The Detroit Pistons found themselves looking up at all 14 competing Eastern Conference teams in the standings on Thursday with the NBA Playoff season drawing near. Coach Monty Williams' team has of course been eliminated for several months now, and previously set the all-time NBA record for most losses in a row in a single season, tying the record for most losses in a row overall with 28 losses.
Coach Williams' teams' embarrassingly bad performance has given new meaning to the famous franchise nickname ‘Bad Boys' as several underwhelming players were traded to other teams and the Pistons went with a young, addition-by-subtraction roster for the remainder of the season following the 2023-2024 NBA trade deadline.
The Pistons briefly surpassed the Washington Wizards for the second-worst record in the East, only to find themselves slinking back into the cellar when their subsequent string of games was all said and done.
For Detroit Pistons fans, the best news of the season came when team legend Chauncey Billups, whose Hall-of-Fame selection was announced recently, which Billups thought was an April Fool's prank.
With the Pistons playing out the string and their fans sifting through pre-draft lists of potential lottery picks who could help turn the franchise's fortunes around, it's time to rank the top three Pistons players, executives and coaches most responsible for the team's dismal season. While each of these Pistons ambassadors did an admirable job of competing, they simply did not do enough to get the job done and their weaknesses and lack of talent and/or other winning attributes were exposed in the process.
1. Monty Williams
The Pistons' new head coach came over from the New Orleans Pelicans in the offseason and quickly seemed like a fish out of water in Motown. Williams is a polished coach who players, fans and management seem to like. He did his best to find the right lineup combinations and push the right buttons this season for Tom Gores' franchise but nothing he tried seemed to work.
Many Pistons fans were completely and utterly perplexed at Williams' lineups throughout the course of the season, which favored Killian Hayes over Jaden Ivey and seemed to have the Pistons stuck in the mud for much of 2023-2024.
With Hayes now in NBA purgatory, having not been added yet by any other franchise, Detroit fans across the Wolverine State are feeling more and more validated by the day. Williams showed moxie while questioning the officiating during Detroit's historic losing streak. That was one of the few times it felt genuine and authentic to long-suffering Pistons fans, many of whom still believe Detroit made a major mistake in bringing him aboard this past offseason on one of the most lucrative contracts in league history.
2. Tom Gores
The Pistons' wealthy owner was lambasted with chants of ‘Sell the Team!' earlier this season as the once-proud NBA franchise saw its record move to 2-28 on the season.
Tom Gores was born in the Middle Eastern in the city of Nazareth and moved to Flint, Michigan with his family at the age of four. He has since poured plenty of dollar bills into reviving the Pistons franchise but has seen his efforts falter in more ways than diehard Pistons fans would care to count.
Tom Gores is seen by many Pistons fans as an outsider despite his Michigan roots, because of the time he has traditionally spent away from the team in California and other areas of the country.
While Tom Gores deserves some credit for assembling a talented roster with Cade Cunningham, Ivey and Jalen Duren all shining at various times, he deserves far more heat for his franchise's embarrassing performance both this season and in years past.
3. Killian Hayes
The former Pistons point guard grew up in Lakeland, Florida, site of the Detroit Tigers' training camp, and played professionally in France before joining Gores and Williams' team. He played hard and played smart, efficient and disruptive defense at times but ultimately became the biggest scapegoat for Detroit, along with Bojan Bogdanovic who was shipped to the New York Knicks.
Hayes and Bogdanovic both seemed to “bog down” the Pistons' chances for success by keeping younger players with more potential like Ivey and Ausar Thompson glued to the pine.
Bogdanovic became a productive scorer and did his best to lead an overmatched Pistons team when given the chance.
Hayes never became much better than a below average player with mediocre awareness on both ends of the court. His lack of production and mental lapses were a major hinderance to the Pistons' success, along with injuries to Jalen Duren and Cade Cunningham. Point guards are supposed to set the tone for a team, and Hayes' lackluster, timid and uninspired play set a negative tone from the beginning of the season until the time he was released from the team.
It wasn't entirely Hayes' fault. He took on the tepid personalities of Williams and Gores while attempting to play mistake-free basketball and blend in with his teammates. It simply wasn't enough to get the job done.
Hayes finished a 42-game, 31-start season that saw him score less than seven points per game. His assist-turnover ratio was a solid 4.0. It didn't matter as Detroit piled up loss after loss and no one seemed willing to step into a leadership role except for Cunningham and Duren at times.
Regardless, Hayes will need to work diligently on his outside shooting, strength, and intangibles if he ever hopes to log significant minutes on an NBA team.
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