The Pistons went into the All-Star break with a 5.5-game lead in the East and a chance to win 60 games for the third time in franchise history. A week prior, they went into the trade deadline cautiously, focused as much on seasons to come as the season at hand.
Will they regret it? The East is as weak as it's been in a while due to injuries to stars like Jayson Tatum of the Celtics and Tyrese Haliburton of the Pacers and inconsistent seasons for the Cavaliers and Knicks, but the Pistons might not have enough scoring to make it through the playoffs. All they did at the deadline to solve that was add Kevin Huerter, whose shooting numbers are down significantly the last two seasons.
Asked last week if he believes the Pistons are good enough to win an NBA title as currently constructed, president of basketball operations Trajan Langdon answered honestly: "I don't even know, really."
"We haven’t won a home playoff game, so I’m just not going to talk about NBA championships when we haven’t won a home playoff game," Langdon said on 97.1 The Ticket. "It’s two completely different monsters."
The Pistons took a huge step forward last season, won their first playoff game in 17 years and pushed the Knicks to the brink in the first round, but also lost all three games that series on their home floor.
They're tougher, stronger and more talented a year later, with the rise of Cade Cunningham as a legitimate MVP candidate and the emergence of Jalen Duren as an All-Star. Langdon doesn't want to sell his team short. He just knows the challenge of winning an NBA title, and won't take playoff success for granted. Asked if Detroit's roster is built to succeed in the postseason, he said, "That’s the hope, yeah."
"Again, I think we’re playing really good basketball, I think we’re one of the better teams in the league and hopefully we can continue that in the second half of the season and have success," he said. "In 2014, I was a (front-office) member of the Spurs and we won, 2016 I was a front office member of the Cavs and we won. It’s really, really hard. I mean, 16 games, and that other team (in each round) is really good and they’re going to be prepared and they’re going to be coming at us. To win 16 of them, in the postseason, is very, very difficult. I understand that, so I’m not going to sit here and say that we’re definitely going to be able to do that.
"For me, I know we’re going to be competitive. I have no question about that, and I think we’ve shown that already. I love the team that we have and I think we've got a shot to do some damage."
To Langdon's point, the Pistons are 9-2 against the other top six playoff teams in the East, including two recent drubbings of the Knicks in Detroit. They'll get a better idea in the next couple months of where they stand against the top teams in the West, with two games apiece on tap against the Thunder, Spurs and Timberwolves. They did take two games from the Nuggets in the last month.
As for the idea that the East is "wide open" thanks specifically to the absences of Tatum and Haliburton, Langdon acknowledged that "those are two big-time players" and "we feel that there’s an opportunity." But "I don't think we feel it's wide open," he said.
"There’s good teams. I think we’ve shown that we can beat those teams, but we also realize that we haven’t won a playoff series yet, we haven’t won a home playoff game yet," Langdon said. "Although we’re having a really good regular season thus far, the playoffs is a different monster and we don’t have a lot of experience there.
"So, 'wide open,' obviously having those two superstars out helps, but we understand how it difficult it is and we’re just trying to stay focused and reach this team’s potential. That’s our day-to-day approach and what we’re doing, instead of looking at the grand scheme of things."