Record predictions for every NBA team

Detroit Pistons (Projected Record: 33-49)

The Pistons lack top end talent. Their best player is Tobias Harris, who is a perfectly fine starter and solid to good young player, but he is nowhere near a superstar. Reggie Jackson, the player on Detroit who probably most assumes he is the best player on the Pistons, is a bad starting point guard and it is little surprise that Detroit played better without him than with him last year (insert “he was playing injured” so treat on-off stats with care disclaimer here).

Andre Drummond is a mammoth human who looks like he ought to be a dominant player on both ends who fails to utilize his immense gifts in ways that provide a significant positive impact on his team’s chances of winning. It’s a real shame.

Avery Bradley is here, and he’s…fine. A perfectly okay guard, but no great shakes and certainly not moving the needle much in terms of the win total, especially not as he’s tasked with replacing Kentavious Caldwell-Pope AND Marcus Morris, for whom he was traded.

Stan Van Gundy is a savvy coach and maybe he can cook something up to finally get Drummond to reach his potential or to get Jackson to stop draining the lifeforce from his teammates with his pounding the air out of the ball. But, the talent just doesn’t appear to be here. Despite all of the above, the bottom of the Eastern playoff picture is bleak enough that the Pistons figure to have a puncher’s chance of snaring the eighth seed.