams, I maintain a soft spot for J.B. and wish him the best, wherever and however he gets it.

The Pistons also remain an impressively endless group: Cunningham fouled out in the first game of the season, ultimately a four-point loss to the Chicago Bulls. When a similar situation arose against the Portland Trail Blazers just before Christmas, Cade fouling out as Detroit was up eight with eight minutes and change remaining, the rest of the Pistons picked up the slack, with Jalen Duren leading the way.

As Jaylen Brown puts up otherworldly numbers to remind us that the world championship Boston Celtics team was, in fact, a team, with Jaylen adapting to its current reality, Cade Cunningham continues to build on his trade in largely the same terms: here is the squad surrounding me, and I will make the most out of them. His woodsy-driven friendship with Duren, complete with disconnected periods and the like, imbues the Pistons with the kind of character fans love seeing in the athletes they watch.

In 2026, Cade is an MVP candidate, the kind of star to whom the term applies literally because of his gravity on the court. Duren is a Most Improved Player candidate and might remain so for the next 3-5 years regardless of how good he is in any of those seasons. These Detroit Pistons are lining everybody up: they’ve got eyes on the target.

---

[1] With apologies to Cleveland,,,

[2] Extremely rude, especially given the first footnote. Hi Katrina!