With an average of 19 victories per season for five years (only 94 victories in total), the Detroit franchise is at the bottom of the hole and cannot manage to get out of it. The team is very young and the players are used to a series of setbacks, to a certain culture of defeat, which is now their daily life.
This is why the new president, Trajan Langdon, decided to rely on experience to strengthen his team. Thus, Tobias Harris, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Malik Beasley arrived during the offseason and this trio represents 2,129 regular season matches and 140 playoff matches!
“We recruited these players for this reason: not only to help on the floor but also because a regular season is very long”, explain the leader of Detroit. “To help during the ups and downs, to ensure that the players remain strong when we go through a series of defeats. We should not think about last season but about the future. We have to move on to the next action, to the training that is coming, to the match that is coming. »
Break the regular season into pieces and move forward slowly
We remember that, in 2023/24, after two victories in three games to start, the Pistons had sunk by recording 28 defeats in a row ! An NBA record. The group was weighed down by this experience and then, on four occasions, the players experienced a series of six or more defeats in a row…
“JB Bickerstaff spoke to these elders, saying that their leadership for the young people will be crucial in creating good habits,” continues Trajan Langdon. “A lot of our players haven't won at this level and haven't played for something in the second half of the season, after the All-Star Game, when that's what the whole league hopes to do. We hope that they will be leaders in the locker room, on the floor, during travel and in the fourth quarter, to show the young people how things should be done. »
As the season still promises to be long for the Pistons, and like the Raptors' vision, we should not necessarily think about winning every game. Otherwise, each defeat will be a failure and morale, already badly damaged by catastrophic seasons, will never return.
“We must not be obsessed with an action or a meeting, but rather see things over sequences of five or ten matches, or even half a season, to assess the progress of the players,” warns the president. “I don't think the goal is our win-loss record. Obviously we want to win as much as possible but we are trying to build a group, to establish an identity specific to Detroit. We want, at some point in the season, to be able to say that we are playing Pistons basketball. »
