Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
![“Do you have a stomach for this [job]? Because it’s …](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/content-pipeline-sports-images/sports2/nba/logos/8.png?format=png8&auto=webp&quality=85,75&width=140)
On a May morning in 2024, Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores finished his final interview with Trajan Langdon with a tough question at 2 a.m. “Do you have a stomach for this [job]? Because it’s not going to be easy,” Gores told Andscape he asked Langdon.
Gores wasn’t underselling the challenges of the Pistons’ president of basketball operations role. Detroit had posted the NBA’s worst record in each of the previous two seasons, including a franchise-low 14 wins and a league-record 28-game losing streak in the prior campaign. The Pistons had last won a playoff game in 2008, a disastrous stretch for a storied franchise with three titles to its name. But from rising out of basketball obscurity in Alaska to overcoming knee surgery at Duke to responding to a failed NBA playing career by flourishing professionally in Europe, nothing has ever come easy for Langdon. So, “The Alaskan Assassin” quickly decided he could stomach yet another challenge and said yes to the Pistons.
“He didn’t blink. He was all in,” Gores said. “Then I asked him to text me his top 20 action items and get started first thing in the morning. “Now, I didn’t expect things to turn around as fast as they did, but I’m not surprised.” Two years later, Langdon, 49, has led the Pistons from the NBA basement to the best record in the Eastern Conference. Last season, Year 1 under Langdon, the Pistons and new head coach J.B. Bickerstaff won 44 games, celebrated Cade Cunningham as a first-time All-Star, and pushed the New York Knicks to six games in the first round, making their first playoff appearance since 2019. The Pistons finished this season with an East-best 60 wins, led by two All-Stars in Cunningham and Jalen Duren and an NBA Coach of the Year candidate in Bickerstaff. The East’s top-seed Pistons will host the winner of a play-in game between the Orlando Magic and Charlotte Hornets tonight in a first-round playoff matchup starting Sunday.
The Pistons have invested big into Cunningham, going far beyond the rookie-scale max extension (five years, $269 million) he agreed to in summer 2024. For team owner Tom Gores, the qualities he saw in Cunningham during the organization's record losing streak in 2023-24 only reinforced that decision. "When we were at our lowest, the man didn't blink," Gores told ESPN. "He continued to work, continued to pat his players on the back. That's when I knew this guy's character was something special. "You learn the most from anyone in life during the tough times. The way I saw him functioning, [behaving] when things were emotional, what he did when we were down."
Omari Sankofa II: (Pistons owner) Tom Gores pregame: “It’s been a decade, really, trying to get to where we are today. It’s taken a lot of patience and a lot of hard times. It feels great. I feel like we’re set up to be a machine … set up to be a sustainable winner. But I’m also nervous, we have to win.”
Advertisement
Tom Gores has many of the spoils you’d expect of a self-made private equity billionaire: an NBA team, a Los Angeles mansion and a glitzy Beverly Hills office where he can throw parties for his friend Leonardo DiCaprio. But it’s that ownership of the Detroit Pistons that may be nearest to the heart of this proud son of Michigan. Back in May, as the team was ending its best season since 2008, he praised supporters for sticking by them through the bad times. “It wasn’t that long ago I was apologizing,” the Platinum Equity founder said. “I want to thank the fans for hanging in there. I think the team needed them.”
Platinum’s $10 billion fifth flagship fund, which closed in 2020, cut its expected internal rate of return to about 11% at the end of last year, documents seen by Bloomberg show. Roughly three quarters of other funds of the same vintage are doing better. The fund had to cut the unrealized value of its companies by about 8%, according to the documents and a person with knowledge of the matter. Several investments, including portable toilet provider United Site Services and chainsaw maker Oregon Tool, were slashed to zero.
"I am happy where I am," Bickerstaff said. "For us as coaches, we are trying to figure out, 'What is my job? What are the expectations? And how do I continue to move those expectations forward?' The best organization in this league is the team that is the most consistent. When things get rocky, they hunker down on the things they believe in, the people they believe in and the players they believe in. ... I am truly blessed to be where I am with Trajan Langdon and Tom Gores. They are the type of people who, when things get tough, have my back and have shown that."
As one rival team executive said earlier this week, the “no. 1 job” of the Pistons front office now is “to convince [owner] Tom Gores that they’re not knocking on the door. Don’t rush it. Don’t go doing something stupid just because you had a good year. Otherwise, you end up like Atlanta.”
Eric Woodyard: #Pistons owner Tom Gores holds an impromptu press conference ahead of Game 6. Says he anticipated the team being good, but not this good. He thanked the fans. “Our urgency is not gonna stop,” he said. pic.x.com/xzLcRnr8mO
Advertisement
One of Detroit's biggest sports fans is interested in joining the city's bid to land a WNBA franchise. Eminem, the 15-time Grammy-winning rapper, has had discussions about joining the high-profile investor group that already includes Pistons owner Tom Gores, Lions owner Sheila Ford Hamp, General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Lions quarterback Jared Goff, Fab Five legend Chris Webber, former Piston Grant Hill and Denise Ilitch, among others.
Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores submitted a bid for the city to receive a WNBA franchise, sources told Yahoo Sports. The Detroit Shock were a big part of early WNBA history, winning championships in 2003, 2006 and 2008 before moving to Tulsa in 2010 — and before being rebranded as the Dallas Wings. The Shock set single-game records for attendance in the 2003 WNBA Finals as 22,076 fans filled the Palace of Auburn Hills to see Game 3 against the Los Angeles Sparks, and they matched that mark again in the 2007 Finals. Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever set the single-game regular-season record against the Washington Mystics this past season with 20,711.
The potential Detroit franchise would be expected to play at Little Caesars Arena in downtown Detroit, sources said, which is where the Pistons have been since the 2017-18 season. The Pistons also have a practice facility and headquarters two miles from the arena that was built in 2019, and it’s expected the WNBA franchise would also have its own facility and headquarters as well, should the bid be accepted.
Omari Sankofa II: Tom Gores is sitting courtside tonight. Was here Wednesday as well