Why the Pistons? 

Hi, I'm Alex Aisner. I'm a sophomore at the University of Michigan. I was born and raised in West Bloomfield, MI, about 30 minutes outside of Detroit. The Pistons are my favorite sports team in any league, and sportswriting is one of my passions, so the choice to make this project about them was an easy one. Once I had decided I wanted to write about the Pistons, however, it was clear that I'd have a hard time creating anything compelling given the current state of the team. Admittedly, as of right now, the Detroit Pistons are a bad basketball team. We have some nice young players that could develop into something in the next decade or so, but it's hard to tell. I wasn't old enough to remember our last championship in 2004, and unless the team makes some drastic changes, I fear I may not live long enough to witness the next.

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Being a Pistons fan (or just a Detroit sports fan in general) is pretty miserable. It's like getting back into a relationship with a horrible ex. At the beginning of every season, the organization announces that they've made all these big front office changes, they've hired a new coach, they even signed a couple nice players. They talk so much that you think to yourself, "maybe, just maybe, this year will be different!" Maybe the season even starts off strong, they grab a couple of nice wins. And then, the inevitable happens. All of a sudden, the team is on a 17-game losing streak, the coach is on the brink of getting fired if he hasn't quit already, and the city of Detroit has once again faded into irrelevancy. You thought it could've worked out this time. You didn't learn your lesson from the last dozen times you raised your expectations. 

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In order to come up with material that had the potential to be remotely interesting, I had to go back to the times when the Pistons themselves were interesting: enter the late 1980s. The Pistons are the best team in a league with Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan. I tried to document and detail this era of basketball as best I could in my video essay and op-ed piece. I wanted to portray just how frustrating the Pistons were for every other team in the league. How instead of retreating when other teams cursed their name, the Pistons doubled-down on their style of play just to spite opposing fans. I thought this was a unique mantra for a sports team to have, one that is rarely seen nowadays; if you can't join them, beat them.

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Inspired by The Last Dance documentary that came out a few years ago, I briefly stepped into the world of documentaries and docu-series. I didn’t have the time or the resources to create an entire documentary myself, but I did try my best at making an effective trailer for a hypothetical documentary. This was an interesting dynamic for  sports-related media, as the target audience for the trailer would be those who aren’t necessarily into sports. The trailer would serve as a way to get them interested, as opposed to articles, which are for those already familiar with the world of sports. I learned how not only to tell a story in limited time, but how to convince people to become invested in a story they hadn’t been previously. 

As stated before, the Pistons are a hard team to root for, even when they’re winning. But that won’t stop me from watching their games and writing about their team. I really hope you enjoyed reading about the Pistons as much as I enjoyed writing about them.