The NBA Play-In Tournament begins tonight with four games that will determine the final four playoff berths, and the team sitting at the top of the Eastern Conference bracket waiting for its first-round opponent is the Detroit Pistons — a franchise that, twenty-four months ago, was the worst team in professional basketball. [1]

The numbers describe the arc. In 2023-24, the Pistons went 14-68, the worst record in the NBA and one of the worst in league history. They lost 28 consecutive games, tying the all-time record for futility set by the 2010-11 Cleveland Cavaliers. [2] The roster was a collection of young players, expiring contracts, and institutional hopelessness. Little Caesars Arena was half-empty on good nights. The franchise had become a punchline, the team opposing fans bought tickets to watch lose.

This season, Detroit finished 59-23. [1] The Pistons clinched the Eastern Conference's No. 1 seed with games to spare. They won 60 games before resting starters in the finale. Their home record was among the best in the league. Their road record was better than every team in the East except the Celtics. The turnaround — 45 more wins than two seasons ago — is the largest two-year improvement in NBA history. [2]

The name at the center of both seasons is Cade Cunningham. Detroit selected him first overall in the 2021 draft out of Oklahoma State, a pick that carried the weight of expectation and the burden of context. Cunningham arrived to a franchise in freefall. He played through injury, through losing, through the particular loneliness of being a No. 1 pick on a team that cannot protect him with competent teammates. His first three seasons produced individual talent wrapped in collective misery: a player clearly capable of being a franchise cornerstone on a franchise that had no foundation.

This season broke the pattern. Cunningham averaged 24.8 points, 9.2 assists, and 6.1 rebounds per game while shooting 38 percent from three-point range. [2] He was named an All-Star starter for the first time. He led the league in assists for most of the season. His case for Most Valuable Player — a conversation that seemed absurd before the season began — rested on the simplest argument in basketball: the Pistons were terrible without him and extraordinary with him. No player in the league this season was more responsible for his team's success relative to expectation.

The supporting cast matters. Jalen Duren, the center Detroit drafted in 2022, developed into one of the league's best young big men, averaging 15 points and 11 rebounds. Ausar Thompson, selected fifth overall in 2023, became a defensive force whose length and athleticism anchored Detroit's switching scheme. The trade deadline acquisition of a veteran shooter and a backup point guard added the depth the Pistons lacked in the first half. Head coach JB Bickerstaff, hired before the season, implemented a defensive system that ranked third in the league in efficiency. [2]

But the story is Cunningham's. It is a story about patience — the kind that franchises almost never exercise and fans almost never extend. Detroit could have traded him after the 28-game losing streak. The noise around the franchise was deafening: blow it up further, trade the pick, start over with a different timeline. General manager Troy Weaver, who had drafted Cunningham and absorbed years of criticism for roster construction that produced historic losses, bet on continuity. The bet paid off at a rate that made the gamble look like certainty in retrospect.

Tonight's Play-In games do not directly involve the Pistons. Detroit, as the No. 1 seed, has a first-round bye from the Play-In and will face the winner of the 7-8 games later this week. [1] The evening's schedule features the Charlotte Hornets versus the Miami Heat at 7:30 PM Eastern in the Eastern Conference 9-10 game, and the Phoenix Suns versus the Portland Trail Blazers at 10:00 PM in the Western Conference 9-10 game. [1] Wednesday brings the 7-8 matchups: the Philadelphia 76ers versus the Orlando Magic in the East, and the Dallas Mavericks versus the Sacramento Kings in the West. [1]

The Pistons will not know their first-round opponent until Friday night, when the Play-In concludes. [3] The possibilities include the 76ers, the Magic, the Hornets, or the Heat — a range of matchups that speaks to the compressed middle of the Eastern Conference, where the difference between the seventh seed and the tenth seed was fewer than four games in the standings.

The broader NBA playoff picture is equally compelling. The Oklahoma City Thunder claimed the Western Conference's No. 1 seed behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the likely MVP. The defending champion Boston Celtics are the East's No. 2 seed. The New York Knicks, rebuilt around Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges, are third. The narrative threads are rich: Can Oklahoma City convert regular-season dominance into a championship? Can Boston defend its title with essentially the same roster? Can the Knicks' new core produce a deep run in their first postseason together?

All of those questions are interesting. None of them have the emotional charge of the Pistons' story. Detroit's rise from 14 wins to 59 is not just a statistical anomaly. It is a reminder that professional sports, for all its economic rationality and analytical sophistication, still produces outcomes that no model predicted. Two years ago, the Pistons were tanking for draft position. Tonight, they are the No. 1 seed in the East, their best player is in the MVP conversation, and Little Caesars Arena is sold out for the first playoff game in Detroit since 2019.

The worst team in basketball became the best. It took patience, a franchise player who survived the worst of it, and the kind of institutional stubbornness that looks like genius only after it works.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos