Is it a flash in the pan? After the Pistons turned over the season...

Looking back at the Pistons' last season, they won the playoffs after many years of separation. However, lack of experience and missed judgment at critical moments, when facing the Knicks, the Pistons finally failed to reach the level of the winner, and ended this fantastic season after the last six games.

Looking back now, the Pistons' performance is definitely much higher than expected, from the last train of the league last season to the sixth seed in the East, and also won a precious playoff victory. The series was difficult to distinguish and resolve, with the winner and loses being only 11 points at most, and there were four games within three points.

combined with the Knicks' final match, it was not easy for the Dark Horse Pacers to fight the Knicks until the last moment. The only downside is that they lost all three home games. After moving to the new stadium, they have not won the game at home.

As for the Pistons fans, the 2024-25 season is definitely a major improvement, but now the question is: Was the performance of last season just because of good luck, or is the Pistons already have the top six fighting power in the Eastern Conference?

Looking back at the Pistons in recent years, the lineup is not too bad, but due to the influence of the team's senior management, the Pistons eventually became a historically bad team. Troy Weaver, who served as a senior executive of the Pelicans, managed draft pick assets extremely poorly during his tenure as a Pistons, and was also highly superstitious about his vision of selecting players. Once the player was identified, he would use huge assets to fight for it.

The most representative of this is that he spent a lot of second-round picks to get second-round center James Wiseman.

From the perspective of trading, Weaver likes a high-talented player. He traded many times during his tenure and couldn't play in his parent team. He almost ignored the lineup effect in his attempt to scrape the lottery.

After choosing Jaylen Durham, a big man with excellent physical conditions but lacking shooting and unstable defense, the Pistons first used asset trading to become a free agent, Marvin Bagley, who was about to become a free agent, and then quickly renewed his contract when there was no competitive pressure. Later, he forced the second place to find Wiseman, and gathered the three centers with poor shooting, poor defense and no passing in one fell swoop, which directly led to the embarrassing situation of the team having three monks having no water to drink.

Even other second-round picks who are valued, such as Kevin Knox, Josh Jackson, Narrance Noel, Dennis Smith, etc., have almost never scratched out any big prizes. For these former high-talented players, although there are many reasons why they did not show their talents in the end, and the parent team had to bear a lot of responsibility at the beginning, they almost suffered team destruction after transferring to the Pistons, and even had difficulties in the NBA's qualified rotation. From Weaver's perspective, his vision is really quite vicious. In addition to the general manager, the head coach's seat has also been very unsatisfied. Although former head coach Monty Williams won the Best Head Coach, his last season with the Suns was not happy. After being fired, he had to leave the NBA for a while, but Pistons owner Tom Gore forced to find Monty to coach the Pistons at an irresistible price.

Looking back at Monty's coaching career, the Suns did give many young players a new look in the early stages. Devin Booker no longer cared about his own data brushes. Monty gradually trained him to be a top backcourt that can both offense and defense, and also have certain organizational abilities; although center Ayton did not reach the ceiling level, he had a certain level in the defense support.

Of course, the appearance of Chris Paul also solved many potential problems of this young team, but overall, although Monty had shortcomings at that time, at least he still had the ability to ensure the team's basic combat power.

But in the late stage of the Suns, the relationship between Monty and the players gradually became rigid, and he almost lost the ability to control the locker room off the court. On the court, he set Durant as a base corner fixed-point shooter, and used a large number of desperate lineups with a smaller body system, which caused the Suns to seem to have excellent offense, but their defensive system completely collapsed.

After commanding the Pistons, Monty's rotation of personnel was completely reversed. The two most obvious representatives were the first season with French defender Gillian Hayes to squeeze Jaden Ivey out as the starter, and then arranged a wing with a mess of shooting. Isaiah Livers took a lot of playing time.

There are a large number of wrong players on the court, and the off-court scheduling is in chaos, which ultimately leads to the Pistons' longest losing streak in history. Fortunately, the team boss dealt with the two sinners, the general manager and the head coach in time, and then found Traja Langton from the Pelicans as the general manager, and found Bickstaff, who had excellent cultivation, to take over the new coach from the Cavaliers. It was these two who joined the Pistons that gave the Pistons a turning point.

Borrow a sentence: Everything will turn back when it reaches its extreme. A large part of the success of the Pistons last season came from this. After it had fallen to a trough, the new general manager no longer simply believed in player talent. He recruited shooters to help core players open up attack space and activate existing lineup resources. As for coach Bickstaff, he laid the defensive foundation for the team during his Cavaliers' time, but due to the special formation of double centers + double guards, he could not develop effective offense. Even if he led the team into the playoffs for many years, it was difficult to avoid being swept out of the game.

But it's different in the Pistons. After entering the NBA, Cunningham's stable performance was affected by injuries. He only ranked third in the rookie year's best rookie vote, and the attention he received among rookies in the same echelon was obviously not the first. Although he was the core of swimming early, he led the team to a historical record of losing streak. These disadvantages are naturally not the situation he hoped for Cunningham, who has a strong desire for competition..

But under the training of Bickstaff, Cunningham was finally able to get rid of the pain this season and show his skills. Jaden Ivey also got back his starting position that should have belonged to him. Jalen Durham no longer had to compete with the other two centers to play time. Forward Osal gradually recovered from the thrombosis problem, rookie Ron Holland also showed better maturity than expected. The development of many young players in the team gradually returned to the right track.

Although he lacks game experience and still has shortcomings in shooting, thanks to the foundation of top athletic ability, at least Bickstaff can maintain his defensive foundation. In addition, mid-zoo point guard Schroder, starting point guard Hardaway Jr., three-point shooter Beasley and others have performed rejuvenating in the Pistons. It is no exaggeration to say that last season, the Pistons gathered almost all the favorable factors, and the right time, place, and people were combined, which eventually allowed the Pistons' regular season record to achieve a triple jump, getting rid of the gloom of the bad team.

After entering the playoff stage, the Pistons' performance was significantly better than expected. Cunningham performed particularly well in the playoffs. The team's fighting spirit and athletic ability once made the Knicks suffer a lot. Unfortunately, due to the team's combat effectiveness gap and the lack of game details, he finally lost to the Knicks.

Back to the initial problem, personally, the Pistons were not a flash in the pan last season. The young players in the team have made significant growth and progress. Under the leadership of Bickstaff, they played with the positive and defensive intensity that they had not had in the past many years. Duke-born general manager Langton is willing to give young players time to prove himself, rather than throwing away players who are not his choice like his ex-Weaver, who can also play well and give back to the team.

In general, just looking at the data and game content, it should be more inclined to be that these young players have found a way to survive in the league and will not have a complete collapse. As for what situation it will develop in the future, it depends on whether they can maintain their growth trajectory of last season in the new season.

For some teams, entering the playoffs is only the basic plate, and there is also a review and review of the first round of the game. But for the previous league last bus, reaching the playoffs and ending the embarrassing record of hard-to-find playoff wins over the years has been a huge success, and even from a more optimistic perspective, it is likely to be a new beginning for the Detroiters to bottom out and rebound.