The Detroit Pistons had plenty to overcome this season, including having to adjust to their third coach in three years.
It wasn’t completely shocking that the Pistons fired Monty Williams just one year into his massive contract, as the team couldn’t have performed much worse on their way to a 28-game losing streak and 14 wins overall.
Fans weren’t terribly excited when JB Bickerstaff was announced as his replacement, even though JB had previous success guiding young teams to the next level. But he was still a retread, a guy who had just been fired, so Bickerstaff didn’t have the shiny new toy allure of a first-time coach.
No one is feeling that way after Bickerstaff guided his team from 14 wins to 44 in his first season, making the playoffs for the first time in six years along the way and making the Monty Williams disaster look even worse.
It would have been easy for the young players to tune out yet another coach with yet another system, but instead they bought in, which Trajan Langdon said was a big part of their success during his recent press conference:
"The biggest thing is the guys buying in to the third coach in three years."
It may seem like a small thing, but adjusting to a new system and philosophy isn’t easy, which is why fans should be ecstatic about the way it turned out.
JB Bickerstaff made the transition easy for the Detroit Pistons
Most of the credit has to go to JB Bickerstaff who took over a young and lost team fresh off a humiliating season.
He was a huge upgrade immediately just by the way he handled his business, which was by being honest with his guys and setting out clear and defined roles for them right away, something Monty Williams never did.
Jaden Ivey didn’t have to worry about when or if he was playing. Isaiah Stewart wasn’t trying to learn a new position and Ausar Thompson wasn’t asked to stand in the corner on offense.
He made Jaden Ivey the starter and left him there, which clearly boosted his confidence. He told Beef Stew he was the backup center and that he needed to give the team 20 bruising minutes of defense a night, which he did. He asked Ausar Thompson to attack the rim, told him to quit worrying about 3-point shots and instead focus on being an elite defender, which he did.
So, it wasn’t hard for the young Pistons to “buy in,” as Bickerstaff immediately gave them something to believe in, which is that if they all played defense and played their roles well, the team could be successful.
To their credit, the young team learned their third new system on the fly and did it enthusiastically when it would have been easy for them to go through the motions and wait for the new team president to blow up the roster.
Instead, they bought into the team concept, into defense first, sharing the ball and backing one another. They bought in, but Bickerstaff made it easy for them, which was a huge factor in their renaissance this season.