The Detroit Pistons and Donovan Mitchell will always be connected.
The Pistons passed on a chance to draft Mitchell in 2017, instead choosing Luke Kennard, a decision that I’ve ranked as one of the Holy Trinity of Pistons’ draft misses.
Detroit has had to watch Mitchell make the playoffs every year of his career and evolve into a superstar while Luke Kennard, well, didn’t.
That connection deepened when the Pistons hired JB Bickerstaff, Mitchell’s former coach and a guy many believe Mitchell helped run out of Cleveland.
But after another second-round exit (Mitchell has still never made it further), the fingers are no longer pointing at JB Bickerstaff, who was the obvious scapegoat for Cleveland’s playoff failings, and they are now pointing at Mitchell.
Kendrick Perkins went off on Mitchell on a recent episode of the Road Trippin’ podcast, in which he blamed Mitchell for getting JB Bickerstaff fired.
Here’s some of what he had to say, I’ve omitted some of the more colorful language:
“Donovan Mitchell, we don’t want to hear it, brother. We don’t want to hear it. This is why we don’t want to hear this about—oh, what he said. What did he say yesterday? ‘We’re gonna what? And count us out’ or something? What are you talking about, Donovan? A Donovan Mitchell-led team has never been to the Conference Finals. Donovan Mitchell, you got a coach fired. You got J.B. Bickerstaff fired. This is a fact. You had no communication with that man while he was there. You didn’t like him, right? Soon as he got fired, you signed a contract extension, right? You extended with the Cavs.”
The Cavs’ loss was the Pistons’ gain.
No one questions the heart of the Detroit Pistons
Most of this segment was spent talking about how the Cavaliers were soft and that JB Bickerstaff was the guy trying to change that, which in part led to his firing, as his style can wear on players after a while.
That didn’t happen in Detroit, where Bickerstaff’s young team embraced his hardnosed defensive mentality, which Perkins mentioned:
“We’re not up here questioning if the Detroit Pistons is some dawgs, we ain’t questioning **** about that, we know that they’re some dawgs and that started with JB Bickerstaff.”
Perkins blamed the Cavs’ new coach, Kenny Atkinson, for giving the team too much “leeway,” which led to them being soft in the playoffs.
Perk is Perk and we know he’s going to say outlandish things to get attention, but he might be onto something here when it comes to Bickerstaff. Not all teams will respond to a guy like JB, who pushes his guys to be physical and to prioritize defense.
As we’ve seen with Tom Thibodeau, everyone loves you when this strategy works, but when it doesn’t, the coach is an easy scapegoat for their team’s failures.
The Cavs don’t have JB Bickerstaff to blame for this one and it will be interesting to see how they respond to being bounced from the playoffs again after a 60+ win season.