Ausar ThompsonChris Schwegler/NBAE via Getty Images
The Detroit Pistons have been dreadful for half a decade.
Over the last five years, they’ve won just 24.5 percent of their games. That’s dead-last in the league over that span, and the gap between them and 29th place is about the same as the gap between 29th and 16th.
In 2023-24 alone, the Pistons were 14-68, giving themselves the worst record in the league and the best odds to secure the No. 1 pick.
But the Atlanta Hawks jumped nine spots in the lottery to wind up with the first pick despite having the 10th-best odds. The Houston Rockets jumped six spots to third, and the San Antonio Spurs snuck up one spot to fourth.
That pushed Detroit to the fringe of the top five. And its recent history there is tough to get excited about.
The jury is still out on Ausar Thompson (chosen fifth last summer) and Jaden Ivey (fifth the year before). The same can probably be said of Cade Cunningham, who was the top overall pick in 2021. The two first-rounders taken before him, Killian Hayes and Sekou Doumbouya, are both currently out of the NBA.
After all these years of bad basketball, the Pistons still don’t have a single sure-fire star. And though this class may not have had one, either, it would’ve been nice to look from the top spot rather than the fifth.
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