If you’ve been a fan of the Detroit Pistons long enough, then you are familiar with the rhetoric every time there is a new head coach, and there have been plenty of them, as Detroit has had a new leader on the bench five times in the last decade.
The first step is to talk about the past, and how you are going to make the Pistons the Bad Boys again, blah blah blah, nonsense that I am glad J.B. Bickerstaff has not yet uttered.
The next stage is to talk about all of the things you are going to improve, namely the defense because that is “Detroit basketball,” as if defense doesn’t matter to the rest of the league.
It certainly does, as only one team in the top-10 in defensive efficiency (Houston) didn’t make at least the play-in last season.
Bickerstaff did pay lip service to defensive improvement, saying in a recent article in the Athletic (subscription):
"The teaching of (defense) and taking the time matters. The more reps you get at it, matters. We’re going to spend a ton of time repping things out, trying to keep it as simple and clean as we can, but give guys the opportunity to get great at doing the same thing over and over again. Through that, they’ll improve.
“That is our philosophy on development. There is defensive development, as well. Most of the time, people only care about the offensive development, right? They spend all their time working on step-back shots, between-the-legs and all that, but they don’t spend any time working on rotations or being in the proper spots. That is something we’re going to really, really handle.”
Ah yes, this old tune.
It’s one we’ve heard from the previous three coaches, all who promised to improve the Pistons’ terrible defense, but did any of them actually deliver?
Stan Van Gundy, 2014-2018
SVG made similar promises about the defense when he took over, saying that the Pistons had to “establish a defensive identity” and wouldn’t be a championship contender until they were top-10 on that end.
Van Gundy took over the league’s 25th rated defense and immediately improved it, making modest gains up to 19th in his first season.
He then had the Pistons as the 12th, 8th and 10th best defense in the league in his final three seasons, so unlike the guys who came after him, SVG made good on his promise.
These were different times, when the team was actually trying to win, so Van Gundy was not held back as much by tanking rosters as the guys who came after him.
If only SVG were as good at drafting players and making trades as he was at coaching defense.
Dwane Casey, 2018-2023
Let the defensive freefall begin! Like SVG before him, Dwane Casey put a premium on defense and talked about it endlessly as coach, once promising before the 2022 season that the Pistons had a chance to be in the top 10, which did not happen.
Casey did have the 11th ranked defense in the league in his first season, but that quickly fell apart as the Pistons started to tank, which is certainly not a knock on Casey, who in retrospect did a pretty good job given his onerous task.
The Pistons were 22nd, 16th, 24th and 28th in Casey’s remaining years, putting up some of the worst defensive numbers in the history of the franchise and the NBA itself.
But never fear! Monty Williams is coming in to save the Pistons’ defense again.
Monty Williams 2023-2024
Williams had built successful defenses in the past, so as the Pistons started to turn the corner on the rebuild, surely he’d get them back to respectability in that area....right?!?
Wrong.
The Pistons were just 26th in defensive efficiency last season, the first in four years they were actually trying to win games.
Someone forgot to tell Monty, who barely showed up last season and whose team allowed the most points per game in franchise history on their way to the worst record in history, two things that are definitely related.
The terrible defense led to a 28-game losing streak and plenty of lopsided scores as Williams dreamed of how many teams in the NBA he could get to pay him to not work (2 so far).
None of the Pistons’ young players made leaps on that end, and in the case of Jalen Duren, he might have gotten worse. Williams couldn’t figure out how to use the only elite defender he had (Ausar Thompson) and never made good on his promise to restore “Detroit basketball” (yawn).
Now it’s on J.B. Bickerstaff to do what Williams and Casey before him couldn’t, which is get this defense into the top half of the league at least.
He has a recent history of having top defenses in Cleveland, so there is hope he can fulfill the same promise we’ve heard time and time before.