The top five reasons to still trust the Detroit Pistons this postseason

before their final Regular season home games, detroit pistons Center Jalen Duren Picked up a microphone to address the crowd at Little Caesars Arena. The Pistons were finalizing one of the best regular seasons in franchise history: 60 wins and the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, while completing the most dramatic two-year turnaround in NBA history.

From 14 wins in two campaigns to 60 wins in 2025-2026, the Pistons’ improvement of 46 wins is the largest jump in two seasons in NBA history, according to ESPN Research.

Standing in the middle of the court, Duren called out to the crowd. “D-Troit Basket-Ball,” imitating the team’s famous PA announcer, John Mason. Duren thanked the fans for their support during the season and also offered a reminder.

“Our work is not done yet,” he said. “We still have a long way to go.”

The Pistons claimed the No. 1 seed on November 7 and have topped the Eastern Conference standings every day since. And yet they entered the playoffs as an underdog in a conference they dominated. According to DraftKings, the Pistons began the playoffs with the fourth-best odds to win the Eastern Conference (+500), followed by boston celtics, cleveland cavaliers And new York Knicks. “We think we can win it all,” Pistons forward auser thompson told ESPN. “We don’t think about what other people say.

“I feel like we can beat anybody.”

Detroit’s playoff run didn’t get off to a good start in Game 1, however, as they fell 112-101 to the 8th seed on Sunday. orlando magic The Pistons have never been ahead in such a game.

Not only was it the Pistons’ 11th consecutive home playoff loss, the longest losing streak in NBA history, but it also fueled a narrative: that this long-irrelevant franchise, which has made the postseason only three times since 2010, is not worthy of having a seed next to its name.

Detroit’s last home playoff win came in Game 4 of the 2008 Conference Finals when Duren and Thompson were 4 and 5, respectively.

Still, the Pistons have time to fulfill Duran’s promise to the home fans, starting with Game 2 against the Magic on Wednesday night (7 p.m. ET, ESPN).

And there are five reasons to believe they will.

1. They learned a serious lesson after their crushing defeat in the playoffs last year

all-star point guard Cade Cunningham Made a pledge shortly after the Pistons season ended last year. Detroit was involved in a tightly contested series with the Knicks before being swept in six games.

Trailing by three and with a chance to tie the score in the final seconds of Game 6 in Detroit, Cunningham threw a pass to the team’s best 3-point shooter, wide-open Malik Beasley, but the ball slipped out of his hands and out of bounds. The turnover sealed the series and ended Detroit’s first playoff appearance since the 2018–19 campaign.

“That feeling will stay with us in our workouts and conversations throughout this summer,” Cunningham said that night. “We will come back and be better.”

So far, Cunningham is two out of two.

Duren is, perhaps, the most visible expression of that pledge. He took two weeks off last offseason before connecting with Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff for personal work over the summer. Doing so made it the best season of his career.

“Honestly, it changed my perspective,” Duren told ESPN. “At first, it was just trying to get in there, trying to get into the club. Now it’s OK, we know we have a good team to come back to. Now it’s like can we make some noise out there?”

Bickerstaff, a finalist for Coach of the Year, has heard this saying countless times: Young teams have to experience heartbreak in the early rounds of the playoffs before they can achieve a deep playoff run.

NBA history over the years has reinforced this mantra – Michael Jordan’s loss to the bad boy Pistons; Lebron James‘Various playoff shortcomings before becoming champion; oklahoma city thunder Lost in the 2024–25 Western Conference Semifinals despite having the best record in the league.

Yet these Pistons believe they can resist.

“We got a sense of how it felt against the Knicks last year — a series that was very competitive and that made us feel like there was more to come,” Bickerstaff said earlier this month. “It boosted what our guys did this summer and turned it into this year.”

The experienced coach has led many teams including the Cavaliers to the playoffs in his career. Those Cavaliers teams experienced similar growing pains in Bickerstaff’s initial seasons with the franchise. “I think experience matters,” Bickerstaff said.

“Experience is different for people. Especially in the playoffs, when you’re a young team and you’re facing new experiences, it depends on how quickly you can learn and adjust to that experience. If in Game 1 you learn something and get some experience, then in Game 2, can you fix it? It won’t take you three games; you’ll probably lose that series.”

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Jalen Duren hits hard with authority

Jalen Duren had an offensive rebound and a one-handed dunk for Detroit.

2. The Duren of Sunday’s Game 1… Wasn’t the Duren of Games 1-82

Even after the disappointing Game 1 loss, Cunningham’s post-game attitude was stoic.

“We’re upset about losing it,” he said. “But this is a long series. There is no loss in our confidence.”

Cunningham played his way into Game 1 and finished with a playoff career-high 39 points along with five rebounds and four assists in 40 minutes. But he was missing his co-star.

