The Pistons have spent the early part of this season checking two of the biggest boxes that matter when a team starts thinking bigger than just the regular season.
Detroit’s defense has stayed elite, and the 3-point shot - the thing that hurt them so badly last year - is suddenly looking like a strength. The Pistons are now taking and making more threes than they did over the last two seasons, and after ranking near the bottom of the league in both attempts and makes in each of those years, they’ve climbed into the top half of the NBA in both categories.
That shift matters because the shooting numbers are no longer just respectable; they’re strong. Detroit is 7th in the league in 3-point percentage, hitting about 38 percent as a team. That kind of mark usually puts a club near the top of the league, if not right at the front.
The other side of the equation is even more striking. The Pistons own the NBA’s No. 1 defense, giving up just over 100 points per game. When teams start getting talked about in championship terms, that’s the kind of number that jumps off the page.
Recent title teams have followed a similar blueprint. The New York Knicks finished 4th in defensive efficiency and 4th in 3-point percentage last season on their way to a title.
The year before, OKC paired the league’s best defense with a top-half 3-point shooting team and turned that into a title of its own. In 2023-24, the Boston Celtics were 3rd in defense and 2nd in 3-point percentage.
The pattern is hard to miss.
That’s the backdrop for why Trajan Langdon’s offseason focus looks so important now. Detroit needed to fix the imbalance that showed up last season, when a strong defense wasn’t enough to cover for shaky perimeter shooting in the playoffs. So far, the early returns suggest the Pistons are moving in the right direction.
The modern game rewards teams that can protect the ball, limit extra chances for the other side and knock down threes at a high clip. With more movement and a faster pace across the league, efficiency has become the currency that matters most. Detroit is showing it can cash in on both ends.
There are still issues to sort through, especially the kind of shot creation that becomes essential once the playoffs arrive. But right now, the Pistons are doing two of the most important things a contender can do: defending at a high level and making enough threes to make that defense count.
In Other News...
Pistons Fans Have A New Reason To Revisit That Embiid Ending
The Pistons left Philadelphia with a 112-106 loss, but the game will be remembered in Detroit for more than the final score. Joel Embiid was assessed a flagrant foul penalty 1 after kicking Cade Cunningham in the groin, and he also picked up a technical foul for shoving another player in a night that had plenty of edge to it.
Embiid still produced a double-double with 26 points and 15 rebounds, adding another big night to a career that keeps climbing the 76ers record book. For Pistons fans, though, the lasting image is less about his numbers and more about the ending, which gave Cunningham and Detroit plenty to think about after a frustrating finish. [Read more 🡒]
Pistons Fans Have Every Reason To Be Furious After Embiid Incident
The sequence involving Joel Embiid and Jaden Cunningham was the kind of moment that can leave a crowd stewing long after the whistle. Near the three-point line, Embiid unintentionally struck Cunningham in the groin while defending, and the Pistons forward was left in obvious pain as the play unfolded in front of everyone.
Embiids night did not stop there, either, as he also drew a technical foul for pushing Tolu Smith and was later hit with a retroactive Flagrant 1. Even with the extra scrutiny, he still finished with 26 points and 15 rebounds, and Philadelphia moved to 8-1, leaving Detroit with plenty to gripe about from a game that felt increasingly out of hand. [Read more 🡒]
Pistons Look Smarter For Passing On Miles Bridges Now
When Detroit was weighing its options at power forward, Miles Bridges was one of the names in the mix, but the Pistons chose to go another direction and build around players they felt fit better. Instead of making that move, they landed on veterans such as Tobias Harris and John Collins, a pair of additions that gave the front office a different kind of roster construction to work with.
Bridges has long had the scoring and rebounding production that keeps him in the conversation, with career averages of 16 points and 6 rebounds per game, but the defensive questions have followed him from Charlotte to Phoenix. His recent stint with the Suns has only sharpened that concern, with his play on that end drawing criticism and factoring into a decline in Phoenixs defensive rating, which makes Detroits decision to pass look a little wiser in hindsight. [Read more 🡒]