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Head coach J.B. Bickerstaff of the Detroit Pistons looks on during the second half against the Houston Rockets at Toyota Center on October 24, 2025 in Houston, Texas. <\/p>\n
J.B. Bickerstaff<\/a> will be in Inglewood, California, at the Intuit Dome on Sunday, coaching in the NBA<\/a> All-Star games. He won that right for leading the Detroit Pistons<\/a> to the best record in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n More than a year and a half prior, however, he was thinking he might be a little more than an hour down the 405 in San Clemente, leading his kids to soccer practice.<\/p>\n Having been let go by the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> in May of 2024, despite the club\u2019s steady rise, Bickerstaff was wondering if, at age 45, his whistle could be staying in his pocket a while. Perhaps a long while.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t think I was going to get a job,\u201d he told Heavy Sports. \u201cThere weren\u2019t jobs available at that point. So I was just sitting at home and hanging out with my family back in Cleveland trying to figure out what was next.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were going to move to San Clemente, California. There\u2019s a soccer academy there, and we were going to go there and let the kids go to the academy and train.\u201d<\/p>\n Then the phone rang. Trajan Langdon had taken over control of basketball operations in Detroit on the heels of the Pistons\u2019 14-68 seasons and the jettisoning of Monty Williams from the bench. Williams had said he needed a break from coaching but the Pistons in 2023 kept throwing money at him until he couldn\u2019t say no. His one season there proved he wasn\u2019t kidding about that break thing.<\/p>\n J.B. Bickerstaff Has Led a Motor City Rebirth: \u2018This Is Where I\u2019m Supposed to Be<\/p>\n The next season, 2024-25, with Bickerstaff and a growing base of young talent, was a Motor City rebirth. There were 44 wins and the first playoff appearance in six years. Bickerstaff finished second in Coach of the Year voting to Kenny Atkinson, the guy who replaced him with the Cavaliers.<\/p>\n It was a win-win for the franchises.<\/p>\n Though no doubt wounded by his firing in Cleveland, he is able, from the perspective now of clear conference favorite in Detroit, to see the transition as a net positive.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah. I mean, I think so,\u201d Bickerstaff said. \u201cYou go through a lot of ups and downs, but ultimately I think you end up where you\u2019re supposed to be.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I feel like this is where I\u2019m supposed to be \u2014 with these guys, with this coaching staff. It\u2019s like I couldn\u2019t have been put in a better place to continue doing this job.\u201d<\/p>\n Bickerstaff Took Time to \u2018Reflect & to Try to Grow & Get Better\u2019<\/p>\n With 40 wins already, the Pistons are in gear to leave even last season\u2019s breakthrough drive in the dust. The roster is better, the players are individually better, and Bickerstaff thinks he\u2019s gotten better, too. The time in limbo back in 2024 was the stage for some important inner vision.<\/p>\n \u201cThat month that I had off gave me an opportunity to, like, evaluate myself and think about what I was going to be at the next opportunity and just understanding that the focus should always be on the process and not just focused on the results,\u201d he said. \u201cIn my last year in Cleveland, I let that get the best of me, where it was like results, results, results. And we skipped some of the process stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n So now his summers include a conscious period of self-scouting.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just gives you an opportunity to do that, to reflect and to try to grow and get better,\u201d Bickerstaff told Heavy. \u201cThat\u2019s where my mind was back then. But it was funny, because, at that time, like I said, I didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d be getting another job.\u201d<\/p>\n No knock on San Clemente, but Detroit winters are looking pretty damn good to J.B. Bickerstaff these days. So does an All-Star appointment this weekend in Inglewood.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tSteve Bulpett<\/a> has covered the NBA since 1985, the first 35 of those years as beat writer\/columnist for the Boston Herald. In that time, he has gained National Top 10 honors from the APSE as a columnist, beat reporter and features writer. Since 2014, he has served as a vice president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association. More about Steve Bulpett<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tMore Heavy on Pistons\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tLoading more stories\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty Head coach J.B. Bickerstaff of the Detroit Pistons looks on during the second half against the Houston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,305,193,3846,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-602962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cleveland","11":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","12":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116069814471434919","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}