Detroit Pistons: 3 positives and negatives of 2019-20 schedule
By Eric Black
The 2019-20 NBA schedule has been released and the Detroit Pistons have several positives and negatives to theirs. Here are three of each.
The NBA has released the schedule for the 2019-20 season, detailing how each team will traverse through the regular season and the Detroit Pistons have some interesting tidbits to theirs.
Among notable games, the Pistons will be among those playing in Mexico this season, facing off as the “home” team against Dallas on Dec. 12 in Mexico City. While schedule talk can often be filled with pie in the sky projections of how your favorite team will do, there are some quantifiable positives and negatives to gleam from this year’s schedule.
Let’s jump into the negatives.
Negative: Lack of national presence
Unfortunately for Detroit, there isn’t very much buzz for this team nationally. Despite having two All-Stars on their team in Andre Drummond and Blake Griffin, there’s virtually no one outside of the 734, 313 and 248 area codes clamoring for the Pistons to be on national TV.
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This year, only seven games are nationally televised with one on TNT, four on NBA TV, and two on ESPN. For those two games on ESPN, facing off against Brooklyn and Philadelphia, both larger media markets, is how they get on the biggest platform in ESPN. Despite Detroit being the 14th largest media market in the country, according to Neilsen, they don’t get much love in terms of games being televised.
For all of the improvement the Pistons may have made in the offseason, they still didn’t add a star guard that can be depended on to score when needed. Reggie Jackson can be a good player, Derrick Rose was a star, but neither expect to be All-Stars this coming season. Rose has the most potential to make headlines for better or worse, but unless this team starts the year at the top of the conference I don’t expect them to receive any more attention than they do already.
There was a time when the Pistons were nationally interesting, although that era ended with the Allen Iverson trade. Missing out on Mike Conley and Russell Westbrook trades solidified the Pistons place as being overlooked by the national audience.