Detroit Pistons center Jalen Duren stressed that the team’s togetherness is the main reason for their dominance this season
For most of the regular season, those outside of Detroit took a little bit of time to get used to the sound of the Pistons checking in as the top team in the Eastern Conference, but those inside the locker room in Motown had a sense of belief that they could accomplish greatness if they worked hard enough.
Now that the Pistons have officially secured the top seed in the East entering the playoffs after defeating the Philadelphia 76ers by a 116-93 margin last night, Detroit has a tangible reason to celebrate their hoops squad once again.
“I think we’ve got the best fans in the league,” Pistons center Jalen Duren said after the game. “They’ve been behind us ever since I got here, through the ups and through the downs. They supported us, and they deserve it. The city deserves it. We’ve got a long way to go, a lot more to do, a lot more to accomplish, but we’re going to enjoy this tonight.”
As Duren said, the Pistons’ fans have stayed loyal and passionate during their 14-win season not too long ago. Those same Detroit fans that packed Little Caesars Arena two years prior have been even more vocal through the Pistons’ success this year, and that relationship is emblematic of the bond that JD shares with his teammates on the court.
“I think we take pride in being the most together,” Duren said. “Through the ups, through the downs, we lean on each other and we really take brotherhood seriously over here. JB has come in and set an expectation, and this is what we expected to be. We expected to be one of the better teams in the league because of the amount of work we put in and the togetherness we have.”
Through Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff’s 20-plus years of experience in the NBA, Detroit’s general has learned the value of teamwork 10 times over. No one man can win a championship all by himself in the league, so Bickerstaff has worked to foster a culture that honed in on the next-man-up mentality because every team’s 15-man roster will undergo a stress test at some point during the season.
For the Pistons, one of those stress tests came early in the season against the Chicago Bulls in a contest that was dubbed as “The Injury Report Game.” Despite the Pistons’ lack of reinforcements, Detroit managed to claw out a victory, and it helped establish a sense of confidence among the group.
Later in the season, the Pistons faced another stark test when both Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart were suspended for multiple games as a result of their roles in the Charlotte Hornets brawl. Sure enough, Paul Reed was there to fill in for the big men, and Detroit kept cruising along.
More recently, Cade Cunningham suffered a collapsed lung over two weeks ago, and this test could’ve easily shaken the Pistons from their stranglehold on the top seed in the East. Instead, Daniss Jenkins took everything he learned from Cunningham throughout the season and turned it into a blueprint on how to guide the Pistons in the All-Star’s absence.
Now, the Pistons are four games away from entering the postseason with championship ambitions. More tests are certainly on the way, but Detroit is eager to meet each challenge head-on, just like they’ve done all year long.
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