Agents of chaos
The 2025-26 Pistons are trying to establish their own brand as they continue to evolve from being NBA bottom feeders.
The raspy-voiced, chain-smoking Celtics radio announcer pounded on the press table at the Pontiac Silverdome. He was screaming into his microphone.
“OH! How they do things here! The cheap shots! The lack of sportsmanship!”
Johnny Most was beside himself.
The Celtics were battling the Pistons, circa 1987-88. One of those playoff springs, when those two teams duked it out (literally) for supremacy in the Eastern Conference of the NBA.
Johnny had already nicknamed Ricky Mahorn, “Mayhem,” when Ricky played with the Washington Bullets. Back then, Ricky teamed with rugged Jeff Ruland and—in addition to Johnny Most’s moniker—those two were tagged with “McFilthy” (Ruland) and “McNasty” (Mahorn).
And Ricky, Billy Laimbeer and the boys were giving the Celtics of McHale, Bird and Parish the business on the floor. Much to Johnny Most’s horror.
Not that those Celtics were choirboys, mind you. Johnny was a bit of a homer.
Those were the days of “The Bad Boys.”
The Pistons were more than a basketball team as the decade of the 1980s moved along. They became a brand. They gladly wore the black hats. Deeper into the ‘80s, their play got more abrasive. More edgy. To say the least.
Combine that with the ascent of Michael Jordan, the godfathers of the East (the Celtics) and the Pistons’ exponentially growing chip on their shoulder, and you got a witches brew that the NBA absolutely loved—contrary to the league’s pearl clutching.
The Bad Boys were the NBA’s battering rams and they won two straight championships in the process.
The 2004 Pistons had a brand too.
They were the “Goin’ to Work” crew.
Those Pistons were absolutely a textbook case of the whole being greater than the sum of their parts. No true “superstar” but the starting five was every bit as good, as a unit, as any to play in the league in that era.
They embraced Detroit and Detroit embraced them right back. They were lunch bucket, hard hat, the whole nine yards. Like the Bad Boys, the 2004 Pistons hung those hard hats on defense. On most nights, their NBA opponents struggled to hang 80 points on them. Heck, even 70 could be a long shot. Especially in the playoffs.
Chauncey Billups won the Finals MVP but it was almost by default. SOMEONE had to win it.
The Pistons are a weird franchise, historically.
Their 68 years in Detroit have mostly been filled with below-.500 teams. The 1960s, especially, were tragicomic. They’ve often been a gigantic Big Top.
Yet aside from the Celtics, Lakers, Bulls, Warriors, 76ers and Spurs, no other franchise has won as many as the 3 championships that the Pistons have won.
It’s funny.
The point being that when the Pistons have gotten rings, they’ve done it with a clear identity.
This year’s version of the Pistons are embracing the word “chaos.” As in, “controlling” it.
It apparently is THEIR identity—new for 2025-26.
The players talked about it after beating the Rockets on Oct. 24, which followed a stinker in Chicago on opening night.
“I think our guys lived up to what our motto for the season is,” coach J.B. Bickerstaff said.
“And what we wanted to do a good job of is controlling the chaos, and I think that’s what you saw out there on the floor. Last year, there were times where things got a little muddy and we let our emotions get the best of us. I think tonight we did a phenomenal job of, when the things got messy, we didn’t back down and shy away. We kept our composure and we were able to execute through it. We’ve been preaching that to the guys: control the chaos, control the chaos. I think they lived up to it tonight.”
For marketing folks, this is maybe a case of “what’s old is new again.”
Basically, it’s a repackaging of a good, old Detroit basketball tenet: tough defense.
Tough, unyielding defense is what won the Pistons their 3 championships.
Sounds like this year’s Pistons are trying to embrace a defensive mindset.
Here’s backup center Paul Reed, who embodies the “defense first, offense second” Pistons player.
“Even before the season started we understood that nights like this was gonna happen and there was going to be a lot of chaos,” he said after the win over Houston. “Our theme for the year is, control the chaos. [Coach] prepared us for these moments. Shoutout to J.B. Bickerstaff.”
This theme might be new for 2025-26, but its roots were planted late last season during the push for the playoffs—and in the series against the Knicks, where the Pistons lost in 6 games but not without a fight. Literally and figuratively.
In that series, the Pistons played with an edge that endeared themselves to the long-suffering basketball fans in Detroit. They won a gutsy Game 5 in New York after the Knicks stole Games 3 and 4 in Detroit—temporarily delaying the Knicks’ date with the Celtics in round two.
But the Pistons went 0-3 at home in that series, and of course that’s no way to have postseason success. That they went 2-1 in New York wasn’t enough.
When in doubt in Detroit, lean on defense. In all sports.
Superstar in the making (maybe already made) Cade Cunningham has already put his stamp of approval on the new mindset.
“That plays into how we want to play the game,” Cunningham said about how the Pistons had to overcome adversity and a dirty whistle against the Rockets. “That’s our identity. We knew tonight was going to be a dogfight because of that, we knew [the Rockets] wanted to play physical as well. You just have to be ready coming into games like that. It was a great win for us.”
The Pistons are 4-2 and while that’s a tiny sample size, what isn’t tiny is their commitment—or maybe it’s an homage to Pistons champions of the past—to suffocating their opponents. Especially in the fourth quarter, where the Pistons have already taken control in their four wins.
“Chaos” takes on different meanings to these Pistons.
It could mean those patches in games where the whistles aren’t friendly and the play gets ragged and unseemly. It could mean what the Pistons do to their opponents vis a vis high energy, physical guys like Jalen Duren, Ron Holland and Ausar Thompson.
Regardless, “chaos” continues to be more and more a Detroit word.
The Tigers embraced “pitching chaos” during 2024’s mad dash to the playoffs and at times this season. Now the Pistons have globbed on, with their “Control the chaos” theme.
Looking back, I don’t think any NBA champion—before or since—holds such an iconic brand as the “Bad Boys” Pistons. Even casual NBA fans have heard of them.
The “Goin’ to Work” Pistons aren’t quite as well-known by that name outside of Detroit, but they too had their brand.
Both teams relied on lockdown defense to carry them to the promised land.
Ben Wallace is in the Hall of Fame and it would take Ben a week’s worth of games to score 20 points. That’s how respected his defense is.
Dennis Rodman is in the Hall of Fame and it’s not because he averaged 20 ppg.
It’s way too early to determine whether the 2025-26 Pistons will be the agents of chaos that they seek to become.
But they are embracing an identity, and as we’ve seen in Detroit when it comes to basketball, that’s a good start.