Ranking the post-2010 NBA Franchise: #29 Detroit Pistons
Last time we looked at the very bottom of our list, the Sacramento Kings. While they have endured a long streak of failure, the optimism was that at least they seemed to be on an upwards trajectory. Yes, they had been bad for a long time, but there was reason to think that was over. For our 29th ranked team, there is no such optimism.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Detroit Pistons.
A reminder for how the scoring worked, I tried creating a system that valued different things that make the best franchises run-well: success year-over-year, playoff success, developing talent, having deep rosters and of course, star power. So here is the scoring system I came up with:
50-win season: Franchises got 1 point for every 50-win season they accumulated between 2010–11 and 2022–23.
60-win season: Franchises got 2 points for every 60-win season they accumulated between 2010–11 and 2022–23.
70-win season: Franchises got 3 points for every 70-win season they accumulated between 2010–11 and 2022–23. Admittedly, this will only apply once.
Making the playoffs: Franchises got 1 point every time they made the playoffs between the 2010–11 and 2022–23 seasons.
Making the 2nd round: Franchises got 2 poinst every time they made the 2nd round of the playoffs between the 2010–11 and 2022–23 seasons.
Conference Finals: Franchises got 3 points every time they made the conference finals between the 2010–11 and 2022–23 seasons.
Made finals: Franchises got 3 poinst every time they made the NBA finals between the 2010–11 and 2022–23 seasons.
Won Championship: Franchises got 5 points every time they won the Larry O’Brien trophy between the 2010–11 and 2022–23 seasons.
Three All-Stars: Franchises got 2 points for every season they had at least 3 players selected to the all-star team in a single season between 2010–11 and 2022–23.
Three All-NBA: Franchises got 3 points for every season they had at least 3 players selected to an all-NBA team in a single season between 2010–11 and 2022–23.
Six players averaged 10+ PPG: Franchises got 2 points for every year they had 6 players on their roster average more than 10 points per game in a season. A minimum of 50 games played with the team by the player was necessary to qualify.
Seven players averaged 10+ PPG: Franchises got 3 points for every year they had 7 players on their roster average more than 10 points per game in a season. A minimum of 50 games played with the team by the player was necessary to qualify.
MVP: For every player drafted in the 2010s that won MVP with their original franchise, those teams got 4 points. Draft day trades count the same as being drafted (EG: if Luka Doncic had won MVP, it would have counted for the Mavericks.)
DPOY: For every player drafted in the 2010s that won DPOY with their original franchise, those teams got 3 points. Draft day trades count the same as being drafted.
6MOY: For every player drafted in the 2010s that won 6MOY with their original franchise, those teams got 2 points. Draft day trades count the same as being drafted.
Most Improved: For every player drafted in the 2010s that won the Most Improved Player award with their original franchise, those teams got 2 points. Draft day trades count the same as being drafted.
Rookie of the year: Franchises got 3 points for having their player win rookie of the year.
5+ All-Star: For every player drafted in the 2010s who made 5+ All-Star appearances with their original franchise, that team got 2 points.
5+ All-NBA: For every player drafted in the 2010s who made 5+ All-NBA appearances with their original franchise, that team got 3 points.
The Pistons got 2 points for making the playoffs in 2015–16 and 2018–19. They also got 4 points from having 6 players averaging more than 10 poins per game in 2016–17 and 2022–23. They had a total of 6 points.
So how did it all go so wrong? Let’s try to find out.
It’s wild to me that the Pistons have become such a despondent franchise. I know them as the Bad Boys who spawned legends like Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars and a young Dennis Rodman (not acknowledging the big guy, fuck that guy.)
Then, in the early 2000s there was a revival of the Bad Boys movement, this time with Ben Wallace and Chauncey Billups as the poster boys. Of course, that version was more an ensemble cast because Rip Hamilton, Rasheed Wallace and Tayshaun Prince all more than pulled their weight. Like Voltron, that version of the Pistons was more than the sum of its parts. And of course, those early 2000s teams had a connection to the earlier Bad Boys since Joe Dumars was their general manager. He was even highly regarded as a basketball mind.
After a stretch of 5 straight conference finals (and one NBA championship), the Pistons haven’t had much to celebrate since. As their core aged, Ben Wallace was the first cog to leave. Bolting to Chicago for a lot of money. Then Joe Dumars traded Billups, the heart and soul of their team, for 54 games of a washed-up Allen Iverson. That trade motivated Rasheed Wallace to leave in free agency the following summer. Ben Wallace would eventually come back to Detroit, signing a contract with them ahead of the 2009–10 season but by that time, he was all but retired. Think Udonis Haslem’s last few years in Miami but a little spryer and a lot more losing games.
That’s how at the start of the Big 3 era, the Pistons were left with only Hamilton and Prince as the key members of their contending years still on their roster. Hamilton was 32 and Prince was 30. Hamilton was on an expiring deal and not likely to re-sign in Detroit.
The team was low on talent and the on-court production made it obvious. Their 27–55 record the previous season earned them the 7th selection in the 2010 draft where they would select big man Greg Monroe out of Georgetown.
To pair with Monroe, the Pistons had Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva. Gordon was a streaky scorer who made his name in some big playoff moments for Chicago. Villanueva was a one-season wonder as a rookie in Toronto mostly known by everyone for KG allegedly calling him a cancer patient. Unfortunately, neither of these two players were contributing in the way Dumars hoped when he gave them big deals in free agency.
Looking for a little boost heading into 2010–11, the Pistons signed Tracy McGrady in free agency. Much like Iverson a few seasons prior, McGrady was a big acquisition in name only as the oft-injured star was very much on the downhill of his career as he got to Detroit. He would average 8 points per game in his lone season with Detroit.
The hope, as is often the case with a team picking high in the draft, was that Monroe would come in and become a dominating post-presence around which the team could build. Monroe was 6–11 and 265 pounds. He was very physically strong, making opponents look like boys in the paint. In college he had even shown a keen-eye for playmaking from the 5-spot. The Pistons were envisioning a Vlade Divac-like center who could run their offense in the paint.
Instead, Monroe developed into an ok but not great starting big man. He averaged near double-double seasons while scoring into the mid-10s. But he didn’t really develop a passing game in the NBA. What’s worse, Monroe’s lack of speed and bounce made him a very ordinary defensive player. Not once in his career with the Pistons did he average over a block per game. For a team that had once prided itself on their defensive schemes, Monroe did not fit in with Detroit’s mindset.
Unsurprisingly, a team giving a lot of its minutes to players like Gordon, Villanueva, an old T-Mac and a rookie Monroe did not win a lot of games. That landed them the 8th pick in 2011 which they used to select Brandon Knight, a guard who starred for the Kentucky Wildcats.
The Knight pick certainly wasn’t bad. He was highly lauded out of high school and performed admirably on a Kentucky squad that went to the Final Four. Draft experts had him going as high as third overall before attitude questions dropped his stock. Positionally, the Pistons had a guard in Rodney Stuckey, but he wasn’t excelling at handling the duties of being the starting 1. Still, Stuckey was a solid player on a roster with a lot of question marks around him. I remember thinking at the time that it felt like they were doubling down on a position instead of looking at their other pressing weaknesses.
They could have maybe picked up an off-ball shooter like Klay Thompson who also doubled as an excellent defensive player to replace the definitely departing Rip Hamilton. Or maybe they could have picked up Kawhi Leonard, SDSU’s star player who dominated both ends of the court?
Still, this is me speaking with a lot of hindsight. At the time, the pick was mostly praised by experts and fans alike. For all we knew, Knight might be the guy to turn this franchise around. Especially if Monroe was going to continue to develop as a presence in the post.
In Knight’s rookie year, things didn’t change much. The Pistons still sucked. Especially in a lockout year where experienced players would reign supreme due to the lack of time to prepare before the season started. Splitting ball-handling duties with Stuckey, Knight did not immediately appear to be the answer as the team’s primary playmaker, averaging just 3.8 assists per game in 32 minutes. The Pistons won 25 games and this time they earned the 9th pick of the 2012 draft.
Here, they selected Andre Drummond who was a one-and-done big man out of UCONN. Now I have to admit, at the time of this pick, I thought Detroit had lucked into their franchise savior. You have to understand, Drummond looked like a God amongst mortals in high school (and still of similar status in college.) The guy was sculpted, tall and athletic. Not only that, Drummond graduated a year early, playing his freshman year of college in what should have been his senior season of high school.
He also had so much shoulder hair that he always looked like he was wearing a sweater, maybe that added to his mystique.
