2 positive signs for the future of the Detroit Pistons

The Detroit Pistons are sitting on 23 wins and have the third-worst record in the NBA.

Even though they have won more games this season and have Cade Cunningham to be excited about, this is still the third-straight season in which the Pistons will finish with a win total in the low 20’s.

You’d have to go back to the 2015-16 season to find a Pistons team that finished above .500, so Detroit fans have surely suffered long enough.

Hopefully that is all about to change, as the Pistons not only have a young star, complementary players, cap space and draft assets to bolster their roster, but there have been some positive signs this season that things are about to change for the better.

The Detroit Pistons since the All-Star Break

If you look at the Pistons pre and post All-Star Break you’ll see a tale of two different teams.

The Pistons were regularly getting blown out at the beginning of the season and suffered a couple of lengthy losing streaks.

Since the All-Star break, the Pistons are 10-12 overall and have only failed to cover the spread twice in that stretch. They’ve only been blown out twice, once by the Hornets and most recently by the Mavericks in a game where the Pistons were sitting all of their veterans.

If the Pistons were to play at their post All-Star Break level for an entire season they’d be sniffing the play-in tournament most years, which is exactly what we are hoping for next season.

Detroit wants to take the next logical step towards contention and their post All-Star break record is a good sign that they will.

The Detroit Pistons are mostly beating good teams

Of the Pistons’ 23 wins, 13 of them have come against teams that are above .500, including some of the best teams in the league.

The Pistons have beaten all of the top-4 seeds in the Eastern Conference (Heat, Bucks, Celtics 76ers x2) and have played some of their most impressive games of the season against the best competition.

There are myriad reasons for this, one of which is that good teams often let up or rest guys when they are playing Detroit, but that wasn’t the case this season, as the East is neck-and-neck and most of these teams were at full strength against the Pistons.

Detroit has been in just about every game and even the ones in which they lost, they got the attention of their opponents, including Kevin Durant who said that Cade Cunningham and the Pistons were going to be a “force to be reckoned with” soon.

I agree with KD, as the Pistons are building something nice and all signs are pointing towards them being out of the cellar next season.