CLEVELAND, Ohio — When the Cavs moved on from J.B. Bickerstaff after the 2024 playoffs, it wasn’t because the organization doubted his competitiveness or his ability to build culture.
It was because Cleveland believed it needed evolution.
“I think for us it’s with this group, finding someone with a new approach, someone with a different voice, a fresh set of eyes to help us move forward,” Cavs president of basketball operations Koby Altman said then. “We’ve accomplished a lot in the last few years, getting to a conference semifinals, and we don’t want to be complacent.”
Bickerstaff took that to heart in his next venture with Detroit. He didn’t change who he was when he left Cleveland. What changed was how he learned to manage everything around it. The process, the workload, the rhythm of an NBA season.
The Pistons’ start to this season has reflected that growth, adding another layer Sunday as Bickerstaff walked off the floor at Rocket Arena after watching a Detroit team built in his image impose its will on a Cavs group he once led.
Detroit left Cleveland with a decisive 114-110 victory, a 26-9 record, first place in the Eastern Conference and a growing belief that this season is less about arrival and more about acceleration.
For Bickerstaff, it was also a quiet snapshot of how much — and how little — has changed since his final season in Cleveland.
After the Cavs’ second-round loss to the eventual champion Boston Celtics in 2024, the split from Bickerstaff came with its murmurs.
Off the court, concerns centered on day-to-day tactics. The tenor of internal conversations. Some players bristled at the bluntness. Others struggled with the rigidity of routine.
On the court, questions focused on whether his defensive-minded backbone could consistently generate modern offense when playoff scouting shrank the floor and removed margin for error. Internally, there were questions about whether the Cavs’ talent level — one the organization and players believed was good enough to reach the Eastern Conference finals — was being maximized.
But those questions lingered even after Cleveland fell to Indiana in five games the following season, without Bickerstaff, offering no clean resolution to the debate.
On the other hand, Bickerstaff was using the lessons learned to build brick by brick again.
“Process. I think that’s the thing that helped me the most, especially that last year here in Cleveland is not being results-driven, but being process-driven,” Bickerstaff said when asked about what he carried most from Cleveland to Detroit.
“I think that’s what’s helped me and kind of transform my career, to be honest with you, is to be able to have that mindset that you can’t get caught up in the results. Your focus has to be on doing the right things every single day. And if you do the right things and you have the right people with you, the results will be what you want them to be.”
In his first season with the Pistons in 2024-25, he led them to their first season over .500 since 2015-16 — a year after Detroit won just 14 games and went on a historic 28-game losing streak. They pushed a competitive Knicks team to six games in the first round, gaining needed experience for this Pistons group’s first taste of the playoffs.
Now, in his second year at the helm, the Pistons look like a reflection of their coach: physical, gritty, unapologetic and increasingly comfortable embracing the “Bad Boy Pistons” edge that feels less nostalgic than intentional. But behind that edge is a version of Bickerstaff that has softened the process without dulling the standard.
Practices are no longer uniformly intense by default. Recovery days are built with intention. Sports science metrics shape workload decisions. Some days call for film, walk-throughs or a friendly game of soccer instead of five-on-five scrimmages.
None of it reads as fluff inside the locker room because they compete when it’s time to compete, and prepare with purpose the rest of the way.
It hasn’t changed his insistence on fundamentals. Principles are still drilled. Minutes still fluctuate quickly based on who’s playing hardest, who’s defending and who’s honoring the team concept.
“You see me, I’m still the same in the moment. When the games start, it is about competition, but it’s all the other stuff that leads process,” Bickerstaff said. “It’s what we do [at] shootaround. It’s what we do in our coaches’ meetings. It’s what we do with our individual development stuff. All that stuff is process. And then once the competition starts, the s— starts and that’s when you see me lose my mind.”
That combination — preparation without softness, competition without burnout — has defined Detroit’s start.
The Pistons don’t look worn down. They don’t look tight chasing the standings. They look connected. They look certain in who they are, and in who they hope to become.
How this season ultimately ends will help shape how history remembers Bickerstaff’s Cleveland tenure.
Maybe the younger version of the Cavs simply wasn’t ready for the blunt conversations or the concrete regimen he believed they needed to survive playoff physicality. Maybe Detroit is proof that maturity and timing matter just as much as scheme.
Or maybe the postseason still becomes the final exam that exposes the same questions that followed him out of Cleveland — whether culture-building alone is enough when series turn into chess matches and play design becomes oxygen.
That answer remains undecided. So does the broader verdict on Bickerstaff’s arc.
nba action between cleveland and detroit
Cavaliers' guard Donovan Mitchell (45) and head coach Kenny Atkinson talk on the sidelines during action in the NBA game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Detroit Pistons at Rocket Arena on Sunday, January 4, 2026. Detroit won 114-110.David Petkiewicz, cleveland.com
There’s an irony in how Cleveland now sits in a familiar tension point.
Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson, in just his second season, is navigating expectations that feel eerily similar to what Bickerstaff faced after winning 99 games over his final two regular seasons. Cleveland entered this year believing it could contend for a title. Instead, it’s hovering around .500, sitting eighth in the East, searching for consistency and identity.
Atkinson’s messaging has leaned heavily on patience, process and big-picture thinking — lessons forged during his first head coaching stint in Brooklyn and refined through years as an assistant. That perspective doesn’t guarantee outcomes. It does buy clarity.
Bickerstaff learned the same lesson the hard way.
Sunday held up a mirror with a crack in it. Two franchises at different points in their timelines. Two coaches shaped by the same pressures. A reminder that NBA growth rarely travels in straight lines.
Every time the Cavs and Pistons meet now, both sides learn something about themselves. About what they were. About what they’re becoming. About whether the line between culture and contention can finally be crossed.
Hindsight is 20-20. The present is still being written.