The Detroit Pistons are now undoubtedly the best team in the city

The Detroit Pistons endured a near-decade of irrelevance in their own market, but now are arguably at the top of the Detroit sports totem pole.

May 14, 2014.

For Detroit Pistons fans, that day marked the first glimmer of hope (other than the emergence of Andre Drummond) for a franchise that had been dead in its own market for nearly a decade.

Of course, that was the day that Stan Van Gundy was hired as head coach and president of basketball operations, and since, nothing has been the same.

Just two players, Andre Drummond and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, remain from the group that Van Gundy initially inherited. He has rebuilt the roster quickly, through a series of moves that have all been widely praised all while never giving up much in terms of assets.

That part was a necessity, considering that SVG didn’t really inherit much in terms of movable assets when he arrived.

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Essentially, Reggie Jackson, Tobias Harris, Marcus Morris, and Reggie Bullock were acquired in exchange for DJ Augustin, Kyle Singler, Brandon Jennings, Ersan Ilyasova, and a couple of future second round picks.

Since Van Gundy was hired, he and Tom Gores have constantly preached “win now without sacrificing the future”. They’ve accomplished that about as well as one could hope for, with a 12 win improvement from Year 1 to Year 2 along with the franchise’s first playoff appearance since 2009.

The “future” aspect of the situation, which is rightfully at the top of fans’ priority list in what is basically a two team NBA at the moment, is also budding. Outside of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, every member of the team’s core that is considered vital to future success is signed through at least 2019, on team-friendly deals. KCP will become a free agent after 2017-18, and the Pistons will to decide whether or not they want to pay him big money. If he simply improves his three-point shooting by about five-to-ten percent, it’s likely a no brainer.

Still, the Pistons aren’t anywhere near ready to contend for an NBA championship, and whether or not they ever will be with this core is still very much up in the air. It is almost entirely dependent upon internal growth, though the Pistons will be flexible with cap space and could be a more attractive free agent destination as the young core matures. However, the fact that they’re currently the best team in the city speaks almost as much to the current state of Detroit sports as it does to the job that Van Gundy has done in his two short years at the helm.

The Lions are coming off a 7-9 season and just saw their second best offensive player in team history call it an early career. The Tigers as we’ve known them over the last several years aren’t dead yet, but some key players are on the wrong side of 30 and their pitching going forward is a huge question mark.

The Red Wings’ now 25 year playoff streak is still active, but Pavel Datsyuk is headed back to Russia and they didn’t make any moves that come close to placing them in the top tier of the NHL for next season. There’s also a perceived lack of direction and refusal to play the organization’s younger and more skilled players that fans are unhappy with, but that’s a separate topic for a hockey website to discuss more in-depth.