NBA Lottery Teams’ Playoff Odds Rankings for 2025 | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats & Rumors

The Pistons could win twice as many games as they did a year ago and still not come close to making the Play-In Tournament. That’s an important framework to keep in mind as we recognize that Detroit will likely be a lot better than it was in 2023-24.

Cade Cunningham could make his first All-Star appearance, Ausar Thompson played top-level defense as a rookie last year and a number of veteran players arrived last summer to ensure the Pistons don’t finish with 14 wins again, which is just a league minimum.

With Malik Beasley, Tim Hardaway Jr., Tobias Harris and Paul Reed, Detroit will be able to surround its young players with shooting and experience. And while that should lead to more success in the record books, the real goal with all these veterans is to ensure that players like Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Thompson, Jalen Duren and rookie Ron Holland are ready to succeed.

The Pistons have brought in a handful of long-serving pro players in recent years to bolster the young roster.

It’s fair to wonder whether this year’s crop will really make more of a difference than the 2023-24 crop of Bojan Bogdanović, Alec Burks, Monte Morris and Danilo Gallinari. Fortunately for Detroit’s long-term targets, that might not be the case; Cunningham and the other members of the junior corps all have a year more experience and may not need those training wheels quite as much.

Ultimately, the Pistons are young and unproven. Under new CEO Trajan Langdon and head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, Detroit isn’t operating under any win-now pressure. While it will be disheartening for fans who have been in the lottery for five straight years, that run won’t end in 2025.