Motown Leads the East — and It Looks Legit. What’s Goin' On?

The Pistons have one of the league's best young cores and a proven formula to win big, now and in the future

Ausar Thompson and Cade Cunningham give the Pistons one of the NBA’s brightest futures. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

At the quarter mark of the NBA season, the Detroit Pistons are the top seed in the Eastern Conference with a 17-5 record.

One year after improving by 30 wins, they’re making another giant leap. At their current pace, the Pistons will win 19 games more than last season and exceed their Vegas over/under line by better than 16 wins.

Given they are defying expectations once again, let’s dig into what makes the Pistons so good, and how far they can go this season:

The Bad Boys are back

For the third time in the past 40 years, the Pistons are building a team known for toughness and a physical brand of basketball.

The legendary Detroit Bad Boys of the late 1980s are set a new standard for bruising basketball — the “Jordan Rules” were their approach to holding down Michael Jordan. With Bill Laimbeer and other “enforcers” setting the tone, the Bad Boys won two NBA championships and started a million debates.

In 2004, the Pistons put together another tough, stifling defensive squad and won their third NBA title by shutting down the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals. Nobody represented that squad more than Ben Wallace, who won four Defensive Player of the Year awards and was elected the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021 despite a career scoring average of 5.7 points per game.

Since then, the 3-point revolution has taken hold, and the league has implemented rules to decrease some types of physical play.

But once again, the Pistons are setting the pace for rugged basketball. Like two of the previous Detroit championship teams, they are second in the league in defensive rating. More to the point, their physical approach has them leading the league in opponent free-throw rate.

The absolute poster child for their style of play is Isaiah Stewart, nicknamed Beef Stew for his propensity for mixing it up with opponents. At only 6’8” but 250 lbs, he’s always ready for confrontation and averages nearly seven fouls per 100 possessions.

The following incident earlier this year, which led to Stewart’s ejection, a fine, and an automatic suspension for excessive flagrant fouls, provided a taste of why he and the Pistons would be uncomfortable to play against:

And like the ‘80s iteration of the Bad Boys, today’s Pistons have an elite defensive forward in Ausar Thompson. While he’s not Dennis Rodman when it comes to rebounding, Thompson is — like his more celebrated twin brother — one of the most athletic players players in the league, capable of almost everything else on the defensive end: He can guard four positions, racks up steals and blocks, and shows excellent defensive footwork, all while guarding the opponent’s best scorer every game.

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Drilling down on defense

According to my 3-factor analysis, the Pistons excel at two big things defensively.

The more important one is opponent points per shot, where Detroit ranks third in the NBA. The Pistons haven’t been especially lucky in opponent 3-point shooting — their 3-point percentage allowed is exactly league average. And as mentioned, they give up a ton of free throws. That leaves one other area of the floor: 2-point defense.

The Pistons are third-best in this category, behind only the Oklahoma City Thunder and Boston Celtics.

The following charts depict the Pistons’ effective field-goal percentage against (left) compared to that of the Pelicans (right):

The Pistons, as a team, possess several attributes that help here. They’re tall, beefy, young, energetic and athletic.

This means that when an opponent starts driving to the basket, the defense collapses quickly. And at least one or two Pistons are ready to jump for a block or contest:

Jalen Duren, who has defended Detroit’s most opponent shots within 6 feet, is allowing opponent field-goal shooting 5 percentage points lower than expected. And while Stewart’s sample size here is too small to be sustainable, his opponent FG% allowed is a whopping 18 percentage points lower than expected.

Another wrinkle of Detroit’s good 2-point percentage against is Cade Cunningham’s ability to stifle opponent fast breaks.

The Pistons crash the offensive board with multiple players. That can lead to lots of fastbreak scoring by opponents — especially if the first defender back is a small guard. But because Cunningham is essentially the size of a small forward, he’s wildly more effective at bothering rim attempts by opponent guards in transition:

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Forcing turnovers

Teams that excel at basket protection tend to play big. That usually comes with a tradeoff, as bigs usually rank near the bottom of the league when it comes to forcing turnovers.

The Pistons manage to protect the basket and force turnovers at the same time.

Once again, the historic Thunder are off-the-charts in this category. Phoenix, playing small, ranks second, and the Pistons are third.

