Detroit Pistons: What The Move Downtown Means For The Franchise
The Detroit Pistons are moving back into a rebuilding city in the midst of their own renaissance.
Detroit sports fans had something to be thankful for on Tuesday. The Detroit Pistons announced they will move into the new Little Caesars Arena upon completion in Fall 2017.
The building is located in downtown Detroit, returning the Pistons back to the city for the first time since 1978. Before then, they played at Cobo Arena from 1961-78 and Olympia Stadium from 1957-61. By this time next year, Detroit will join Philadelphia as the only American cities to have their four major sports teams in such close proximity.
The NHL’s Detroit Red Wings started the project in 2012 intending to build a replacement for venerable Joe Louis Arena. The arena broke ground in 2014. Plenty of speculation and debating took place over whether or not the Pistons would become co-tenants.
However, the only official basketball announcement came in May 2015. The Horizon League announced they were bringing their conference tournament to Little Caesars Arena in Spring 2018.
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Substantial rumblings of the move didn’t come about until late September. Crains Detroit reported then that the Pistons and Red Wings were in preliminary talks about an agreement. Reports of the move becoming official didn’t pop up until Nov. 21.
The Pistons coming downtown will cost an additional $34.5 million in taxpayer money, via the Detroit Downtown Development Agency. A practice facility and team offices will also be constructed downtown. The DDA is already contributing $250 million into the $732 million construction project.
As part of the agreement, the Pistons will put money into multiple community efforts. They will invest $2.5 million into new or refurbished basketball courts across the cities. The team will also host youth basketball camps and mentorship opportunities.
The construction of their practice facility will also include a significant amount of Detroit workers and contracts. A study from the University of Michigan estimates that the move will generate $600 million in economic impact and create over 2,000 jobs.
Those numbers won’t change Detroit overnight. The city has fallen victim to the decline of the automative industry, political corruption and racial divisions. Detroit lost an estimated 63.4 percent of its population from its peak in 1950 to last year.
But the Pistons’ return shows a good faith effort by an area organization to help the continued revitalization of the city.
Members of the Detroit Pistons are excited about the move. Several players expressed their sentiments in Vince Ellis’s piece in the Detroit Free Press. Center Andre Drummond is happy for the city and the fact that fans will no longer turn to him for relocation answers.
"“With that news coming out, it’s huge,” he said. “It’s like everybody’s energy, their vibe, their excitement, their love for the team is going through the roof. Everybody is excited about us coming downtown.“Since I’ve been here, I’ve been asked every single day, ‘When you guys coming downtown?’ I’m like, ‘Look, that’s not my field. I don’t work in the front office. I just play basketball.’“I thank everybody for supporting me all these years, and now that we are going downtown, I think that our support rate and our fan rate is going to skyrocket because everybody that really supports the Pistons is going to be there.”"
Little Caesars Arena puts the Pistons in a centralized location that many Metro Detroiters can reach. The Palace, and the Pontiac Silverdome before it, are almost equidistant between Flint and downtown.
This is great for the season ticket base in the northern suburbs, but makes it a chore for fans in the western and southern suburbs to get to games. Metro Detroit is plotted in a way that is easier for citizens to come downtown instead of converging on an edge of the city.
The Pistons’ roster is also shaping up to be worth coming downtown for. Most of the current rotation (outside of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Beno Udrih) is signed through at least next season. There is a chance that a more developed version of the current squad could step onto the floor on opening night 2017.
The impending move to Little Caesars Arena is a good one. The team will bring some economic impact to a city on the mend, they will be centrally located for its fanbase, and the Pistons will have a competitive roster worth seeing heading into next year.
Next: 2016-17 NBA Power Rankings: Week 5
This move shows the Pistons’s commitment to representing the “Detroit” in Detroit Basketball.