Under J.B. Bickerstaff, not the same old Pistons
With coach J.B. Bickerstaff and guard Cade Cunningham at the controls, Detroit is a contender in the East at last (courtesy Detroit Pistons)
Updated 3/13/2025 10:52 AM
News flash: The Detroit Pistons are good.
The denizens of Moda Center saw it first-hand Sunday night as the Pistons built a big lead and held on for a 119-112 victory over the Trail Blazers on Bill Walton Tribute Night.
Detroit has a quality coach in J.B. Bickerstaff, a young franchise player in Cade Cunningham and a supporting cast scrappy enough to make some noise in the postseason this spring.
After a Tuesday victory over Washington, the Pistons were 37-29 and in a tight battle with Milwaukee and Indiana for fourth place — and home-court advantage in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs — heading into the final month of the regular season.
“It has been amazing,” says George Blaha, long-time radio play-by-play man for the Pistons. “This is one of the most exciting times of my 49 years broadcasting for this franchise.”
Anything is better than what the Pistons have been in recent years — the sad sacks of the East and one of the worst franchises in the NBA. Ownership and management made one of the poorest decisions in the history of decision-making when, after Monty Williams was fired in Phoenix following the 2022-23 campaign, they gave him a $78.5-million contract over six years to coach the Pistons.
After Detroit limped home with a league-worst 14-68 record, Williams was one and done. Sure, the roster was barren and Cunningham missed most of the season due to injury, but Williams didn’t provide much in the coaching department. The Pistons, now paying him the remaining $65 million to coach his sons at TMI Episcopal in San Antonio, then reached out to another fired coach as a life line — Bickerstaff.
J.B., who celebrated his 46th birthday on Monday, had taken the Cavaliers from the graveyard to respectability, going 22-50 in 2020-21 to 44-38 to 51-31 and then 48-34 and the second round of the playoffs in 2023-24. Cleveland management let him go at season’s end, reportedly questioning whether he had the capabilities to take the Cavs “to the next level.”
“You gotta come up with some kind of narrative, I guess,” Bernie Bickerstaff, JB’s father and formerly a well-respected NBA head coach in Seattle, Denver, Washington and Charlotte, told me this week. “It was bulls—t. (The Cavaliers) won 99 games in his last two years, and he had three starters who played just over 50 games because of health, and they still made it to the second round the last year.”
But J.B. has been an immediate success in the Motor City, giving hope to a franchise that has been hopeless for a lot of years. It is not an easy thing to do when “perennial loser” is your byword.
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The Chicago White Sox have long been the woebegone franchise in Major League Baseball. Beginning as the White Stockings in 1901 (they became the White Sox in 1904), the White Sox have won World Series three times — in 1906, 1917 and 2005, the latter when manager Ozzie Guillen caught lightning in a bottle. In 125 seasons since their inception, they have made the playoffs 11 times. Since the postseason was expanded to four teams in 1969 (the format is now 12 teams), the White Sox have had 19 winning seasons, making the playoffs seven times, with 36 losing campaigns. In 2024 they went 41-121, finishing 51 1/2 games behind AL Central winner Cleveland.
Since the turn of the 21st century, the “kick-me” sign has been on the NFL’s Detroit Lions. In the 22 seasons from 2000 to 2021, they had a losing record 17 times and made the playoffs only three times, always losing in the wild-card round. They were 2-14 in 2001, 0-16 in 2008 and went through nine head coaches. Since 1957, when they won the NFL championship with Bobby Layne at quarterback, they have gotten as far as the conference finals only once. (Dan Campbell has them turned around now; they are 27-7 the last two years and one of the best teams in pro football.)
In the NHL, several teams have dismal success rates, most notably the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Arizona Coyotes and, in recent years, the Ottawa Senators, though they could be playoff-bound this year for the first time since 2017.
The Los Angeles Clippers were long the doormat of the NBA. From the 1979-80 season in San Diego to 2010-11, they had a losing record in 29 of 32 seasons. The three years they made the playoffs, they lost in the first round. (In the 13 campaigns since, however, they have had winning marks every year and qualified for the postseason 11 times).
