J.B. Bickerstaff, who was fired by the Cavaliers five weeks ago, wasn’t unemployed for long. He has now been hired by the Pistons as their new head coach. (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images)
The NBA coaching carousel keeps going around and around and around.
According to Yahoo Sports’ Vincent Goodwill, the Detroit Pistons are hiring J.B. Bickerstaff to replace Monty Williams as head coach.
J.B. Bickerstaff will be the new Pistons head coach, sources tell @YahooSports. It was between Bickerstaff and former Pistons assistant Sean Sweeney, who’s in Dallas.
Woj first on the report
— Vincent Goodwill (@VinceGoodwill) June 30, 2024
Bickerstaff, 45, was recently fired by the Cleveland Cavaliers after leading them to two consecutive playoff appearances. Over five years in Cleveland he had a 170-159 coaching record.
This is the first major hire made by Trajan Langdon, the Pistons’ new president of basketball operations. He was hired in late May after spending five years as the general manager for the New Orleans Pelicans. He and Bickerstaff will be in charge of turning around the Pistons after a 14-68 season, the worst in franchise history.
Bickerstaff, who will be Detroit’s third coach in three seasons, has his work cut out for him. The Pistons won an NBA-worst 14 games under Williams last season, which is not what the team was expecting directly after signing Williams to one of the richest coaching contracts in NBA history. (They probably also weren’t expecting the team to post a 28-game losing streak, the longest in NBA history, under Williams.)
Theoretically, it shouldn’t take much for Bickerstaff to do better than Williams did, considering every single team in the NBA besides the Pistons and Washington Wizards won at least 21 games last season. Though right now, Bickerstaff is in roughly the same position Williams was a year ago: hired by the Pistons after being fired from a much more successful team.
Will Bickerstaff be able to do more with the NBA’s worst team than Williams did? We’ll have to wait and see.
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