Detroit Pistons

A works team from Fort Wayne

The club began in 1937 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as a semi-professional side attached to Fred Zollner's foundry, which made pistons for engines and gave the team both its name and its first paymaster. It turned professional in 1941 and joined the National Basketball League, where it won championships in 1944 and 1945. Zollner moved the franchise to Detroit in 1957, having concluded that Fort Wayne was too small a market to carry a professional roster; the city he moved to had been without professional basketball for roughly a decade.

Detroit waited another thirty-two years for a title. It arrived with the physical, defence-first sides of 1986 to 1992, who beat the Los Angeles Lakers in four games in 1989 and Portland in 1990. A third championship came in 2004, again against the Lakers, in five games, and was followed by six consecutive appearances in the Eastern Conference finals between 2003 and 2008.

The team played at the Palace of Auburn Hills from 1988 until 2017, when it moved back into the city proper at Little Caesars Arena. Tom Gores bought the franchise in 2011.

Twenty-eight straight

The bottom of the rebuild is easy to date. After starting 2023-24 at 2-1, Detroit lost twenty-eight games in a row between 30 October and 30 December 2023 — the longest losing run within a single season in NBA history, and level overall with a Philadelphia streak that straddled the 2014-15 and 2015-16 campaigns. The run ended with a 129-127 win over Toronto. The season finished 14-68.

The response was a clear-out at the top rather than another teardown of the roster. Trajan Langdon was hired as president of basketball operations on 31 May 2024. A month later, on 30 June, the club agreed terms with J.B. Bickerstaff, recently dismissed by Cleveland, and introduced him as head coach on 10 July 2024.

What followed was unusually quick. Detroit reached the play-offs in Bickerstaff's first season, then added shooting around its young core — Duncan Robinson arrived from Miami on 7 July 2025 — and went into 2025-26 with a settled starting group for the first time in years.

Sixty wins, and a Game 7

The 2025-26 season was the third best in franchise history by record: 60-22. Detroit won thirteen in a row between 29 October and 26 November 2025, matching the longest winning run the club has ever managed. It passed fifty wins on 19 March, its first fifty-win season since 2007-08, and finished with its first sixty-win season since 2005-06. No team had previously won sixty games two seasons after losing sixty.

That brought the Central Division title for the first time since 2008 and the top seed in the Eastern Conference for the first time since 2007. The play-offs were harder than the seeding suggested. Orlando led the first round 3-1 before Detroit won three straight, closing it out 116-94 on 3 May 2026 and becoming the fifteenth team to recover from that deficit.

The conference semi-final against Cleveland went the other way. Detroit won the first two games at home, lost three in succession including a 117-113 overtime defeat on 13 May, forced a decider with a 115-94 win on 16 May, and then lost Game 7 on 19 May by 125-94. For a side that had been the best in the East all winter, it was an abrupt ending.

Cunningham, and the price of a centre

Cade Cunningham averaged 23.9 points, 9.9 assists and 5.5 rebounds across 64 games in 2025-26, shooting 46.1 per cent from the field. He was named to the All-NBA First Team alongside Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembanyama and Luka Doncic, and finished fifth in MVP voting with 117 points, including two first-place votes. Bickerstaff was runner-up for Coach of the Year behind Boston's Joe Mazzulla.

Jalen Duren's season — 19.5 points and 10.5 rebounds a game at 65.0 per cent shooting, in 70 appearances — set up the summer's most awkward piece of business. Duren became a restricted free agent on 30 June 2026 and sat out the early weeks of the pre-season while offers moved between roughly $170m and $190m. The sticking point was a weight clause in the proposed deal. It was dropped, and on 1 October 2026 the two sides agreed a five-year, $200m fully guaranteed extension, announced two days later. Duren said afterwards that he wanted to be a Detroit Piston for life.

The supporting cast turned over in February 2026 as well, when Jaden Ivey was sent to Chicago in a three-team deal that brought back Kevin Huerter and Dario Saric.

Where they stand in October 2026

The summer reshaped the front court. On draft night, 24 June 2026, Detroit took Karim Lopez at 21 and traded his rights to Memphis for Ebuka Okorie at 17, adding Ugonna Onyenso at 53. Isaiah Joe arrived from Oklahoma City on 6 July. A six-team trade on 8 July brought in John Collins, Taurean Prince and Gary Harris while sending Caris LeVert and Isaiah Stewart to Memphis. Tobias Harris left for San Antonio; Kevin Huerter and Javonte Green re-signed.

Pre-season ran 3-1: a 109-107 win over Phoenix on 5 October, a 114-108 overtime loss at Washington on 10 October, a 128-106 win at Minnesota on 14 October and a 129-125 win over Toronto on 16 October.

The market is sceptical that sixty wins repeats. Sportsbooks set the regular-season win total at 49.5, with BetMGM pricing the over at -105 and the under at -115, and DraftKings had Detroit at +2500 for the championship on 13 October 2026. John Hollinger of The Athletic projected 52-30, which would still be first in the East.

The season opens at home against Boston at 3pm on Tuesday 20 October 2026, on NBC, as part of the opening-day treble-header. Both clubs were eliminated earlier than expected last spring — Boston, 56-26 in the regular season, lost in the first round to Philadelphia — and both arrive with changed rosters, Boston having traded Jaylen Brown to the 76ers for Paul George and picks.

The building and the crowd

Little Caesars Arena opened in 2017 with a capacity of 20,491 and the Pistons moved in from the suburbs the same year. For most of the following decade the bowl looked half-committed. That has changed with the results: total home attendance in 2025-26 reached 806,422, fourth in the NBA, with individual gates in the 18,900 to 20,000 range.

The play-off run turned the forecourt into part of the event. Before Game 1 against Cleveland on 5 May 2026, a free Fan Fest opened in the plaza outside the arena from 4pm, with All Dawg shirts handed out to supporters coming through the doors; Nathan Brecht, the club's director of game presentation, said the aim was a high-energy crowd arriving early. Tip-off was 7pm, with the game on Peacock.

The opening-day programme on 20 October 2026 follows the same template at larger scale. The plaza opens at 10am, players arrive along a blue carpet from 11am with Isiah Thomas and Jerry Stackhouse among the former players signing for supporters, and the adjacent Arena Live space runs a fall fan fest from noon to 2pm with a petting zoo, cider and doughnuts from Blake's Cider Mill, face painting and a skills challenge run by the club's academy coaches.