The Detroit Pistons were the darlings of the NBA this season, going from 14 wins to 44 and making the Eastern Conference playoffs.
The Orlando Magic were that team in 2023-24, as they went to the playoffs as the 5th seed with a young team that looked poised to compete for the conference coming into this season.
Instead, they went from 47 wins to 41 and had to fight their way through the play-in just to get destroyed by a half-interested Celtics team.
Some of this backslide was out of their control, as the Magic did have several injuries to key players, but some of it was through mistakes they made in the offseason, ones the Pistons can learn from so that they don’t become the next team to take a step back.
Linear improvement is not guaranteed in the NBA
We sometimes assume too much when it comes to development and improvement in the NBA.
We see a young player have a good season and assume he’ll be able to improve upon it in the next one, we see a young team do well and assume they will just continue to get better.
But it only takes an injury or two or a couple of guys not to live up to the hype, and suddenly your up-and-coming team is stunted, which is more or less what happened to the Magic with injuries to Paolo Banchero and Jalen Suggs.
These injuries were compounded by a ho-hum offseason from the Magic that didn’t get them the player they needed to take the next step.
The Magic didn’t address their biggest need
Orlando has had one of the league’s best defenses for the last two seasons, but has an anemic offense, something that was obvious to everyone.
The Magic didn’t really address it, as their big offseason acquisition was Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, a 3-and-D wing who is a good player, but hardly going to be a big offensive weapon or volume shooter.
He was bad for most of the season, with his 3-point shooting dropping to 34 percent, so KCP didn’t even deliver on the “3” part of 3-and-D.
The Pistons are in a similar position heading into this offseason, as they have a young team fresh off a successful season and will likely make internal development and continuity their main points of focus this summer.
Just like Orlando, Detroit doesn’t want to fiddle too much with what worked, especially considering all of their key players are 23 years old or younger, but they do have needs that include more size, shooting and depth at the four behind Tobias Harris.
The Pistons aren’t likely to make a drastic move this summer and they don’t need to, but if they don’t address any of these needs, they could find themselves in a similar position to Orlando as the team that takes a small step back.
This would especially be true if the Pistons suffered any devastating injuries, particularly to Cade Cunningham, so we can’t just pencil the Pistons in for the playoffs next season just because they got there this year.
It’s a tough balancing act for Trajan Langdon, who has to address needs without disrupting the things that made Detroit successful and will be under pressure to find the right combination of players to get them to the next level.