re-writing history in the process<\/a>\u00a0to act as if the Pistons were expected to be where they are.\u00a0<\/p>\nJoe Mazzulla is a trendy candidate, and he has had a remarkable year with the Celtics, but even without Jayson\u00a0Tatum\u00a0he still had an MVP\u00a0candidate,\u00a0and most pundits picked Boston to be ahead of the Pistons this year even without Tatum.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But\u00a0maybe the\u00a0most impressive part of coach Bickerstaff\u2019s resume is that he did it in a way that shows a true sign of coaching.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Detroit Pistons have the same team\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Pistons\u2019 roster\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0drastically different from the one that won just 14 games two\u00a0years\u00a0ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Detroit\u00a0hasn\u2019t\u00a0made any huge signings or added a star player that could account for such a dramatic improvement. They are\u00a0mostly\u00a0better because their young core is better.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yes, Trajan Langdon has done a FAR better job of adding the right veterans to complement them. You\u00a0can also argue that guys like Cade Cunningham, Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson were going to be good no matter what, but coach Bickerstaff has clearly had an impact on that, as the same level of improvement\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0there under Monty Williams.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most of the credit goes to the players, who put in the work to improve, but that\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0account for the complete culture change that has happened under JB Bickerstaff.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u00a0are\u00a0other worthy\u00a0candidates\u00a0for Coach of the Year, but I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0see how voters can ignore the\u00a0history\u00a0JB Bickerstaff just made with the Pistons, especially when no one saw it coming.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In two years, JB Bickerstaff took a Detroit Pistons team that had lost 68 games to\u00a0one\u00a0that just finished…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,296,188,3860,6,297],"class_list":{"0":"post-709673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-pistons","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-pistons","11":"tag-detroitpistons","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-pistons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116397653679791627","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709673","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=709673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}