[Charania] The Detroit Pistons have signed coach JB Bickerstaff to a contract extension.
Source: https://www.espn.com/contributor/shams-charania
A tale of two coaches, both trajectories flip in just two games. Wow.
broadcast kept mentioning how they’re close friends too
Both bald with dark beards except for their white chins.
They also both wear the exact same thing with the damn 1⁄4 zip all the way to the throat.
I kept confusing them last series man I stg they look the same
Mosley is what JB would look like if he lost a couple pounds, they have extremely similar faces, identical beards and similar head shapes it’s actually uncanny. I would legitimately believe you if you said that they were twins
I’m half convinced that’s why they are friends.
Like we men are simple, could totes see em spotting eachother from across the coaches convention(or whatever it is) and being like “ayyy we both bald and have beards, crazy right?” “no way, same!”
watch DET gone hire Mosley as a assistant coach
Mosley was gonna be fired this offseason no matter what
And next JB is going to bring Mosley onto his staff.
lot of rumblings the pelicans want him as their HC
Even with a finals run?
Not sure he gets fired if they win 4-1 and go deep against the cavs
well that didn’t happen, did it?
If the magic won the title Mose would still absolutely get fired lmao
And no matter how much some people here have been calling for it there was no way Pistons would have fired JB this off-season
And thus, balance
Crazy business. Bickerstaff quite possibly gets fired instead if the Magic just hold that big Game 6 lead
There wasn’t nearly as much calling for JBs job. Pistons discourse was basically
Pistons fans don’t want to resign their all-star, most likely all-NBA center who essentially averaged 20⁄10 at just 22 y/o…
Yup sounds good ole miserable Pistons fans. (MSU fans never win anything so that minority portion is insufferable)
I guarantee there will be a bunch of teams at our door step to take him off our hands.
Thankfully, TL not a dummy.
Fans are dumb. They don’t work in bball operations for a reason
Hilarious timing man lmfao can’t script it any better
What if they get swept in the 2nd Round and then people here say the contract extension was a mistake. You know how knee-jerk the reactions are
Our owner dropped Monty after 1 year on his 6 year 78 mil contract so I honestly could care less lol
Our owner drops that much on coke each year.
I don’t think that’s unique to our team.
yeah coaching contracts don’t mean shit as long as you’ve got an owner willing to pay it
Rip blazers
They do mean something in that your coach isn’t going to get poached right after an extension. Or I guess he could be traded for picks at least.
Monty sucked, it was the right choice to out him early rather than waste everyone’s time. Was an expensive mistake but a mistake that was fixable.
Was very obvious but plenty of owners don’t make that choice because of their own profits
Gores is a fuck but at least he’s not a cheap fuck. Seems to have learned some big lessons after the Blake/SVG era
Tbf, he wasn’t a cheap fuck with SVG either. He was just a stupid, coked up unethical fuck. Now he’s less stupid.
No he was just way more involved back then
Never forget T shirt cannon Gores
I just can’t get over the fact he has a portrait up next to the players in the walk-in hallway. I saw it once in a post game YKTPWA vid and now I can’t unsee it. I pass this curse along to you, kind reader.
couldn’t
I don’t want to be tinfoil conspiracy but is there any way they are using these coaches to bypass the cap space somehow with their rosters. Because I can’t believe so many coaches recently are cut into multi-year deals and leaving all that money on the table so often I have to believe it’s something more than the coaches are just bad.
Damn, I don’t think he’s out of the woods yet. Losing to Cleveland would still be very disappointing
not disappointing at all. he coached the Pistons to the #1 seed and this is their first time in decades making it out of the first round. he’s already exceeded expectations entering the season
As a pistons fan, I agree. No matter what he deserves a few seasons to build a culture.
the problem is ivey going down in flames as the potential second great offense high usage starter. super effective and capable team (w great culture), that, imo for the playoffs, needs to acquire a robin
Or you could reframe it as the Pistons ending up in an unfortunate situation with a mentally ill Jaden Ivey and still finding a sucker to give them assets for him, only for him to fully flip his shit.
We moved up 8 spots in the draft which is nice and heurter is ok I guess
it wasn’t rly a criticism lol, just a neutral statement of what happened. your positive take sounds right to me.
Not only that, but we also lost Malik Beasley to a gambling addiction. Then Schroeder and Hardaway left, and the Beasley and Ivey losses happened at a point where we couldn’t sign adequate replacements next to Cade.
Offseason should be interesting.