Yeah, he didn’t impress in college but I wrote it off as Drummond not trying that hard because he knew was NBA bound. Looking back, that may have been the case but I don’t understand how I rationalized this as a positive thing. Still, I had Drummond first overall on my draft board. I was seeing Dwight Howard 2.0. I was incredibly high on this kid while being relatively low on Anthony Davis, who I thought would become Marcus Camby at best. This is why I’m not an NBA scout.
The prevailing thought for Detroit’s management was simple: this guy is going to play the 5 and we can shift Monroe to power forward where his lack of defense should hurt us less. Dumars said as much in the media,
“Greg’s not an above-the-rim, high-flying, shot-blocking athlete like that. They complement each other that way. They cover for each other’s weaknesses.”
Drummond would start most of his rookie season off the bench demonstrating a penchant for rebounding and shot blocking. Jose Calderon came over from Toronto in a 3-team trade, giving the Pistons it’s first real playmaking point guard since Billups was sent away. This allowed Knight more chance to act as a scoring guard, a position in which he was more comfortable. But it also relegated Stuckey to becoming a bench piece.
Despite looking like they had a better constructed roster than in the past, the Pistons won only 29 games and earned the 8th pick in 2013. In case you can’t tell, the Pistons kind of made a habit of being a bad team without being bad enough to pick in the top 3. Thus, they were always adding talent but the talent was never enough for them to become a competitive squad.
Anyways, the Pistons used that pick on Kentavious Caldwell-Pope who would become a perfectly fine player. The kind of guy a contending team needs to fill out their roster (ask last year’s Nuggets or the 2020 Lakers.) The problem was that Detroit was nowhere near contention status.
The other problem is that the Pistons were signing contracts as if they thought they were contenders. That can be the only explanation for signing Josh Smith to a four-year deal worth $54 million dollars.
This isn’t to say that Josh Smith as a player wasn’t once good. Hell, he might have even had great moments. But in 2013–14, giving Josh Smith that kind of contract, on a team that won 29 games the year prior? The definition of insanity.
The Josh Smith era in Detroit was a disaster. He was inefficient (which he was known to be in the past) but as opposed to his time in Atlanta, he didn’t seem to be bothered with trying to defend anyone. And defense was his calling card!
It got so bad that less than two seasons in, the Pistons realized they needed to get rid of him. Only every other team in the league knew by that point that Smith was damaged goods. So, they couldn’t find a trade partner in-season. Instead, they were forced to waive his large contract, an unprecedented move, and take a $5.4 million dollar hit on their cap for the next five seasons.
They had even had the chance to shed his contract the prior summer when our #30 in these rankings, the Sacramento Kings, offered Jason Thompson and Derrick Williams to Detroit for the rights to Smith’s (lack of) services. And that’s why Sacramento was 30th, but maybe refusing that trade should have knocked Detroit down to the bottom. A real prisoner’s dilemma.
In 2014–15, the Pistons went and hired Stan Van Gundy to become the franchise’s next coach. Van Gundy was primarily known for his team behind the bench with the Miami Heat and then the Orlando Magic when the team had Dwight Howard at his peak. Van Gundy was known to squeeze the most juice out of his players. Who better to coach Dwight Howard 2.0 than the man he had coached the original?
One season later, Van Gundy proved that ability by taking a roster low on star talent and leading them to a 44–38 record and their first playoff berth since the days of Chauncey Billups. Granted, they scored the 8th seed and got swept by LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers, but a win is a win and the Pistons didn’t get embarrassed in the playoffs despite losing 4 straight.
The Pistons went into 2016–17 with essentially the same roster. And this time, they did a little worse, compiling a 37–45 record, missing the playoffs. The following season, they won 2 more games but still failed to reach the postseason. However, the 2017–18 season was noteworthy for another reason entirely; they made a huge splash in the trade market.
Mere months after signing a 5-year maximum contract with the Clippers (after a meeting in which Clippers management compared him to Martin Luther King), Blake Griffin was being shopped by the only team he had ever played for. The dynamic and athletic player who had become the face of the modern-Clippers had worn out his welcome in Los Angeles. In the past, he had injured himself punching staff, acted immaturely off-the-court, and in-games it was becoming clear that the Clippers were good but not good enough to win it all. Thus, they were hitting the reset button by dealing the face of their franchise.
