Pistons Owner Has Surprising Admission About Team's Performance This Season

The Detroit Pistons' turnaround surprised everyone this year.

Pistons owner Gores speaks to reporters before Game 6 vs. Knicks / Screengrab via Eric Woodyard (@E_Woodyard) on X/Twitter and ESPN

Detroit Pistons fans have been through a lot in recent years and the team's owner, Tom Gores, knows it. Luckily, the Detroit Pistons have been the NBA's best surprise this season, tripling their win total from a year ago and earning the Eastern Conference's No. 6 seed.

Now, the young and scrappy Pistons are fighting for their season, down 3-2 to the New York Knicks in their first-round series. Before Game 6, Gores held an impromptu press conference in Detroit were he had an incredibly honest admission about his team's season.

"[The Pistons] are a really unselfish group and nobody really counted them in this year," Gores said atop a press-conference podium Thursday night via Omari Sankofa II of the Detroit Free Press. "I expected them to do well—not this well, quite honestly."

The Gores-owned Pistons set a franchise-worst record last year of 14-68, the worst record across the NBA. This year, they went 44-38 over the regular season and bypassed the play-in tournament, qualifying for the playoff field while becoming the first team in NBA history to triple their win total from a season prior.

"It wasn't that long ago that I was apologizing to the fans," Gores continued via ESPN's Eric Woodyard. "But they hung in there. ... This year I want to thank the fans for hanging in there. I think the team needed them. Last year was really rough, this was a year the team really needed them and Detroit showed up."

The Pistons are battling to force a Game 7 at Madison Square Garden Saturday night. Although teams rarely come back from a 3-1 series deficit, it wouldn't be the first time these Pistons shocked the world—and their boss.

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