It will be the first playoff experience for everyone else in J.B. Bickerstaff’s normal rotation – Cunningham, Jalen Duren, Ausar Thompson, Ron Holland II, Isaiah Stewart and Simone Fontecchio. The Pistons privately talked about getting to the playoffs long before anyone thought it possible and they’ve adopted a one-day-at-a-time focus with the long-term goal of having it pay off in a playoff berth. But Bickerstaff knows enough about playoff basketball to know that no matter how long and hard his young players have thought about the experience, they won’t truly appreciate the essence until wading into the waters. “It’s a completely different basketball game,” he said. “And until you’re in it, it’s hard to understand it. We’ve been through this before. At some point in time, we were all kids and didn’t listen to our parents, either, and didn’t figure it out until we experienced it on our own. That’s what the playoffs are. We can tell guys what to expect, but until we experience it you don’t understand just how different it is from an intensity standpoint, from the execution of schemes, the importance of possession-by-possession basketball.” -via NBA.com / April 16, 2025
