The Most Iconic Detroit Pistons Bench Players (Post-Teal Era)

Will Bynum – The case could be made, fairly easily, that the Pistons were even worse from 2008-2014 than they were in the “Teal Era.” During this time, the Pistons only broke 30 wins three times (39, 32, and 30 – yikes).  Besides being terrible through that entire stretch, the team had one other constant: Will Bynum came off the Pistons’ bench the entire time.

To me, this was simply a correlation, not a causation, because Will Bynum certainly gave Pistons’ fans some great games over his career. In fact, I would argue that Will Bynum was one of the few aspects of the team that gave me much joy at all during that stretch.

In 2012, Will Bynum unleashed 31 points (26 in the 4th/OT) on the Atlanta Hawks to secure a comeback-win for a very downtrodden Pistons team. This was one of my favorite games during this entire period of time, and it really demonstrates what made him exciting as a reserve.

The game inspired Bleacher Report to publish a piece about Will Bynum’s character. The article touches on the fact that Bynum never really got an opportunity to start for the Pistons. Whenever it looked like the starting lineup would have space for him, Rodney Stuckey, or Brandon Knight, or Brandon Jennings would end up in front of him. Nevertheless, Will Bynum was a true blue collar worker, never complained, and continuously earned the respect of fans.

The writer in that article asserts that Will Bynum represented everything right about sports. I would tend to agree.

Side note: If you were wondering what happened to Will Bynum, the man is still doing his thing in the D(G)-League!