In January of 2018, a deal was struck between the Clippers and the Pistons, sending Blake Griffin to Detroit for Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, a 2018 first-round pick and a 2019 second-round pick. That draft pick became Miles Bridges who was traded for Shai Gilgeous Alexander. SGA was later the main piece in the trade that would land Paul George with the Clippers.
With Blake Griffin in tow, the Pistons had their first legitimate star player since the mid-2000s. Yes, he had well-documented injury issues, but if he could manage to stay healthy, there was no doubt that he would help improve the Pistons. As the 2017–18 moved along, it became clear that while Griffin would help, they needed a change in coaching. Thus, after the season they went and hired the recently fired Dwane Casey who had been let go by the Raptors in the same season Casey would win coach of the year.
In his first full-season in Detroit, Blake Griffin demonstrated why the Pistons took a chance on him. He managed to play in 75 games and looked like a real MVP contender. He averaged 24.5 points, 7.5 rebounds and 5.4 assists. He started taking, and making, more threes than he ever had before, adding a whole new dimension to his game. In crunch-time, Griffin gave the Pistons their first real killer since Chauncey Billups. Griffin never looked better than he had this year, highlighted by giving the 76ers 50 effortless points.
Blake Griffin gave Pistons fans something they hadn’t had in nearly a decade: hope. Hope that there was an end to all the losing. Hope that one day soon, the Pistons might rise again as an NBA power. Unfortunately, with hope often comes disappointment and for Griffin and the Pistons, that would rear its ugly head late in the season.
While managing to stay healthy all year, Griffin injured his knee down the stretch, putting his status for the playoffs in question. Despite needing surgery, Griffin saw his team get slaughtered in the first two games of their series against Milwaukee. Knowing they had no shot without him, he opted to play for the rest of the series.
Griffin played admirably despite being unable to do much with his injured knee. He dove for loose balls, went after the ball and wasn’t afraid to get physical and try to get something going. Sadly, even with Griffin on the roster, Milwaukee was just too deep and talented for Detroit to have a chance. They were swept in unceremonious fashion, losing all of their games by a minimum of 15 points. Still, Pistons fans recognized the effort Griffin gave them and made sure to let him know they appreciated it.
They didn’t know it then, but that would be the highlight of the Blake Griffin era in Detroit. He would only appear in 38 more games with the Pistons over the next two seasons. Some fans became bitter that Griffin was not able to help them over the hump, forgetting the amount of wear and tear he did to his body carrying the team for an entire year.
By March 2021, Griffin would be waived by the Pistons. Meanwhile, the team had slid back down to bottom of the NBA, winning only 20 games in both 2019–20 and 2020–21. Bottoming out in 2021 proved to be fruitful because it helped them earn the first overall selection of the 2021 draft.
There, they selected Cade Cunningham, a highly viewed guard who could both score the ball and create for his teammates. Cunningham pieced together a good rookie season, finishing third in rookie of the year voting and making the All-Rookie 1st team. Less ideal was Cunningham’s sophomore season that was cut short due to injuries limiting him to only 12 games.
The Pistons haven’t been good in the Big 3 era basically ever. They made two post-season appearances in that time and won all of 0 games in the playoffs. They’ve consistently drafted players who underwhelm (Monroe, Drummond) or don’t develop into the type of player they truly need (Knight, Caldwell-Pope.) A big issue for them for most of this time has been their inability to completely embrace losing, ensuring better draft picks.
Starting with Cunningham, Detroit seems to have finally embraced that system. Jaden Ivey was chosen 5th overall in 2022 and the hope is that he will become the Rip Hamilton to Cunningham’s Billups. Jalen Duren, also taken in 2022, presents as a promising center who can guard the paint. In 2023, the Pistons added Ausar Thompson, a forward with tantalizing NBA skills and measurements.
I can’t say for sure, but if Cunningham can stay healthy moving forward, this is probably the best way for the Pistons to right the ship that has been astray for so long. They’ve spent the last few years being an NBA punching bag, slowly adding talent to their roster. If, and this is a big if, most of their picks can develop as they foresaw (something that hasn’t happened for them in the past), they might finally have the pieces to start building a legitimate NBA team.