Not sure how Ivey is his fault. He even managed to deal a damaged asset and get something back
All the reactionary pistons discourse was directed at Jalen Duren disappearing in round 1. Not a lot of folks were calling for JBs job
yeah def not jb’s fault.
can you translate this to American English
will do.
the problum is jaidyn ivy got traded because the pistins woudnt let him play even tho he said he wasnt injered anymore and because he waznt a woke looser. kade kunningham and the the pistins are pretty good they just need to stop dancing w the devel and get some Jesus in there lives if they want to compete for championchips
Can’t win without a consistant second scorer. It’s been said all season while Detroit has kept the 1 seed. Unless they win it all everyone will pile on that they reached their ceiling.
Nope. Only British English
Ting is, Ivey proper fell off as their number two and all ‘at. Team’s tidy with a good atmosphere, but for the playoffs they need a bloody Watson for their Sherlock Holmes
can you explain why you feel this way? i feel like bickerstaff’s playoff track record speaks for itself, so why waste more years with him when there’s no guarantee you’ll have cade on the team forever?
Bickerstaff took a franchise that came off the worst NBA season in history, and brought them to the playoffs, and secured the 1 seed with a young squad. If Bickerstaff came into a situation with a superteam, his window would be much shorter. For his situation, he has a young squad with alot of upside, why would not allow your coach some wiggle room to ensure professional relationships with your players? Far too often, the NBA fires coaches way too soon in my opinion.
A coach cannot control his roster ?
that’s exactly the point i’m making, you have no guarantees about what your roster will look like in the future, so why spend years with a good roster being piloted by a coach who is 13-22 in the playoffs?
To be honest, I’m not ever saying JB should be fired, but to give him an extenison after he nearly led his team to one of the worst playoff upsets in NBA history is kinda wild
What im saynig is there is context in being 13-22 in playoffs, the cavs issues was garland,allen etc where always hurt heading into the playoffs. Thats not the coaches fault lol. He faced the 2016 warriors you really expect him to win that ?
2023 against the knicks, the cavs were basically fully healthy, with garland and allen playing the whole series, and the cavs had homecourt, yet they got smacked in 5 games against a team that lost to the 8 seed in the next round. from a knicks fan POV that was a really telling series and i haven’t seen anything from bickerstaff since to change my view that he is a floor raiser who has no business coaching a contender.
There’s still plenty of value in raising a team’s floor, and he’s only 47. The expectation is he’ll keep improving.
I think you can argue it was unnecessary at this time. He was signed through 2029 and coaches almost never voluntarily leave a team for a different team.
I still think he’s earned enough by building the foundation of this defense. The way Cade and Stewart have grown as defenders is outstanding. Duren too, given he was a terrible defender 2 years ago. That’s JB’s specialty.
But I can also see there was little impetus to do this right now.
Whatever happens from here on out is gravy
Real fans know, our expectations were to win a playoff series. We’re playing with house money now in the Second round!
We won a playoff series, legitimately wouldn’t shock me if that was the main thing they wanted to accomplish this postseason with the known holes in the roster.
It’s the main thing I wanted as a pistons fan. I’ve seen this team, like you, be shit for most of the last 20 years. Even last year, I looked at my friend when the pistons had the ball the last possession of game 6 against the knicks. I told him “they won’t even get a shot off”. He made fun of me and said it’s for their fucking season, of course they will. As you probably remember… they did not.
So this season I said if they won a playoff series and didn’t look like jokes in the 2nd round, that would be perfect. If they make the conference finals, I’ll be elated. And if they made the finals… I’d have to talk to my psychiatrist and make sure my meds are correctly calibrated.
All that to say, Bickerstaff absolutely deserves the extension, this season is a success to me.
Yep yep. People forget this team lost 26 consecutive games 2 seasons ago. They could lose every game vs the Cavs by 40 and this season would still be a success.
Regardless of what could have happened, he earned a few years with how well the pistons have played. He’s a good coach.
I think that’s fine if you look at it holistically and lump everything together.
But if they beat the 8 seed in 7 games and lose to the 4 seed after winning 60+ games, that’s without question underperforming relative to the regular season by a very large margin.
That would speak to a roster evaluation problem
It could be both, I certainly think their roster is part of the problem.
But Bickerstaff has had issues like this for a long time.
Yeah, I don’t know why so many people on here think his job was in jeopardy after this season. Even if they had lost he wouldn’t have gotten fired.
If you told me we would lose in the second round coming into the season I would have been pretty happy with the result
Now it depends how we lose I guess
I can’t think of a single coach in the NBA that could do better with the Pistons than he is doing right now. We have good players but he is getting the best out of them, especially on defense.
