People were interested in these podcasts

Pistons Up, Bucks Down

User avatar
RealGM Articles
Lead Assistant
Posts: 5,022
And1: 48
Joined: Mar 20, 2013

Pistons Up, Bucks Down 

Post#1 » by RealGM Articles » Tue Apr 1, 2025 4:38 pm

In December, the Milwaukee Bucks looked like a title contender. Maybe they weren’t at the upper crust of that NBA populace. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard were clicking together like never before, though, and the team was taking on a more hard-nosed identity in their run to the NBA Cup title. Andre Jackson Jr. brought teeth to their point-of-attack defense not seen since Jrue Holiday was traded, Brook Lopez was looking fresher than expected, Taurean Prince was leading the league in three-point shooting, and Khris Middleton had time and reason to rehab himself slowly, and get back to the man he was when the Bucks won their 2021 championship.


Things have changed. Antetokounmpo is still an unfathomable hardwood beast, but Lillard is likely out for the season with a blood clot. Jackson's season seems to have peaked with his harassment of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the NBA Cup’s culminating game; a hampering of 2025’s likely MVP that has only happened twice since. Key role player Bobby Portis Jr. has been suspended for most of the season after violating performance enhancement protocol. Middleton never did look right, and was shipped away in desperation to the Washington Wizards, who sent back Kyle Kuzma in return.


The Bucks are 4-9 over their last 13, and falling in the standings. They aren’t at real risk of falling into the play-in tier, but they’re also not looking like a team who the New York Knicks—their most probable first-round playoff opponent—should fear. Antetokounmpo will always keep the enemy awake at night, covered in sweat, and he could very well turn in a performance that wins a series on its own. But at this point, that super-heroic scenario seems like the only one in which the Bucks advance, and hope to ride their two-time MVP’s cape for another round. It’ll be nice to see Giannis back in the postseason, but surrounded by an inadequate roster without Lillard, his return to the holy land will also be bittersweet.


Displacing the Bucks are the Detroit Pistons. Their path from way off the radar to the center of it has peaked, this week, with a brawl. Against the Minnesota Timberwolves, role players Isaiah Stewart and rookie Ron Holland Jr. agitated the Wolves into a lot of sideline flailing and wrestling. Stewart and Holland have been bothering teams all season, and it was only a matter of time before someone took the bait. It was Naz Reid and Donte DiVincenzo who finally bit, but it could’ve been anyone. The Pistons are a well-rounded team, equally deep in shooting and bruising, frustrating everyone they face. 


Their season has shown a remarkable turnaround, with a crew of redemptive veterans playing some of the best ball of their career around the wildly ascendant Cade Cunningham. Cunningham has more than validated his No. 1 draft status in his fourth year; you only need one hand to count the ball-handlers in his company. He can score, distribute, and manage a whole squad’s pace and spirit with the best of them. A permanently chill, oversized point guard flanked by flamethrowers, he can always turn himself into a utility vehicle that rollicks it way meanly into the paint, where his anticipation and touch have at times entered a Jokic-esque realm.


His gravity and governance have facilitated the born-again seasons of Malik Beasley, Tobias Harris, and Tim Hardaway Jr.—three journeymen whose signings in Detroit were small news over the summer. They’ve been essential for the spacing around Cunningham, and counter-balances to the youth of Cunningham, Holland, Stewart, and Ausar Thompson and Jalen Duren, who both start. Thompson is already one of the best defenders alive in his sophomore campaign, and Duren is a rebounding and rim-running monster who only recently earned the privilege to legally drink.


As the Pistons rise and the Bucks fall, notions of NBA hope and doom clarify. The Pistons, built through the draft and shrewd free agency bargains, will experience the same complex and limiting salary rules that have shrunk the Bucks’ prospects, inevitably. For now, though, they are making the most of the more generous conditions known to long-struggling teams, and enjoying a group that is both rapidly improving and highly affordable. The punishment for doing a good job at that, for too long, is around the corner. But the end of that wall is still far away. Should things go according to reasonable projections, the rise and fall that the Bucks have known for the past ten years is now Detroit’s to know for the next decade.

Return to Articles Discussion