East No. 10 | East No. 12 | Full List
No. 11: Detroit Pistons
Last Season: 32-50
12th place in East; missed playoffs
It was just last decade when the Detroit Pistons enjoyed a remarkable run of six straight trips to the Eastern Conference finals, two conferences titles and one sparkling NBA championship trophy. Six seasons have passed since that group of high achievers inevitably declined and was subsequently busted up by former team president Joe Dumars.
Those six seasons have been as fallow as the others were triumphant -- zero playoff appearances and win totals between 25 and 32 each season. The span has now included three distinct rebuilding pushes, two by Dumars and one by his replacement, Stan Van Gundy. It's early, but there are signs the fog is finally beginning to dissipate over the Palace of Auburn Hills.
After a miserable start to the 2014-15 season, Van Gundy set about remaking the Pistons' roster in the image of his best teams in Orlando. The presence of 22-year-old center Andre Drummond made the blueprint a no-brainer. In Drummond, Van Gundy had a fair replica of a young Dwight Howard, his cornerstone player with the Magic. Getting Drummond to Howard's level is a work in progress. Building up the roster around him might be an even bigger task. The bottom line is the Pistons improved considerably as the season progressed, even while Van Gundy tinkered with the roster in some pretty major ways.
In Miami, the Heat jumped 17 games from Van Gundy's first season to his second. In Orlando, the second-year improvement was seven games. Even if Detroit splits the difference, it moves the Pistons' six-year high of 32 wins last season to 44 this year, and a certain playoff spot. Has Van Gundy positioned the Pistons to finally snap their postseason drought?
Van Gundy inherited Dumars' last ill-fitting roster, and as he tried to make the pieces align, the Pistons belly-flopped out of the gate. Detroit stood 5-23 on Dec. 22 when Van Gundy made the boldest decision of his fledgling career as a dual head-honcho executive and coach: He released starting forward Josh Smith, who had $45 million left on the contract he'd signed with Dumars only 17 months before. Per the parameters of the stretch provision of the CBA, the move essentially means the Pistons will be paying Smith roughly the equivalent of a full mid-level exception to not play for them over the next five years.
The move might have pinched Van Gundy's future cap space, but it opened things on the court. The Pistons immediately reeled off seven straight wins, with point guard Brandon Jennings especially flourishing as touches and spacing opened up with Smith's departure. Alas, Jennings went down with a season-ending Achilles injury at Milwaukee in January. Detroit hung in for a while, hovering just outside the East's top eight into February, before essentially being knocked out of postseason contention by a 10-game losing streak.
With his eye now firmly fixed on the future, Van Gundy made his second-biggest splash as an exec, dealing two second-round draft picks, D.J. Augustin and Kyle Singler in a three-team trade that brought back restricted-free-agent-to-be Reggie Jackson. That deal, which was conceived early in the aforementioned 10-game skid, didn't have the immediate effect of Smith's release. Detroit coalesced with Jackson manning the point and the Pistons went 9-7 to finish the season. All told, Detroit went 27-27 after Smith's release.
With so much upheaval during the season, it's hard to know what to make of the Pistons' season metrics. Their No. 17 finish on the offensive end was a four-year high, as was the No. 21 finish on defense, but neither improvement stirred many hearts in the Motor City. Still, with Jackson running the show during Detroit's solid 16-game finish to the season, the Pistons posted the eighth-best offensive rating in the league during that span. The shooting was much improved (No. 11 in effective field-goal percentage) and the turnovers were minimal (No. 3).
Jackson's performance late in the season was eye-popping, with averages of 19.9 points and 10.9 assists and a true shooting percentage of .558 over his last 16 games. Drummond, meanwhile, averaged 16.9 points, 14.5 rebounds and 2.3 blocks during that nice finish. Best of all, the Pistons outscored opponents by 6.3 points per 48 minutes with Jackson and Drummond on the court.
On Oct. 20, Pistons coach and team president Stan Van Gundy told Detroit reporters that Drummond has elected not to sign an extension so as to help the team create additional cap space. "Every player says I'm all about winning," Van Gundy said. "This guy is proving it." The decision suggests Drummond trusts the organization will reward him with a max deal next summer.
In the end, while 32 wins won't turn heads very often, the way it happened in Detroit offers hope for a fan base that hasn't had any for a while. Not only did the Pistons play respectable basketball for much of the last four months of the season, Van Gundy seemed to have ticked off the first to-do item on any team's rebuilding checklist: In Jackson and Drummond, he'd identified the core around which he could now build.