If his teams struggle in the playoffs, then we can give him time and resources to fix whatever the issues are in the preparation. We’d be absolute morons to cut him loose.
It shouldn’t be, people need to stop looking at their 60 wins and look at their roster
This team desperately needs a 2nd creator and reliable scorer
People really really need to just stop looking at regular season records for these types of team, it’s an excellent defense in the East, that’s default 55 wins any year in the East since 2000
Man I was hoping for Ivey to be the 2nd star…
Bro was looking promising before he got Cole Anthony’d.
Gods I was watching him since he got drafted.. looked like DWade out there, what could have been…
He had a low BBIQ, before we found out he had a low IQ.
Pistons fans romanticize his speed and box scores before the Anthony injury but he was never playing particularly good basketball. He was playing Buddy Hield/Colin Sexton basketball.
What an indictment on the current product that fans are supposed to completely ignore the regular season lmao.
A good defense does not guarantee 55 wins what a stupid take lol
no it wouldn’t.
It’s only been 2 years since we lost 60 games and 28 in a row. Turned that into a winning season. Then turned that into a 1 seed and first series win since 08.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d be bummed as hell if they lost but this is WAY past what I thought we’d be two seasons after signing him.
would it? Cleveland has a vastly better roster
There has been zero chance he was getting fired this year, anyone saying otherwise is crazy. He has wildly overachieved in both of his seasons. This team has been nowhere near ready for two seasons, and that wasn’t on him. Pistons fans just don’t know how to handle accepting that.
I also don’t really disagree that it’d be that disappointing to lose to Cleveland. That loss is way more likely to cause roster changes than a coaching change.
Not at all, I expected them to lose in 6 to Cleveland pre playoffs. Losing in the first round would have been a disaster though.
Pistons average age of their core is like 23, yes they’re a 1 seed but they’re overachieving as is.
I just wonder would this have happened if they lost game 6?
They won 60 games so they’ll keep him but he’s gonna get fired in 2-3 years anyway because that’s when the Bickerstaff magic starts to wear off
That series has pistons in 6 written all over it.
Why do teams Do this instead of waiting till the off-season
why not now? like if he loses in this next round you think he still wont deserve an extension after how much they overachieved this year?
Pretty sure he was signed thru 29 or 30. This is completely unnecessary
That’s how I feel but apparently we’re the minority in pistons fandom
Why would you possibly care? Coaches get fired mid contract all the time.
I don’t? Plus our owner has shown he’ll eat money if it goes south. This extension is still completely unnecessary
It’s almost certainly to give him a pay rise. With his success I imagine a handful of teams were contacting his agent and offering some decent money and this extension is just a way to keep JB happy and tell the teams to piss off
It’s in his contract that he gets an extension from Gores for every playoff series win. If we get to the Finals, he’s going to be the team’s coach until 2050.
The only remote guess I have is that they want it off of his mind so he can 100% focus on the rest of the season. Other than that I have no idea.
Price could go up if the winning continues. However dang he was signed through 29-30 already so I am kinda surprised.
To pump him up to coach better? Duh?
Because he way outstripped expectations in the regular season already
Really hope he beats the Cavs and gets his revenge, they scapegoated him.
Our roster was not tailored for his style of bball. We had a roster of finesse players, he’s a trenches type of guy.
I think the fans scapegoated him, but it was a not a fit for our roster. Detroit is a perfect place for him, and I’m happy for his success.
Most reasonable Cavs fan
I agree - I wasn’t thrilled with the initial hire, but he proved me wrong and did build a strong culture for us. Was sad to see him go, but as you said, the roster filled out in a way that wasn’t a match anymore. And it’s obviously easier/cheaper to get a new coach.
I like him in Detroit, he’s doing great work. Obviously I hope we win, but good for him on the extension. More coaches deserve more time.
Atkinson had an incredible first year and people were quick to point out that the team needed a new voice
lol wat
Hard to call it a scapegoat when JB has only led a team out of the 1st round twice and both times were against Mosley in 7 games and both times required his best player to put godly numbers. His teams have just not been effective in the playoffs.
He threw our players under the bus, and implied some shit that was disrespectful
Like a bus!
Odd revisionist history. I root for him to do well, no animosity there, but he wasn’t going to take us to the next level.
Sometimes it’s just time for a change, and Kenny’s been better
We did not. He was an awful playoff coach, the Pistons are having the same issues we had, and it’ll be exposed again in our series with them.
JB is great at getting a crap team to be competitive, which was perfect for the Pistons. And they’ll dump him after two seasons and he’ll go coach the next bad team with young talent.
