For the third time in the past 40 years, the Pistons are building a team known for toughness and a physical brand of basketball.

Like two of the previous Detroit championship teams, they are second in the league in defensive rating. More to the point, their physical approach has them leading the league in opponent free-throw rate.

And like the ‘80s iteration of the Bad Boys, today’s Pistons have an elite defensive forward in Ausar Thompson. While he’s not Dennis Rodman when it comes to rebounding, Thompson is — like his more celebrated twin brother — one of the most athletic players players in the league, capable of almost everything else on the defensive end: He can guard four positions, racks up steals and blocks, and shows excellent defensive footwork, all while guarding the opponent’s best scorer every game.

Drilling down on defense

According to my 3-factor analysis, the Pistons excel at two big things defensively.

The more important one is opponent points per shot, where Detroit ranks third in the NBA. The Pistons haven’t been especially lucky in opponent 3-point shooting — their 3-point percentage allowed is exactly league average. And as mentioned, they give up a ton of free throws. That leaves one other area of the floor: 2-point defense.

The Pistons are third-best in this category, behind only the Oklahoma City Thunder and Boston Celtics.
The Pistons, as a team, possess several attributes that help here. They’re tall, beefy, young, energetic and athletic.

This means that when an opponent starts driving to the basket, the defense collapses quickly. And at least one or two Pistons are ready to jump for a block or contest.

Jalen Duren, who has defended Detroit’s most opponent shots within 6 feet, is allowing opponent field-goal shooting 5 percentage points lower than expected. And while Stewart’s sample size here is too small to be sustainable, his opponent FG% allowed is a whopping 18 percentage points lower than expected.

Another wrinkle of Detroit’s good 2-point percentage against is Cade Cunningham’s ability to stifle opponent fast breaks.

The Pistons crash the offensive board with multiple players. That can lead to lots of fastbreak scoring by opponents — especially if the first defender back is a small guard. But because Cunningham is essentially the size of a small forward, he’s wildly more effective at bothering rim attempts by opponent guards in transition.

Forcing turnovers

Teams that excel at basket protection tend to play big. That usually comes with a tradeoff, as bigs usually rank near the bottom of the league when it comes to forcing turnovers.

The Pistons manage to protect the basket and force turnovers at the same time.

Once again, the historic Thunder are off-the-charts in this category. Phoenix, playing small, ranks second, and the Pistons are third.

Almost the entire roster is above average when it comes to steals, so we’ll highlight just a couple of players you might not be focused on yet:

• Third-string center Paul Reed is averaging 3.6 steals per 100 possessions — and 3.0 per 100 for his career, which puts him in the No. 1 spot all-time among NBA players 6’9” and taller (with at least 3,000 career minutes).
• Ron Holland II, who narrowly trails Beef Stew in feistiness, averages 3.9 per 100, leading the league.

Detroit’s steals occur in a wide variety of ways: Duncan Robinson excels at swiping the ball on opponent drives; Holland is great at playing the passing lanes near midcourt.

Even in situations where the ball is initially only deflected — the Pistons rank sixth in deflections — it’s likely to end up in Detroit’s hands, as they rank second when it comes to recovering loose balls.

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Bright future

While the Pistons might not continue winning almost 80% of their games — their scoring margin suggests they’ll come back to earth — Basketball Reference projects Detroit as 65% likely to have a top-3 seed in the East, with an 11% chance to make the NBA Finals.

Looking further ahead, xRAPM suggests that only the Rockets and Thunder have a similar number of good players younger than 25: Ausar Thompson, Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren are already top-60 players.

Assuming Detroit holds onto Duren and Thompson — who are due to be restricted free agents in 2026 and 2027, respectively — these Pistons appear here to stay.

more, including tons of clips, here: https://www.roycewebb.com/p/motown-leads-the-east-and-it-looks (paywalled)