Until they can prove that, they’ll remain an NBA laughing stock. With Sacramento breaking through and making the playoffs in 2022–23, the Pistons were kind of left in the dust. Yes, there are other bad teams around them, but Detroit has been bad for so long that they will soon need to prove they can get out of this hole.
So far, the 2023–24 season has been a tale of two halves. The Pistons began the year looking like potentially the worst team of all-time. They rattled off 28 losses in a row before finally winning their 3rd win of the season. At that point, they were 3–29.
They are now 12–55, certainly not good or even mediocre. They are still a bad team. But Cunningham is starting to show more than flashes of being great. I would say he’s trending in that direction. He is the first building block the Pistons have had in so long. Their future now rests in his young hands (and management’s ability to surround him with talent.)
Hopefully for Pistons fans, this is the crossroads at which they turn their odds around. All I know is that basketball is a lot more fun with a crowd full of people chanting “DE-TROIT BASKETBALL” at the top of their lungs.
Remember Me? A walk down memory lane highlighting some average players who connected with their teams
Josh Smith
… just kidding.
Jason Maxiell
A holdover from the time when the Pistons were a successful franchise, Maxiell embodied the spirit of the fan-favorite. At 6”7 playing the 4 and 5, he was primarily going up against players much bigger than he was. Maxiell was not a natural talent. He couldn’t shoot the lights out. He wasn’t finessing defenders in the post. He just worked harder than everyone on the court. There was absolutely no fear in his heart. As exemplified by the time he blocked a Tyson Chandler alley-oop attempt.
In fact, artful blocks like that one became Maxiell’s calling card of sorts. Tell a Detroit Pistons fan, “Jason Maxiell eats babies” and they’ll understand what you mean. His career wasn’t particularly heralded. He was out of the league by the time he was 31 because injuries had taken a toll and without the athleticism to help him overcome his lack of height, he became a pedestrian player.
But for a while, Maxiell was the heart of the Detroit Pistons. Without the Billups and Wallaces of the world, Maxiell remained as the reminder that Detroit was once a proud basketball city. He was the promise that it might one day regain that status as a basketball powerhouse.
It helps that Maxiell had the perfect attitude to mesh with a blue-collar town like Detroit. You didn’t mess with Maxiell unless you were ready to scrap with him. He wasn’t afraid to throw punches and he wasn’t likely to lose a fight he was getting into. At the end of his career, Maxiell was playing in China and one player found out just how scary Maxiell could be if you got him angry. Thank god Michael Beasley was there that day.
It was that kind of emotion and intensity that helped Detroit fans feel connected to Maxiell.
Ish Smith
In theory, Ish Smith is a journeyman. He has played for 13 teams in a 13-year career. That’s almost half of the NBA! But if I close my eyes and picture him on the court, he’s wearing a Pistons jersey and I’m sure most of their fans would agree with me.
Smith spent three full seasons with the Pistons, which for a guy with his career, is equivalent to Brett Favre’s time on the Green Bay Packers. He wasn’t around for much success in Detroit but he still battled every night. In the process, he captured the fans’ hearts.
Listed at 6 feet, Smith never had height on his size. However, he did have speed. At his peak, Smith was a blaze on the court, comparable to speed demons like John Wall and Derrick Rose. Maybe he didn’t reach that kind of talent level but Smith could ball. Whenever a blue-collar town like Detroit gets an underdog like Smith, you can always count on them being highly regarded by the fans.
Boban Marjanovic (feat. Tobias Harris)
On the other end of the spectrum is a giant of a man. Boban, like Smith, spent only a few seasons rocking a Pistons jersey. That said, everywhere he goes, Boban makes teams fall in love with him. It’s a tale as old as time. A tall, goofy man who seems to enjoy the life he has earned. That’s always going to resonate with people. We all want to see these players have a good time and Boban sure as hell always looks like he’s having blast.
It’s on the Pistons that Boban met Tobias Harris and together they became Bobi and Tobi. Coming from two completely different worlds, they somehow bonded further than even most teammates do and became best friends. It was a story that kind of took on a life of its own on social media as their stark differences only made their friendship better.
We’re different, but we’re the same, you know? If you ask me why [we get along so well], this is the same [in regards to] the relationship with my wife. We don’t watch the same movies, we don’t listen to the same music, but we have something in common where, together, we make one great person. This is the same with Tobias. I don’t know why I listened to different music and he listened to different music, but at the end of the story, we started listening to the same music, he’d send me some TV shows, I would send him some TV shows.
