Detroit Pistons NBA Draft: What happened the last time Detroit picked 1-6

The Detroit Pistons concluded the 2020-21 NBA regular season with a record of 20-52. In the midst of a long-overdue rebuild, a finish to the season this poor came as a sigh of relief to Pistons’ fans.

Gone are the days of mediocrity and hanging around between the 8th and 10th seeds in the Eastern Conference. Detroit basketball is entering a new era under their first-year general manager Troy Weaver.

In the first year of the team’s rebuild, Weaver overhauled the roster and set in place the foundation for what will hopefully be a future contender. The Pistons lost a lot of games last season, but the team was competitive throughout the year.

Entering the offseason, Weaver and the Pistons have hope for the team’s future. Their 20-52 record was enough to land Detroit the second-best odds in the 2021 NBA Draft Lottery.

Detroit Pistons: Fans hoping to finally get some luck in the NBA Draft Lottery

After weeks of waiting, tonight, June 22nd, at 8:30 pm eastern standard time, Pistons fans across the globe will all hold their collective breathes in anticipation as they eagerly await the results of the lottery.

Fans hope that tonight the lottery gods will favor the Pistons and award them with the first overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. That result would be the first time in Detroit’s history that the team moves up in the lottery with their own pick. (In 2003 the Pistons owned the rights to Memphis’ pick which moved up four spots after the lottery.)

While fans and the Pistons’ front office alike both hope to land the number one pick, the worst they can do is fall to the sixth selection. While such a result would be a great disappointment, there would still be a pool of talented young prospects for Weaver to choose from.

With not much left to do but wait for the lottery results, now is as good a time as any to look back at the last time the Pistons selected at pick numbers one through six.