However, Duren co-starred throughout the regular season, and with Cunningham having another All-Star campaign, moved into All-NBA status.

Duren increased his scoring average to 19.5 points this season, an increase of 7.7 points which was the seventh-highest increase among players from last year.

“[Duren is] Finding out how strong he is on the floor,” Pistons forward tobias harris told ESPN. “He’s finding ways to make people better. And I always told him at the beginning of the year, your demeanor, your voice, your energy is so important to our whole group, especially defensively. He’s done a great job of taking over and figuring out how good he is.”

piston is going to be required He Duren in Game 2 — something he addressed on Tuesday — after the Magic successfully executed their Game 1 defensive plan to stop him. He had only eight points and seven rebounds.

“The scary thing is that he could be a lot better,” Harris said. “And he knows it.”

3. Their bench is experienced and deep

All five of the Pistons’ starting players were injured as the team prepared for a November 12 game against the Chicago Bulls. If there was ever going to be a definitive loss, this would be it.

Harris told ESPN that’s when he felt a change in the team’s confidence.

“I remember pregame in the locker room, like, we expect to win this game,” he said. “It’s just our mentality – and we’re just rolling with it.”

Behind a starting lineup of dennis jenkins, javonte green, paul reed, ronald holland ii And duncan robinsonThe Pistons won by 11 that night, improving to 10–2 on the season despite missing Cunningham, Duren, Harris and Thompson.

It set the tone for the rest of the season, Harris said. When Cunningham missed 11 games with lung failure at the end of the regular season, the team did not lose a game.

“We all know it’s not one person,” Duren said. “We need a whole team to be successful. We understood that from the beginning. We have a group of guys here who can put the ball in the hole, guard and who are familiar with our culture and what we’re building.”

According to ESPN Research, Detroit went 13–5 (.722) without Cunningham this season, the best winning percentage in the league among teams playing without their leading scorer.

Bickerstaff has one of the deepest benches in the league. Detroit has 10 players who average at least seven points and who have appeared in 70% of the team’s games. This combination is practically unheard of in NBA history: the Pistons are only the second team to do so in league history, joining the 1962–63 Syracuse Nationals.

“If you can get guys to buy into an identity, a style, if you can play organized basketball on both ends of the floor,” Bickerstaff said, “then you can have some success when guys are missing or when guys have to be submissive because everybody knows their role, they know their responsibility.”

4. He has played very well in the clutch – and he has done so often

The Pistons went 27–15 (64.3%) in clutch games this season, tied for the most clutch wins and fourth-best winning percentage in the NBA.

After a big win over the Lakers at the end of the season, Jenkins explained why.

“We don’t play scared because at the end of the day, we know we’re going to play defense,” he said. “When we get into these difficult moments, it’s never a time to panic.”

The numbers support that. The Pistons played the NBA’s second-weakest defense.

And Detroit was especially successful when competing with the best teams in the league. They went a league-best 30–12 in games between playoff teams, including 8–3 in contests against the top four in the East.

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Isaiah Stewart makes a solid rejection at the rim

Isaiah Stewart denied Paolo Banchero, making a transition basket for the Pistons.

5. Elite Defense, Inside and Out

From the time Bickerstaff took over as head coach at the start of the 2024–25 season, he reinforced the characteristics of some of the best rosters in team history: physicality, toughness and a punishing defense that forces opponents to think twice about going into the paint.

The Pistons already have a DPOY finalist in Thompson, who hunts on the perimeter.

combination of Isaiah Stewart And on the interior, Duren has created one of the league’s most formidable combos at the rim as well. As a team, the Pistons held opponents to just 54.6% shooting during the regular season, which ranked third in the league behind Oklahoma City and Boston – the two previous NBA champions.

“We’re very proud of it,” Duren told ESPN. “My job as the architect of the defense is to maintain that. And I’m proud of that because we’re a team with a defense-first mentality.”

Duren’s chops shine in his pick-and-roll defense. According to GeniusIQ, the Pistons allow 0.92 points per opponent pick with Duren added, which is the 14th-best mark in the league.

After last year’s playoff series against the Knicks and facing one of the league’s premier pick-and-roll players Jalen BrunsonDuren worked on film over the summer, looking for more effective ways to defend the action.

“I’m just learning where I can get better,” Duren told ESPN. “Watched a lot of film, understood what my weaknesses were and also understood what my strengths were and just focused on that.”

According to GeniusIQ, Stewart held opponents to only 41.4% shooting when he had his closest defender, third (behind Oklahoma City) among players defending at least 500 field goals this season. Chet Holmgren and of boston derrick white).

Specifically in the paint, Stewart held opponents to 43.8% shooting, the lowest field goal percentage among qualified players in the league.