Worried the Pistons might get sold out of state some day?

[Snakebites]

Seattle fans thought they had too much history on their side as well to be relocated.

That being said I severely doubt you guys go anywhere.

This.

3 Finals Appearances, 1 championship, playoffs more often than not, numerous retired numbers, 2 separate periods as perennial contenders....

Our history compares favorably to theirs in many respects, but the point here is that history is a guarantee of nothing if the wrong combination of circumstances come into effect.

As I said earlier, though, there isn't really much going on right now to suggest that's going to happen. We've been unsuccessful both on the court and in the box office for a few years now, but nothing about what Gores is doing suggests a potential move.

[HeroicKennedy]

Seattle fans thought they had too much history on their side as well to be relocated.

That being said I severely doubt you guys go anywhere.

This.

3 Finals Appearances, 1 championship, playoffs more often than not, numerous retired numbers, 2 separate periods as perennial contenders....

Our history compares favorably to theirs in many respects, but the point here is that history is a guarantee of nothing if the wrong combination of circumstances come into effect.

As I said earlier, though, there isn't really much going on right now to suggest that's going to happen. We've been unsuccessful both on the court and in the box office for a few years now, but nothing about what Gores is doing suggests a potential move.

Yup, it helps that Gores isn't a total scumbag like Clay Bennett.

[Snakebites]

A move is a fairly risky venture for any franchise to undertake.

Detroit area is a "low lying fruit" as a market in the sense that it's pretty well established that even a fringe contender like the team the Pistons fielded in 2001-2002 can draw good attendance even without big money players or an aesthetically pleasing play style.

Unfortunately after accidentally falling into a good team 12 years ago deliberately building one appears to be beyond this front office .

[Navas]

This thread reiterates my belief as to how gullible and sheep like sports fans tend to be.

Edit: and paranoid.

[ComboGuardCity]

You guys do realize stadium attendance isn't the biggest deciding factor. There are tv and radio deals to take into account. This isn't happening.

[The Penguin]

In a word NO

The Pistons were tops in the entire league in attendance as recently as 2009. As mentioned earlier owning the Palace is a huge factor. I'm not sure if this question is naïveté or paranoia.

[Invictus88]

As a Michigan transplant living in the Seattle area I can say that the fans here didn't think that the Sonics would ever move away either. It turns out team history isn't really as important of a factor as you might think.

That said, we had some other factors that really moved things along:

1. An unbelievably idiotic local government here that really didn't realize what it had when the Sonics were in town.
2. An incredibly stupid owner in Howard Schultz that claimed he believed Clay Bennett when the latter said he would keep the team in Seattle if Schultz sold it to him
3. A jackass commissioner David Stern who really really didn't like Seattle and/or was fairly tight with Bennett.
4. A really lousy arena and a team with a really horrible / noncompetitive lease.
5. No one wanting to step in at the time to shore up #4 with their own money (Seattle now has Chris Hansen but it's too late)

I really don't see anything even close to that when I look at Detroit. The palace is old but nowhere near as bad as Key Arena. And yes, the city is going bankrupt and so forth but it's also a city that really values its sports teams. And you have owners ready to step up and take care of the infrastructure / stadium stuff if that ever becomes an issue.

Even if you ignore all of the above I think the most important reason why this won't happen anytime soon is that neither the league or the other owners want a repeat of what happened in Seattle. You can clearly see that from what happened in Sacramento. You had a really poor performing team with a poor arena and a relatively poor economic situation and owners begging to sell it to someone out of state. You had a willing buyer who would pony up 300-400 million of his own money to foot the bill for a new stadium, infrastructure and so forth who went through ALL of the steps asked of him. And the deal was voted down handily by the league.

Fear not Detroit, your team isn't going anywhere.