The Detroit Pistons Are Dunking On Expectations

Coming into this season, it was unclear whether Andre Drummond would ever fulfill his massive potential. The extent of that potential was not in question—the 22-year-old Pistons center had done a pretty good impression of Dwight Howard through his first three seasons. But his efficiency took a slight dip last year when former Howard head coach Stan Van Gundy came to Detroit; learning on the job is a vexing and non-linear thing in the NBA. Last year Drummond looked like a good and occasionally brilliant player with a middling Pistons roster around him, but the first campaign of a new era in Detroit was something of a miss—although it was hard to tell how much of this was on Drummond, given the injuries and trades that upended the team last season. I also held a personal (cranky, folksy) skepticism about Drummond as an NBA centerpiece, stemming from his overzealous and often yearning use of social media, but that's mostly me.

Today, and for all of this young season, Drummond is a 20-20 threat every night, and inarguably the year's breakout superstar. He is terrifying at the rim on both sides of the court, and has flashed a much-improved post game; additionally, his murderous instinct as a roll man has given Reggie Jackson more open, easy baskets than maybe any point guard in the league. The Pistons are a healthy 5-5 despite injuries to Brandon Jennings and Jodie Meeks, and they look like a sure thing for the Eastern Conference playoffs, now and for years to come. It's finally happening in Detroit, and if the team we see now isn't quite the one that might someday contend for a title, this one might be more fun to watch than the better teams to come.

What Drummond has done as a defender and rebounder this fall is almost hard to believe. It is just about impossible for opposing teams to score at the basket when he is on the floor, and Drummond also leads the league by a huge margin with his 19.3 rebounds per game, numbers not seen in the NBA since rebounding genius Dennis Rodman was doing it. The amount of tip-ins he completes in a given game is more than most centers attempt in a week. He runs out of the lane on defense to cut off guards, and he swats and intercepts errant passes. Drummond sees everything, now, and he is fast and lengthy enough to reach all of it. Watching him can be an exhausting affair; game-planning, let alone playing, against him is stressful just to think about.

The Pistons are one of a surprisingly large batch of upstart NBA contenders this season, and perhaps the most surprising and surprisingly entertaining of the bunch even beyond Drummond's thermonuclear breakout. As can be expected of a Van Gundy team, their defense is a thing of high art, and the offense displays a very satisfying calculus of space. Reggie Jackson has blossomed as well, and what appeared to be a streak of hubris when he was with the Oklahoma City Thunder—from which he demanded a trade away from the shadow of Russell Westbrook—is now one of the game's most righteous portraits of cockiness. After getting a maximum, $80-million contract from Detroit this summer, Jackson has played like a top-ten point guard.

The Pistons also managed to split the conjoined Morii twins and add Marcus Morris as a starting forward in a summer trade with the Suns. With rookie Stanley Johnson—an absolute horse of a forward who'll be making opposing teams cry pretty soon—Morris has added shooting and some very enjoyable attitude on the wing. When he returned to play against his brother and the Suns, Morris received boos from the Phoenix crowd. "If this was in Detroit, [the booing] would've been way better," Morris said after a 20-point performance in a Pistons win.

The birth of a fun new NBA fighter is a precious thing. Parity is on the rise in the league, and roster continuity increasingly rare, thanks to ever-changing, endlessly complex rules about contracts and trades. In his front office duties in Detroit, Van Gundy has been granted a wide financial berth by owner Tom Gores—one of those unicorn billionaires who's eager to spend money on a sports team to make a community happier—in order to fast-track the Pistons back to relevance. Van Gundy was given the green light to waive Josh Smith last winter, depriving the team of both its highest-paid player and a certifiable knucklehead; Detroit will now be paying the remaining $26 million of his deal for years to come.

That strained investment seems like a gamble that's paying off today. Van Gundy has been criticized for what looks like a very sloppy regard for the quirks of modern NBA finance—handing a $20 million contract to oft-ineffectual center Aron Baynes, for example—but he's been operating in the pursuit of a higher goal. His process has prioritized surrounding Drummond with young, cool-headed guards and wings with good jumpers and defensive discipline, and doing it quickly, before the center's prime is wasted or, worse, spent elsewhere—Andre is up for a new contract next summer.

Regardless of whether the Pistons' good start is sustainable, watching a new squad burst out of the gates with this much intent, identity, and authority is a thrill, and all the more fun for how suddenly it all arrived. Van Gundy's stellar record with team-building suggests this is not a blip, and that this Detroit team is positioned not just as one of the season's early makers-of-noise, but as a conference cornerstone for years, provided they lock Drummond down in July. For now, the fun is watching them continue to figure it out. Get it while it's hot.