With a 117-105 win over the Toronto Raptors on Friday, the Detroit Pistons have clinched a playoff spot a year after winning an NBA-low 14 games. It has been one one of the best single-season turnarounds in league history as Detroit is actually the first team to triple its win total from the previous year.
The 14 wins in 2023-24 is also the lowest total for a team that made the playoffs the following season.
The Pistons technically own the East’s No. 5 seed at the moment, but that’s only because they have played one more game than the six-seed Bucks. Detroit and Milwaukee are tied in the loss column, and Milwaukee would win the tiebreaker today with a 2-0 head-to-head record.
But … the Pistons and Bucks close the season with two consecutive games against one another. Those two games will very likely determine the Nos. 5 and 6 seeds, with neither team likely to catch the No. 4 Pacers, who have a three-game lead with five to play and also own the tiebreaker over Detroit.
“Honestly, right now, it’s hard to put emotions together,” third-year big man Jalen Duren said of the clinched playoff spot. “It’s a testament to all the hard work we put in since day one. But we’re not done yet. Nowhere near satisfied. We’re going to keep going, keep growing, and keep stacking.”
Detroit once again won without its likely All-NBA point guard Cade Cunningham on Friday. Cunningham has been out since March 21 with a calf contusion, and the Pistons have won four of six over the span — albeit with three of the wins coming over the tanking Pelicans, Spurs and now Raptors.
Mixed in there, however, was a 133-122 win over the full-strength Cavaliers, which would be impressive even with Cunningham on the floor. Without him, that game further drove home the point that the Pistons are an honest threat to win a first-round series.
Even if they fall to No. 6 and play the Knicks, they can give New York a real problem — though they wouldn’t be favored to win. If it’s a 4-5 matchup with Indiana, that could be a coin flip, although Indiana is one of the few teams that has been better than Detroit since the All-Star break.
But the Pistons have been cooking for a while. Since Jan. 1, they own the third-best defensive rating and fifth-best net rating in the league, with an offense that sits just outside the top 10. Cunningham is the engine, but the Pistons are loaded with good young players and quality vets like Tobias Harris, Malik Beasley, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Dennis Schroder.
If you’re going to beat the Pistons, you’re going to earn it. They play hard. They defend like crazy and with the relentless driving of Cunningham being a source of consistent offensive creation, there are playoff markers all over this team. Now they’ve sealed a top-six spot to prove it.
