Young Detroit Pistons are different, and they're not afraid to let you know that

Something is happening in this city. Something is percolating within the sporting scene. First the Detroit Lions, then the Detroit Red Wings, now the Detroit Pistons.

They're not ready to start winning titles just yet, but they are ready to start winning games, and they're proving it by the week. Saturday night at Little Caesars Arena offered the latest example, as the Pistons handled the Bulls in their home opener, 118-102, to move to 2-1.

Yes, it's three games, and that's a fraction of the 82 on the NBA schedule. But it doesn’t take a large sample size to see that some things are different with this team, for the first time in a while.

For one, the Pistons play defense. No, really, they do. And not only do they play it, but they seem to enjoy playing it, and their team owner has taken notice.

“I like their toughness,” said Tom Gores, who sat courtside on opening night in Miami and again Saturday night in Detroit. “I’m not sure I expected it so fast.”

It's their toughness, their tenacity, the way they are getting coached by Monty Williams.

“To me they are wiser than their years,” he said, “I think (Williams has) made a difference really fast.”

This is easily the most promising team Gores has had, in talent and in youth. Although he didn’t want to set hard expectations when he met with reporters before tipoff Saturday, he didn’t want to cap them either, and told his team before the season started.

“My message was: I personally have done more than anybody ever expected in my life as a little boy from Flint,” he said. “And I know we are a young team and everything but that’s not an excuse. And nobody should put limits on you. So, it’s up to you how you perform.”

It’d be cliché to say this group entered training camp with a chip on its shoulder. But that’s what so many of the players said then, that they’d heard the noise, and the prognosticators, and the lack of outside expectation.

Clichés become that way for a reason, though, and so far, the Pistons are playing exactly as they said they would. Again, it starts on defense.

Never mind that Bulls star Zach LaVine dropped 51 on them Saturday. As Williams said, sometimes NBA players do that. What mattered is that Lavine had 49 with six minutes to go in a relatively competitive game and only picked up two more points.

Ausur Thompson gets credit for finally slowing down the shooting guard. He blocked his jumper, bothered other jumpers, stayed in front of his drives, and even tracked him down in the open court and swiped the ball from behind.

Jalen Duren was looking straight up the court as he ran back on defense when he saw a couple teammates suddenly turn around and sprint back the other way. He hadn’t realized Thompson had made the steal.

“What he does on the floor doesn’t show up (in the box score),” Duren said.

Actually, it does, at least when he tracks down one of the fastest players in the league and gets the steal. And the rookie forward is showing up there more and more.

He grabbed 12 rebounds against the Bulls, a night after getting 12 against the Hornets. Three games into his NBA career and he may be the league's best-rebounding wing. He does things that “not too many people can do,” Williams said.

The quick second jump, for example, or the way he flies from the weak side to contest shots at the rim. The shooting is a work in progress, and his handles need to get tighter, but then, he’s just getting started.

That's a cliché Williams likes to use about Duren, too.

“I see what you all see, but I also see his intention to get better,” he said. “(Duren would) be the first to tell you he’s just getting started. He's 19 years old.”

And yet?

“The growth that he’s had since practice started …” Williams said, allowing for a hint of a smile.

Duren is coming, and the connection he has developed with Cade Cunningham in so short a time should be tantalizing. The point guard and center each have about a year’s worth of NBA games on their résumés, but only a dozen games together, as Cunningham missed 70 games last season.

But to see the way they have a feel for where the other is is startling. When the Pistons were scuffling to start the second half and the Bulls cut the lead to four, Cunningham and Duren found each other to push the lead back up.

From pinpoint pocket passes on the short roll courtesy of Cunningham to kickouts from the block courtesy of Duren, they play with an innate sense of where the other is located. The pair displayed the chemistry during scrimmages against Team USA preparing for the summer's World Cup in Las Vegas, when clips of Duren taking lobs from Cunningham and dunking on the best young players in the NBA went viral.

Saturday night, they showed it works in the regular season, too. The Bulls may not be a play-in team, as they were last season, and were coming off an overtime win Friday night against Toronto.

But Duren and Cunningham played the night before, as well.

Williams was particularly proud that he didn’t hear the usual talk about dead legs on a back-to-back.

“Nobody (talked) about the normal exhaustion,” he said.

And?

“I just love (their) connection.”

TRENDING: Jalen Duren's rapid growth powering Detroit Pistons' strong start

This shouldn’t be surprising based on what we’ve seen and heard. And if you believe the clichés, these Pistons weren’t about to open their season at home without getting after it.

And so, they did, from the opening tip, rising with the crowd, reveling in the most raucous atmosphere Little Caesars Arena has seen in years … at least for a Pistons game. Hollering after every lob and dunk, every Alec Burks 3-pointer — he hit six — every Isaiah Stewart rebound and Cunningham drive and Duren block, with every bruising defensive stop. The noise grew and grew, until the fans began doing the wave in the fourth quarter.

Again, it’s three games, and the victories have come over two of potentially the worst teams in the Eastern Conference, and a little perspective is generally a good thing. So how about this: The Pistons had lost their past 14 games to the Bulls — a streak dating back to March 2019 — until Saturday night.

That's a step. And if nothing else, where that step leads is fun to think about.

“It's good to feel we are going in the right direction,” Duren said.

He should know. He is helping lead the way, one dunk, one body blow at a time.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

MUST LISTEN: Pistons vice chairman Arn Tellem joined 'The Pistons Pulse' podcast this week to address the state of the team and its future. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts (Apple, Spotify).

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: These Detroit Pistons are different; they're not afraid to let you know