Almost the entire roster is above average when it comes to steals, so we’ll highlight just a couple of players you might not be focused on yet:

• Third-string center Paul Reed is averaging 3.6 steals per 100 possessions — and 3.0 per 100 for his career, which puts him in the No. 1 spot all-time among NBA players 6’9” and taller (with at least 3,000 career minutes).

• Ron Holland II, who narrowly trails Beef Stew in feistiness, averages 3.9 per 100, leading the league.

Detroit’s steals occur in a wide variety of ways: Duncan Robinson excels at swiping the ball on opponent drives; Holland is great at playing the passing lanes near midcourt.

Even in situations where the ball is initially only deflected — the Pistons rank sixth in deflections — it’s likely to end up in Detroit’s hands, as they rank second when it comes to recovering loose balls.

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Adequate offense

Yes, the Pistons excel mostly on defense, where they rank second. On offense, things aren’t quite so rosy, as they rank about average, at 14th.

With Malik Beasley — after a summer of turmoil because of a federal investigation — not currently in the NBA, the Pistons turned to Robinson, who hasn’t quite been able to fill Beasley’s shoes as a high-volume sharpshooter.

And they’re 23rd in turnovers, an issue that’s gotten worse since last year, when they ranked 20th. For all the good things Cunningham does, there still is room for improvement — for example, when passing out of double-teams. He’s sixth in the league in turnovers with 5.3 turnovers per 100, continuing a career-long tendency.

Here’s what keeps the Pistons afloat on this side of the court: Offensive rebounding.

Once again, there’s a team from the West running away with this category, but this time it’s the Houston Rockets, with the Pistons ranking third.

J.B. Bickerstaff, the betting favorite for Coach of the Year, has the Pistons hitting the offensive board with multiple players. The Pistons’ high-energy play — driven by youth — size and athleticism mean they can crash often and successfully:

At other times, Duren’s width and sturdiness make it almost impossible to keep him away from the rim: He ranks third in the league in offensive rebound rate.

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Cade in the crunch, and a bit of luck

Similar to the Suns, the Pistons are exceeding expectations thanks to a total team effort.

Still, it’s helpful to have a star creator in Cunningham to take care of crunchtime and late-clock situations.

Cade ranks third in the league in points in the clutch (per 100 possessions) with very respectable 52% field-goal shooting in these difficult spots:

So far, the Pistons’ point differential equates to a team that’s 14-8, not 17-5, meaning they have been successful and maybe a bit lucky in crunchtime situations. Of 10 games decided by five points or fewer, the Pistons have won six.

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Quality depth

Speaking of luck — the opposite kind — the Pistons haven’t been spared when it comes to the league’s rash of injuries. Tobias Harris has missed nine games and Thompson four, while Cunningham, Duren and Stewart have missed three each.

But there’s a clear “next man up” mentality across every position.

We’ve already sung the praises of Reed, who, in one of his two starts, recorded a 28-13-6 statline with 4 steals.

Perhaps more impressive has been the emergence of Daniss Jenkins. After hitting a buzzer-beater to send a November game into overtime, Jenkins started three games in place of an injured Cunningham and another alongside Cade. The Pistons won all five of those games in the midst of their 13-game winning streak.

In those starts, Jenkins averaged almost 20 points per game and kept the engine running — not bad for someone who went undrafted in 2024.

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Bright future

While the Pistons might not continue winning almost 80% of their games — their scoring margin suggests they’ll come back to earth — Basketball Reference projects Detroit as 65% likely to have a top-3 seed in the East, with an 11% chance to make the NBA Finals.

I personally would probably bump their chances of an Eastern Conference title up toward the low 20s, given that seven East teams appear about equally strong, according to point differential, and the Pistons are likely to be hosting two or three rounds in the East playoffs. That’s a solid situation for a team as young as Detroit.

Looking further ahead, xRAPM suggests that only the Rockets and Thunder have a similar number of good players younger than 25: Ausar Thompson, Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren are already top-60 players.

Assuming Detroit holds onto Duren and Thompson — who are due to be restricted free agents in 2026 and 2027, respectively — these Pistons appear here to stay.

Two decades ago, the second iteration of the Bad Boys made six consecutive East Finals and two NBA Finals, winning one championship. Those are lofty goals within reach for this franchise once again.