Exits: Perpetually part of the engine

Writer Kelly Dwyer on the Sauk Trail, the Pistons always mattering, and when NBA teams had to hitchhike into town.

Cap space, Detroit has cap space. Detroit does not want to hear about cap space.

Detroit's done well with it, under old general manager Joe Dumars. Dumars used the starting point of (former GM) Rick Sund's Grant Hill-for-Ben Wallace salvage to repeatedly trade players into Joe's cap space, often taking on unwanted vets from teams lifting for bigger swings.

Joe D earned a draft pick for taking on the contract "burden" of Corliss Williamson, and savvily dealt that pick against available NBA rules to secure lottery selections in 2001 and 2003. Doesn't matter that Dumars took Rodney White and Darko Milicic with these things, what matters is Joe D earned Clifford Robinson and Jon Barry from teams looking to cut salary, develop salary cap space.

It won Joe a championship in 2004, put Detroit in the Finals in 2005 and 2006, the Eastern finals for SIX consecutive seasons.

Later, after all the confetti was swept away, Joe Dumars ruined the Pistons' 2010s with cap space. Signing free agents outright, no guile or gumption involved, Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva and Brandon Jennings (for Khris Middleton) and Josh Smith (whom the Pistons paid into the 2020s).

Detroit has cap space in the summer of 2025, room if it wants it, the ability to clear house and take a large whap at the pill. Shedding Tobias Harris via trade or renouncing Tim Hardaway Jr. via ignored texts, all in the search for the superstar to align with Cade Cunningham.

With Jaden Ivey out for an undermined stretch and the East wide open, new'ish GM Trajan Langdon has a chance to make a Dumars-styled hit, and right away. Dumars' Pistons went from cheerful overachievers in 2002 to bruising title belt winners in 2004, partially because the East of the early aughts blew a rod.

They've been here before. The Pistons may take leave of NBA relevancy for decades at a time, but this franchise is perpetually part of the engine. Even it takes a little walking between combustion bursts.

On the drive back from Cleveland after viewing the Pacers' skunking of the Cavaliers in Game 5, I started following the train tracks, on purpose, mirroring the route I'd read old NBA players took on the trains in from out East, back in the 1950s.

The Pistons were in Ft. Wayne then, but this isn't where the train went. Rather, the train stopped at an uncovered depot in an Indiana town thirty miles north of Indiana named "Waterloo," a co-incidence I couldn't get out of my head until I'd turned it into irony.

There was no bus awaiting an NBA team's arrival in Waterloo, no town cars or limousines, monorails or interurbans. No, players skulked off the train and walked to a diner and often woke up the owner of that diner, who would scare up drivers to take the visiting NBA team the final 30 miles south to Ft. Wayne, where they'd play the Pistons later that day.

Marty Glickman, Knicks broadcaster and the guy from 'On the Road,' takes it from here:

Traveling with the Knicks, I knew that our instructions were to walk on a two-lane blacktop road toward a blinking yellow light a half-mile away. That turned out to be the only light at a crossroads, where there were 10 or 12 buildings, nothing taller than two stories. Then we were to look for the plate glass window with the sign of the Green Parrot Cafe. Carl Braun was our designated shooter of the pebbles up to the second-floor window, because he had the softest touch. After two or three pebbles hit the window, a frowsy-haired woman would look out and say, “Oh, the Knicks.”

Syracuse Nationals All-Star Johnny "Red" Kerr said Waterloo "looked like a set from 'Bad Day at Black Rock.' There was a greasy spoon called The Green Parrot where there were always a couple of James Dean leather jacket-type guys sipping coffee and smoking unfiltered cigarettes."

Those were their rides. And that was the local look: James Dean was from a town less than 90 miles from Waterloo.

"The real contradiction," Kerr noted, "is that [the Pistons were] owned by one of the richest guys in the league."

The train depot in Waterloo is covered these days, it was there that I was able to bother several collected police officers and well-dressed local townsfolk, a dozen or so gathered for a reason I didn't inquire over. Surprised to be interrupted by a tourist in Waterloo as I was to see a welcome party full of people older than me, in Waterloo.

They all knew where the Green Parrot was, used to be. None of them recognized the sputtered story I told about old NBA players schlepping from the tracks and toward the Green Parrot, a place with decor that looked exactly like what you hope it looked like.

Somewhat unnerved by my interactions with the local Marshals – who followed up on our chat by getting into three separate police SUVs and slowly grinding pavement past my gawking at the former back lot of the Green Parrot – I drove a wee bit north to Michigan. Where I may have been a little more legal than I was in the previous state. I hit one of my favorite roads, the first interstate highway, The 12, tarmac on top of where the mastodons meandered West.

It mirrors the Sauk Trail, a prehistoric clearing used by beast and man alike. I enjoy driving west on it and imagining a fading, dripping glacier out my passenger-side window running parallel to that new, green, world out my side of the car.

I'm not the only one to think this way, generations of mid-20th century tourists bused from Detroit to Chicago and Chicago to Detroit and all points in between after the concrete was poured, parents no doubt telling bored-ass kids all about the wooly mammoths to keep children's growing minds occupied until they could get to the next town, where nobody would drink water. I don't know how anyone made it out of the 1950s, but the Pistons did in 1957, moved to Detroit.

Thirty years later, the Pistons mattered. Then again and now again, with potential for a precocious Finals trip in 2026 or 2027. All Detroit has to do is take the same path, again and again, pretend this time is different.

It isn't — same road for mastodons or tour buses filled with kids with Cokes and chocolate bars or five-tooled stretch fours or the natives or the French or the English or the Irish, arrrrr, my Irish.

The Pistons haven't boasted potential like this since the second Allen Iverson rolled up, revealed himself a dud. Stan Van Gundy's teams were trials, digging and holding breath and only to grab the eighth seed in the East.

But this? A top overall pick and the twentysomethings he's grown with? A general manager that doesn't have to prove he was better than The Last Guy? Those kabillion future second-rounders to deal?

Plus a connected coach who cannot forget Cleveland, but sure as heck forgave the Cavaliers. Learning from mistakes and straightening his approach on the track from Cleveland to Detroit.

They used to fight wars over those miles, real white-on-white shit too, with a 24-year old Michigan Gov. nicknamed 'Boy Governor,' I could go on because I want to: Detroit's Pistons aren't a blip, they won't fade, and only have a longtime Central Division rival (and 2025 Finals participant) to learn from.

Not the quick ascent, but the reminder to remain diligent within a season. Much was expected of Indiana this year, and the Pacers started 9-14. Detroit has that in them for 2025-26. Long season, eyes on the road.

Detroit also has Finals contention in the cards for 2025-26, even without a massive roster whapover. It wouldn't be skipping gears, jumping steps. Rather, adapting to what's in front of them. And what's in front of them is wide open, one winnable playoff series after another.

Until the road heads West. Mastodons run at different speeds out there.

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Editor’s note: Kelly is currently on the road for the NBA Finals, one of of the bravest and best-equipped to drive back and forth between Oklahoma and Indiana, and write about the basketball as much as the space between it.

If you aren’t yet, I highly recommend following along with his work here.