Tobi, for his part, echoed the same sentiment,
Why do we get along? I would just say it’s like two people with caring hearts for other people. It’s also like a culture dynamic, too, where he’s somebody that’s from a totally different country or upbringing and all the way down the line than myself. And like, when I see Bobi and I think why everyone gets along with Bobi is he’s just a free-spirit person that loves to be around positive people, good people that embrace life, people that have a lot of personalities that are in line. Boban’s such a caring person — cares about his family, cares about really anybody that he meets; he wants to make sure that they left better than they were when they met him. I think, for me, I’m kinda the same way. When I first started hanging out [with him], I was like, ‘Man this dude never has a bad day.’ He’s somebody that brings joy to your own day because you realize his positive energy is just a real thing. When we were hanging out, it made me appreciate my life and the things that I get to do just by seeing his type of energy.
On the court, you would think that Bobi’s size would be huge for a sport like the NBA. And even as much as 20 years ago, it would have been. But given the modern game’s penchant for quick shots, fast-pace and up-and-down style, Boban’s game is a bit of an antiquity. It’s hard for someone so big to keep up with the game and thus, Boban did not average too much playing time per game.
Still, when he would get into the game, he was a magnet for rebounds and easy buckets. Boban also had a sweet stroke from the free throw line, which is always a nice bonus for a man of his size.
Brandon Jennings
I’ve spent a lot of time talking doom and gloom about the past 15 years of Detroit basketball. There hasn’t been a lot of sunshine. But for a brief moment in time, much like Blake a little later, Brandon Jennings had Pistons fans dreaming of what might be.
Jennings became the first big-time prep player to skip college and instead go play overseas for the gap year between high school and the NBA. He was a highly touted prospect who could score the hell out of the ball.
Milwaukee drafted him 10th overall in 2009 and he burst onto the scene as a rookie by dropping 55 points in three quarters on the Warriors and another rookie named Stephen Curry. Jennings never quite matched that hype with the Bucks but he was still a very good starting guard.
So, when he was sent to Detroit for Brandon Knight (and Khris Middleton, so Milwaukee fans can thank Brandon for their 2021 championship), there was reason to be excited. Jennings was entering his 5th NBA season, he was only 24 and there was still that tantalizing hope that he might develop into an All-NBA talent.
By the time Jennings got to Detroit, the roster had some issues like bad contracts given out to Charlie Villanueva and Josh Smith. But Smith was especially an issue because he just wasn’t an effective NBA player by that point. Except that he was still being given minutes and kind of messing up any kind of flow the team might be able to establish.
In December of Jennings’ second year with the Pistons, Detroit finally waived Smith, marking the end of an error. From there, Jennings and Drummond’s two-man game really emerged as the lightning rod for Detroit’s offense. They were building chemistry and it really seemed like the Pistons had something cooking.
16 games into the Josh Smith-less Pistons experience, Jennings was averaging 20 points, 7 boards and only 2 turnovers per game. He was taking 6.5 threes per game and making them at a 39% clip. It seemed like Jennings was really starting to find his game. It wasn’t weird to see plays like this one on a semi-regular basis.
There was hope in Detroit. Except that any Detroit sports fan knew by then never to be fooled by hope. In January of 2015 in a game against his old team, the Milwaukee Bucks, Jennings was defending an in-bound pass against Brandon Knight, the player he was traded for. Knight executed a very small V-cut and Jennings tried to stay with him. In the process, Jennings took a wrong step and tore his Achilles, ending his breakout season prematurely.
He was never the same again. Jennings came back the following season a shell of his former self. He was traded to Orlando for Tobias Harris. From there, he bounced around to New York, Washington and eventually back to Milwaukee before calling it quits. Not once did Jennings even come close to averaging double digit points in the NBA again. It was yet another potential great career dimmed before it could truly begin.
If you look at Jennings stats for his time in Detroit, it looks similar to what he was putting up in Milwaukee, if not worse. But it’s important to remember how different those Pistons teams were pre- and post-Josh Smith. Ask any Pistons fan and they’ll tell you: Jennings was becoming something special. To have that taken away so quickly, and on such a random play, it felt cruel. But then again, isn’t that the word one might describe how being a Pistons fan has felt for the past decade and a half?
