Four ways the Detroit Pistons can find a new championship identity
The wheels officially fell off of the Detroit Pistons this year. After making the playoffs last year with the Blake Griffin–Andre Drummond frontcourt, everything that could go wrong finally went wrong.
Less than a year after last season’s run to the playoffs, Griffin got injured again, Drummond was moved at the trade deadline, and the Pistons were one of the only eight teams that aren’t slated to be a part of the NBA’s restart pan.
Now comes the age-old question, where do they go from here? The Pistons were a team with an amazing fan-base that had two eras that defined blue-collar basketball. The “Bad Boy Pistons” and the “Going-to-Work Pistons” gave the team championship identity.
The Pistons are far from having a championship identity now. In fact, this time lacks an identity. Sure, there are some good young pieces on the roster: Luke Kennard, Bruce Brown, Sekou Doumbouya, and Christian Wood, but there’s no identity.
Blake Griffin is oft-injured, same with Derrick Rose; they lack a real star to give the team identity. That has made this team considered one of the hardest general manager jobs in the NBA right now. As Detroit now looks for its new general manager, the question that needs to be raised is where will the team get its new identity?
Luckily the team already started this process with ownership announcing that what they have been doing in barely scrapping the playoffs over this past decade isn’t good enough. Now comes the difficult part of the turnaround. Whoever the new front-office leader of this team may become, here are my four suggestions of where they can start.