Then there are the Pistons. They won the NBA championship under Larry Brown in 2004, got to the Eastern Conference finals under Flip Saunders in 2008 and have been mostly sawdust since then, with just one winning season and two playoff appearances through last season. They were historically bad from 2019-24, going 20-46, 20-52, 23-59, 17-65 and 14-68.
Enter Bickerstaff, author of one of the better turnaround stories in recent pro sports history.
“J.B. was born into it,” says Chauncey Billups, the Trail Blazers coach and a close friend of Bickerstaff. “Bernie taught him well.”
Billups is a Denver native who was a local hero at George Washington High. J.B. moved to Denver in 1990 when his father was fired by the Sonics and hired as general manager of the Nuggets.
“I remember when we moved to Denver from Seattle,” says Bernie, now 83, living in Washington D.C., and still working as a scout for the San Antonio Spurs. “When we got off the plane, they kept talking about how we gotta go see this guy ‘Smooth.’ Chauncey was a young kid at that time. They had it right.”
Billups was the Colorado state Player of the Year as a senior; J.B., a year behind him in school, earned the same honor as a star at East High the next season.
“Chauncey and I have been friends since the seventh grade,” J.B. says. “We played AAU ball together. I would play a grade up (in age group) to play with him. Every game, he got carded because they wanted to check his ID and see if he was really in the eighth grade.”
Billups would go on to a terrific college career at Colorado and stardom in the NBA, winning an NBA championship with the Pistons in 2004 and finally joining the Naismith Hall of Fame last year. Bickerstaff, meanwhile, had two productive seasons at Oregon State under Eddie Payne before transferring to Minnesota for his final two collegiate campaigns.
“Chauncey was dominant as a player, but the thing I appreciated about him, as we grew up and his recognition and legacy grew, he never changed,” Bickerstaff says. “He always treated us like little brothers. That is still the way it is today. He will text and check up on me to see how I am doing.
“He had every right to act like king of the hill, as they used to call him, but he never treated us that way. He treated us like family. That is what I respect most about him.”
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Bickerstaff has turned the Pistons into a winner in his first season at the helm (courtesy Detroit Pistons)
J.B. started his NBA coaching career at age 25 as an assistant coach on his father’s staff in Charlotte in 2004-05. He was an NBA assistant for 12 years before getting the Houston head job on an interim basis 11 games into the 2015-16 after Kevin McHale was fired. J.B. lasted only to the end of the season, going 37-34 and taking the Rockets to the first round of the playoffs.
Bickerstaff moved on to Memphis as an assistant and was promoted to the head job when David Fizdale was fired early in the 2017-18 season. The Grizzlies went 15-48 the rest of the way, improved to 33-49 in 2018-19 and J.B. was out of a job.
But not for long. Cleveland hired him as associate head coach, and when head coach John Beilein resigned in February of 2020, J.B. was a head coach again. During his time there, the Cavaliers were good, but not good enough for him to keep his job.
Then it was on to Detroit, and the beginning of one of the best stories in the NBA this season.
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Last May, Trajan Langdon was hired as president/basketball operations in Detroit. In July, Bickerstaff joined the fold. They began to build a roster capable of competing.
Cunningham was the lynchpin, the No. 1 pick in the 2021 draft out of Oklahoma State who had an excellent rookie year but missed most of the next season following leg surgery.
The 6-6, 235-pound Cunningham, only 23, “can do everything,” veteran broadcaster George Blaha says (courtesy Detroit Pistons)
Thirty-one players had seen action for the Pistons during the 2023-24 season, so stability was needed. There was young talent already on hand in center Jalen Duren, forwards Isaiah Stewart and Ausar Thompson and guards Cunningham and Jaden Ivey.
Langdon added veterans Tobias Harris at power forward and Malik Beasley, Dennis Schroder and Tim Hardaway Jr. at guard, along with 19-year-old rookie forward Ron Holland. Suddenly, Bickerstaff had a rotation he could work with. And that he did.
The Pistons are 11th in defensive rating and 14th in offensive rating, much improved from a year ago, when they were 27th and 25th, respectively. They are playing faster offensively — ranking ninth in pace — and get after it on defense.
