What’s next for the Pistons? Detroit rediscovered Bad Boy identity, but now the team has to modernize it

There’s something gratifying about an organization rediscovering its identity. The NBA feels right when the Los Angeles Lakers have superstars or when the San Antonio Spurs are built around international phenoms. The Detroit Pistons have always been maulers. Whether it was the Bad Boys of the late ’80s and early ’90s or the 2004 team that won a championship averaging 87 points per game in the playoffs, we know the Pistons as a gritty, defense-first organization.

They’ve slowly rebuilt themselves in that image, and it materialized fully this season with a 30-win improvement and a playoff spot. They jumped from 25th in defense a year ago to 10th while leading the NBA in technical fouls. Nobody enjoyed playing the Pistons this year. Certainly not the New York Knicks, anyway, who just escaped their first-round rugby match in six games.

The Pistons might’ve swung that series with a few breaks. Tim Hardaway Jr. should have gotten potentially game-altering free throws at the end of Game 4. It took a 21-0 Cam Payne-driven fourth-quarter run to swing Game 1. And in Game 6, the Pistons were up seven with 2:35 to play but allowed the Knicks to close on an 11-1 run, capped off by a game-winning Jalen Brunson triple. 

If you’re sensing a theme here, it’s New York’s late-game offense. The Knicks generated the shots they needed late and the Pistons didn’t. That’s why they’re advancing to the second round.

We shouldn’t be especially surprised by that. We’re early in Detroit’s run here. It usually isn’t reasonable to expect such a young team to immediately have all of the answers in a playoff setting. Losses like these are learning experiences, and there’s no reason to doubt that Detroit can internalize what went wrong here and figure it out down the line.

So what did go wrong here? It wasn’t Cade Cunningham, but we can start looking there. His individual numbers were about what you’d expect out of a budding star in his first trip through the playoffs. The volume numbers were there. The efficiency numbers were not. That was especially true when he was hounded by arguably the best perimeter defender on Earth. Through the first four games of the series, Cunningham shot 16 of 44 with OG Anunoby defending him (36.4%) and 33 of 63 (52.4%) when he was guarded by any other Knick, according to NBA.com tracking data.

Nobody scores especially efficiently against Anunoby, but a playoff-caliber offense needs ways of getting Cunningham away from him or attacking other matchups. They didn’t have those things in this series. The Pistons put so many iffy shooters on the floor that the Knicks could fairly easily hedge or show most pick-and-rolls long enough for Anunoby to get back in the action. They have a number of interesting supporting scorers, but no true second banana. Dennis Schröder is at a marked disadvantage if he needs to match points with Karl-Anthony Towns. It’s hard to score consistently in the playoffs with low 3-point volume. Those paint points Detroit relies on are harder to come by when nobody is concerned about your perimeter players.

This is where balance becomes essential. The Pistons just had their best season in more than a decade because they leaned into their organization’s old-school tendencies. The goal here is going to be maintaining the defense and toughness that got them here with the modernization necessary to take the next step. They need to shoot more 3s without sacrificing much defensively. They need to keep developing their own players while keeping an eye out for flashier ones who might make sense down the line.

All of this leads to the inevitable star trade conversations most ascending teams face when they encounter playoff disappointment. The Pistons have an All-NBA player in Cunningham whom other superstars might be interested in playing with. Getting such players to live in markets like Detroit isn’t always easy, but those who prioritize winning are going to appreciate what the Pistons are building. 

They have all of their first-round picks after 2025 at their disposal along with plenty of youth and good matching salary. So what’s out there?

The A-listers probably don’t make sense. Kevin Durant is too old. Giannis Antetokounmpo would require a wholesale reinvention of the team beyond Cunningham, which is doable, but probably only sensible if he signals it’s what he wants. If the Suns ever make peace with the reality that they probably should put Devin Booker on the table, he’d be ideal here. Assuming they could round out the roster with 3-point shooting, Booker’s shot-making pairs well with Cunningham’s more diverse offensive game. For now, he’s seemingly not available.

Some of the sub-All-Star-level scorers make more sense here. Take any of the names that frequently get linked to Orlando, like Anfernee Simons and Desmond Bane, and they’d probably make sense for the Pistons as well. Cunningham is only 23. Many of his most important teammates are younger. Detroit doesn’t fully know what it has yet. There’s nothing wrong with taking a baby step into the trade market rather than putting everything on the table now. Worst-case scenario, anyone you trade for can be dealt again later.

Looming large here is the return of Jaden Ivey. Getting him back could potentially solve the problem organically. He was having his best season before a broken fibula ended his year. More importantly, a lot of that success came as a jump-shooter, which was his weakness in college. He and Cunningham work together if he can make 3s. They don’t if he can’t, especially when you factor in his defensive limitations. He obviously isn’t the main reason for this (the return of Ausar Thompson was significantly more important), but it’s worth noting that the Pistons had the 20th-best defense in the NBA when he got hurt and ranked fifth from that point forward. They reinvented themselves without him. Fitting someone like that back into the mix is rarely automatic.

Ivey is the swing piece here, if you assume the Pistons do nothing drastic this summer. What he does next season determines just how far they still have to go on the roster-building front. But the needs and assets here are quite clear. The Pistons look like the Pistons again. They have a star ball-handler and a championship-caliber defensive foundation. The major remaining question is how they can improve the offense without compromising it. If they can do so, they’re going to contend for championships in the near future.