Detroit Pistons: Champions from the NBL to the NBA

The Detroit Pistons is one of the few teams that have quite a number of championship wins under their belt. The Detroit Pistons have three NBA Championship wins to be proud of, garnered in 1989, 1990 and the latest in 2004, and two NBL wins, for the years 1944 and 1945. The Detroit Pistons also have 4 division titles under the NBL and 10 under the NBA.

The basketball team of Detroit City, Michigan called the Detroit Pistons started off as a basketball team playing in the NBL in 1941 and moved to the NBA in 1948. They were not the Detroit Pistons before that however and the team actually spent some time playing as the Fort Wayne Pistons from 1941 till 1957. This team was owned and managed by the Fred Zollner who owned a foundry that manufactured pistons for automobiles and trains. This is where the team got its name and pretty soon the Fort Wayne Pistons began playing for the NBA with an impressive appearance in the NBA finals of 1955 and 1956. Although they lost both times, they showed a promise of what the team could achieve.

The Pistons became the Detroit Pistons when Zollner moved the team to the bigger city of Detroit in 1957 and found that the city did not have a professional basketball team to carry their name. The city of Detroit lost their NBL team to a move to the city of Minneapolis ten years earlier and the Detroit Pistons happily took their place, playing at the Olympia Stadium to a crowd that had not seen a professional basketball game played within its boundaries for a decade. With the team in the NBA and winning Central Division championships, the Detroit Pistons won the full support of the community that they are now proud to call their home.