“J.B. has turned our culture around,” says Kevin Grigg, the Pistons’ long-time media relations director. “The veterans — guys like Tobias and Tim — are making sure his message carries down to our young guys. The way they are playing together, playing for each other, shows with the results on the court.”
“He has brought them some toughness that they needed,” Billups says. “He holds everybody accountable. That is needed a lot of times in our league. He walks that line where he is going to be on them, and then he lets up a little bit. He develops good relationships with his guys, and it’s paying off.”
“J.B. is phenomenal,” says Blaha, who turns 80 on March 26. “He has a certain way he wants the team to play. The guys respect that. They have completely bought into what he wants to do. They love playing for the guy. When he asks somebody to do it differently, he does it in a positive way as opposed to dressing them down. You can see it when he pulls a guy over during a game. Sooner or later, there is a smile and a tap on the backside. If your guys love to play for you, and they play hard for you, then they are all in. Our guys are all in.”
“Grit” is a word associated with Bickerstaff’s current team. J.B. doesn’t mind at all.
“It is something we believe in, but it is also part of the character of our group,” he says. “If you don’t have that grit when things get difficult, you will find a way to bail out. The great ones have it more than anybody else. You have to have that resolve, because there are going to be times when things are difficult.
“It is part of our foundation, who we want to be every night. We also want to connect to our fan base. Fans love to see teams that play with that grit, guys who are willing to sacrifice of themselves, do the dirty work, show the physicality, the toughness that comes with it. Especially in Detroit with the history of the Bad Boys and Chauncey’s group when he was with the Pistons. We want to emulate that and bring that back.”
Bickerstaff likes another phrase: “Win the trenches.”
“It means being attack-minded, driving the ball, offensive rebounding,” he says. “We want that to be part of our identity.”
Blaha preaches the togetherness of the Pistons.
“This is the most unselfish group I have seen since the ‘Going to Work’ team (of 2003-04),” he says. “These guys are almost unselfish to a fault. They will make the extra pass and the extra, extra pass. They are always looking for the best shot for the team, not necessarily for them. We have a great deal of talent and a great deal of togetherness. It is a team. It is not just a certain amount of guys. Even Cade, as good as he is, is a very unselfish player. He looks to get his teammates involved.”
In Portland, Cunningham — who made his first All-Star team this season — quietly scored his team-high 28 points with five assists and four rebounds (albeit with eight turnovers) in 36 minutes. He packs 235 pounds on his 6-6 frame but moves fluently, as if without effort.
“His dad (Keith Cunningham) is still disappointed he didn’t play football — he played at Texas Tech — and thinks Cade could have been a five-star quarterback,” Blaha says. “But I think Cade made the right choice.”
Cunningham, 23, averages 25.6 points and 6.1 rebounds and is third in the league at 9.3 assists per game. He has eight triple-doubles, is second in the NBA (behind Nikola Jokic) with 35 20/5/5 games and is second (behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) for points in the paint by guards with 12.2 per contest.
“He is a stat-sheet stuffer,” Blaha says. “He can do everything. He rebounds, passes the ball, plays defense. He is so good in the paint — I call that his office. When Trajan got more players to score from the perimeter so defenses couldn’t load up on Cade, he really turned the page.”
Adds Bernie Bickerstaff: “Cade is really good, but what really impresses me is the professionalism and how he handles himself as a young man. The guy has all the components to be the real deal.”
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Detroit has won 12 of its last 15 games, starting with an eight-game streak from Feb. 7-26. The immediate schedule ahead offers a chance to gain some ground, too, with only one of its next seven games against teams with a winning record.
The Pistons haven’t been to the playoffs since 2019 and haven’t won a postseason game since 2008. Those streaks should get broken this year.
“At some point in the 2004 season, it registered to me, ‘These guys have a chance to win big,’ ” Blaha says. “The same thing happened 20 to 30 games into this season. I realized they can be pretty darn good. They could work their way into a truly upper-echelon team. They don’t fear anybody, and that’s a good thing. They are confident in each other and confident as a group.”
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