Pistons to Hire Bickerstaff as New Coach

The NBA coaching carousel is in constant motion. Where it stops, nobody knows.

According to Yahoo Sports’ Vincent Goodwill, without much time to collect his thoughts, he is back in the game. The Detroit Pistons are hiring J.B. Bickerstaff to replace Monty Williams as head coach. It was a two-horse race between Bickerstaff and former Pistons’ assistant Sean Sweeney, who is in Dallas.

Bickerstaff, 45 years-of-age, was recently let go on May 23 by the Cleveland Cavaliers after leading them to back-to-back playoff appearances. Over five years at the helm in Cleveland, he posted a 170-159 coaching record.

This is the first hire of consequence made by Trajan Langdon, the Pistons’ new president of basketball operations, who played college basketball at Duke. He was hired in late May after spending five years as the general manager of the New Orleans Pelicans. He and Bickerstaff will oversee turning around the Pistons, who are made up of an extremely young core, after a 14-68 season, the worst in franchise history.

Bickerstaff, who will be Detroit’s third coach in three seasons, has a lot of work ahead of him, and it will take at least a couple of years to implement his philosophy.

The Pistons won an NBA-worst 14 games under Williams last season, which is a far cry from what the organization was expecting after signing Williams to one of the most lucrative coaching contracts in NBA history, 6-years, $78M. They were caught off guard by the team being mired in a 28-game losing streak, the longest in NBA history, under Williams.

It should not take much effort for Bickerstaff to exceed what Williams accomplished, considering every single team in the NBA besides the Pistons and Washington Wizards won at least 21 games last season. However, as we speak, Bickerstaff is theoretically in the same boat Williams found himself in a year ago: hired by the Pistons after being fired from a much more successful team.

The Pistons are doing everything they can in hopes of signing 2021 No. 1 draft pick Cade Cunningham to a long-term deal on his rookie extension and are prioritizing the use of their salary cap space to take on veteran contracts that will be paired with future draft picks.

The question is, will Bickerstaff be able to do more with the NBA’s worst team than Williams was able to? Only time will tell.