Pistons end long stretch of futility with first division title in 18 years

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DETROIT (AP) — After nearly two decades, and stretches of futility, the Detroit Pistons have won the Central Division again.

The Pistons defeated the Toronto Raptors 127-116 on Tuesday to finish a long climb back up the NBA ladder and clinch their first division title since the 2007-08 season.

“You take pride in understanding how hard it is to do these things in this league,” Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said after the game. "You take pride in the fact that you have a group of young men who have grown and achieved certain milestones.

“It's a part of the process, and we expect more.”

Two years after going 14-68 and losing a league-record tying 28 straight games, the Pistons are 55-21 with two All-Stars in Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren. With Cunningham sidelined by a lung injury, Duren had 31 points on 12-of-13 shooting and added nine rebounds against the Raptors.

“He's so talented,” Bickerstaff said. “He's a different kind of big that you see in the NBA. You have space-up bigs and post-up bigs, but when you have somebody who can do both, he's a problem for people.”

Daniss Jenkins, who started the season on a two-way contract, had 21 points and five assists. He's averaging 18.6 points and 6.9 assists since replacing Cunningham as the starting point guard.

“We knew we were trying to do something special this year,” he said. “It's great to accomplish something like this, but we have our eyes on the playoffs and doing some damage there. We'll celebrate this tonight and get back to work tomorrow.”

They've helped end one of the worst periods in franchise history.

In 2007-08, the Pistons were still running out most of the same players that had led them to the 2004 championship and a seven-game Finals loss to San Antonio a year later. They went 59-23 under coach Flip Saunders, then knocked out Philadelphia and Orlando on their way to the last of their six straight Eastern Conference Finals appearances.

They didn't know it, but they were about to go off a cliff.

The following offseason, team president Joe Dumars traded Chauncey Billups to Denver for Allen Iverson and replaced Saunders with Michael Curry.

The Pistons went 39-43 and spent the next 10 seasons cycling through eight coaches and resulting in zero postseason victories.

That was followed by one of the worst five-year stretches in NBA history as the Pistons went 94-290 (.245) and hit rock bottom in 2023-24, when they lost a franchise-record 68 games.

Last season, Cunningham and Duren led the Pistons to a 30-win improvement before the fell in six games to the New York Knicks in the first round of the playoffs.

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