JB Bickerstaff Brings Ex-Cavs Assistants Luke Walton, Sidney Lowe To Pistons

September 23, 2024

As expected, former Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff brought a couple of Cleveland assistants to the Pistons.

That would be none other than Luke Walton, the former head coach of the Kings and Lakers, and Sidney Lowe, who has spent much of his career with the Cavs. The Pistons made all of this official in a press release on Monday.

Along with those two, the Pistons officially hired Fred Vinson, Vitaly Potapenko, Kevin Burleson, Jerome Allen and Josh Estes as assistants to Bickerstaff.

Detroit, of course, is coming off a season in which it lost a league-record 28 games. That led to the firing of head of basketball operations Troy Weaver and coach Monty Williams, who coached the team for a single season.

In many ways, the Pistons are seemingly emulating the Cavs under Bickerstaff — who led Cleveland from the play-in tournament to the first round of the playoffs to the Eastern Conference semifinals in consecutive seasons. He was fired at the end of last season.

But Pistons new head of basketball operations Trajan Langdon liked how Bickerstaff guided the Cavs through the second post-LeBron James era and into respectability. And it was indeed admirable.

The Cavs replaced Bickerstaff with Kenny Atkinson, the former Nets head coach who comes over from the Warriors.

Interestingly, Bickerstaff, Walton, Lowe and the Pistons serve as the Cavs’ home-opener on Oct. 25. Cleveland visits Detroit for a preseason game on Oct. 16.