DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – A season ago it didn’t seem like it could get any worse for the Pistons. They were 17-65 and were going to receive a top five pick for the third year in a row. Monty Williams, a coach that had been to the NBA Finals with Phoenix, was hired to rebuild the team. The pieces were starting to come together with a young team and a veteran coach.
April 14, 2024, came – almost a year later – and the situation feels like the movie “Groundhog Day”. Detroit is worse off than they were a year ago with a franchise worse record 14-68. The Pistons are back in the NBA Lottery for a chance to have the no. 1, again, and will be in the top five draft for the fourth straight year.
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“I think it’s pretty clear we have fan base that’s hungry. From my vantage point, they’ve been committed. We want to match that with a commitment to being a lot better than we were this year,” said Williams. “I know we have grown. We’ve had a number of close games that didn’t go our way, but we’ve also had obvious areas where we’ve got to get better. We ae committed to that and we can’t express that enough.”
Williams is right that Detroit is committed with two first-round draft picks and young talent to grow. Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren were picked to lead the way and Ausar Thompson was added this year. With the likes of Isaiah Stewart and Jaden Ivey added to with Cunningham, Duren, and Thompson, four of them age at 22 or younger. With that and more than $60 million in cap space, Detroit will be able to add another piece to break through and move up in the ranks of the NBA.
“We are going to continue to explore every area we can be better, whether it’s schematics, upstairs in analytics, all the choices we make going forward. I’ve been in a lot of places and I know what it’s like to not have the resources. This is a place that has everything and we have to match that with the things we do,” says Williams.
Detroit will now look ahead to the NBA Draft on June 26-27 at the Barclays Center in New York.
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