He lost in the first round once, lost in the second round once, both times as a 4 seed. He has since lost in the first round once as an overachieving 6 seed and has won the first round once as a 1 seed. He now has a chance to beat the team that fired him for “underperforming in the playoffs” in the playoffs. The Pistons are actually favored in this series, but it feels like a true 50⁄50. He also has never had a player as good as Cade Cunningham before he came to Detroit and in the playoffs, elite Guard play gets you so very far.
If the Pistons do win the series, Pistons fans will be completely insufferable to Cavs fans and it would be 100% earned.
the unofficial stakes of the series were loser gets fired, winner gets an extension
They should have brought out a couple desks and done the firing and contract extension signing directly on the floor after game 7.
Everyone calling this premature like they didnt win 14 games 2 seasons ago. They’re young and the playoffs are tough. They don’t have to win it all to have a successful season. They’re building something legit over there. Well earned.
Good for him, get that bag
I wonder if they lost that first round, would they still have given him the extension
Its hard to fire a coach who gets you to the 1 seed
Toronto did it and that turned out okay for them.
This seems a little premature
If we’re pocket watching billionaires sure. Ultimately doesn’t hinder them from upgrading (may even help) when they decide to fire him.
That’s what she said.
I wonder if the coaching outcomes completely flip if Magic hold on to game 6
This is win/win. If he does great, he’s locked in to be the pistons coach. If he sucks, Tom Gores has proven he is willing to fire a coach and just burn his money. I don’t care about a billionaires money, so that’s still a win.
From 100% fired to 100% extended due to one game
Flip the game 7 result, flip the coaching futures.
I mean still doesn’t mean he’s gonna stick around, they could end up firing him 3 games into the next season if they wanted to
I will not be commenting on this news until the second round is over 👍
Nothing against JB whatsoever, but why not let him get more than 2 years into his contract? We have seen time and time again teams hand out early extensions just to end up firing a coach. Rooting for him in this Cavs series.
This seems premature. They were down 3-1 to the 8th seed, and who knows what happens if Wagner doesn’t get hurt
The Magic were 1 game out of the 5 seed without Franz playing most the year. If Franz played all season, they are battling the Knicks and Cavs for the 3⁄4 seed
It’s also not like they were dominating, they won 2 games in Orlando that were 50⁄50 at the end
LOL
I think he’s a good coach, he was obviously not the problem in Cleveland and he’s shown to elevate the team instead of hinder them.
Aren’t we the team who paid some guy $100 mil to coach us and then let him go one year later? Anyway
Can’t wait after the playoff? He almost lost to 8th seed.
Wow are you sure you wanna do that, Detroit? 🤨
Cavs have the chance to do the funniest thing
Well deserved, regardless of the (justified) criticisms of his tactical decisions.
I see him like a defensive Coach Bud.
Talk about knee jerk reactions lol
An extension after what 2 seasons?
so what would’ve happened had the Magic not choked game 6?? would he have been fired???
[deleted]
Oh man the magic might have won this series after all
Sweep incoming please
APRILS FOOOLS
After barely getting past the 8 seed? lol ok
And Finch got extended after winning the play-in
Different expectations
Jaden Ivey would have been such a perfect #2…
Jaden Ivey was never that guy and I’ll stand on that.
He was a slow decision maker, which stopped him from ever being a good playmaker and even negated some of his speed advantage.
There’s plenty of poor defensive 2 guards that can get you 20ppg on a losing team. They can’t play within the flow of a 5 man offense.
People always loved to talk about his speed but never mentioned his incredibly low FG% at the rim.
They loved to talk about his 3pt shot, but never mentioned how he could only do that if he was WIDE OPEN.
One of the worst defenders in the league and apparently a weirdo in the locker room as well.
Glad he’s gone.
I don’t think he was a weirdo, the Pistons players seemed to be bummed when he left
Maybe if he didn’t get injured, but…
He wasn’t
We are Pistons fans and watched him, he wasn’t making that leap and now with his recent outbursts and issues it was a great move
Yeah I just noticed next season would be his 5th, I legit thought he would have taken the leap after 2nd season but he got injured then I stopped watching
Huh
This is about to age like milk after the Cavs series 🤮
I doubt it even matters what happens.
I’m constantly reminded that people on this sub are incapable of looking passed the next five seconds of life. It’s truly remarkable.
Oof, maybe Detroit should have stayed down in Game 6.
It’s better than firing him and getting Mike Brown as a replacement 🤷♂️
I really don’t think it is lol
Ok lol why did I see Knick fans wanting him fired multiple times during this season on here?