The Detroit Pistons? Gone till November.

From 2010 to 2015, Detroit’s “gone ‘till November” status usually hit a few weeks prior to the All-Star break, a break that Pistons players rarely had anything to do with. Not only was Detroit stuck in the NBA’s worst sort of rebuilding rut – never winning more than 32 games, never winning fewer than 27 – the team produced some of the league’s most godawful basketball. Even for some teams that won half as many games, you could still find things to entertain yourself with.

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The slow turnaround began in 2014, when former president Joe Dumars was let go and Stan Van Gundy was brought into replace both Dumars’ personnel gig, and Larry Drew as head coach. With veteran Jeff Bower handling the technical end of things as general manager, the Pistons went on to create a measured rebuilding.

Greg Monroe was given a (not unkind) cold shoulder in both restricted and unrestricted free agency. Josh Smith was waived to the tune of a (not-insignificant) $5.1 million a year penalty from now until 2020. SVG was without a draft pick in his first draft due to a past Dumars salary dump, but he netted Stanley Johnson in 2015 and former Thunder guard Reggie Jackson partway through 2014-15 for the pittance of D.J. Augustin and Kyle Singler.

Marcus Morris was acquired for a conditional second round pick, Jackson was re-signed in the wake of Brandon Jennings’ Achilles tear, and Jennings’ (a good sport, considering that he lost his starting gig to injury) expiring deal was later turned into Tobias Harris via trade. Harris and Jackson thrived under Van Gundy, and soon-to-be-minted max player Andre Drummond earned his first All-Star berth in 2015-16 as the Pistons raced to 44 wins and the last spot in the Eastern playoff bracket.

Disappointingly, after a regular season that saw them take three of four games from Cleveland, the Pistons couldn’t manage a single win as the defending Eastern champs swept in four. Detroit’s defense failed them in the face of a Cavs team that saw Kyrie Irving (27.5 points) and Kevin Love (nearly 19 points and 12 rebounds) playing with renewed confidence, with LeBron James happily taking a backseat to mind the formations on either end.

Detroit’s offense worked well, with Morris coming out of nowhere to lead the team at 17.8 points per game and Dumars draft holdover Kentavious Caldwell-Pope hitting for 15.3 points in over 40 minutes a contest, shooting 44 percent from long range. Detroit had its chances in three of the four losses, but the worrying sight of Drummond missing 23 of 34 free throws (32 percent, mostly on intentional fouls or the sly unintentional intentional foul) will linger until, well, November.

To that end, the Pistons will be relying on an odd quirk to extend the team’s fortunes into that of an Eastern contender – the NBA abolishing the intentional foul rule. This would allow the team to play Drummond more fourth quarter minutes without fear Clang City setting in.

The issue here is that, while there has been a movement in place to do as much for years, the league doesn’t appear to have a set strategy for the move as of yet, and the NBA’s Board of Governors could eventually vote against it – valuing their respective teams’ potentially key strategy against players like Drummond, Dwight Howard, Andrew Bogut, and DeAndre Jordan over 35-minute second quarters on ABC’s Saturday night primetime game.

(And, while we’re at it, once again I have to relay that I’m not displeased with a millionaire basketball player missing nearly two-thirds of his free throws in the regular season. Finishing at a high percentage near the rim and leading the league in rebounding is an entirely different game than hitting a 15-foot set shot. We don’t ask 6-1 guards to pull in 12 boards a night and shoot 70 percent from at the rim, so why this exchange? We don’t chide pitchers for not hitting .300, y’know?

It’s akin to asking a pro golfer, after getting on the green in two, to then use the stick of their putter to bunt their way to the cup.)

Detroit has an All-Star and a nice addition in Tobias Harris that averaged 14.5 and nine in the postseason, but this team still appears starless. Jackson could one stretch to make an All-Star squad, and Morris didn’t mope while playing away from twin brother Markieff Morris in 2015-16, but if the Pistons are going to compete with this bunch the team will have to construct a bench to keep the attack withering.

This will be tough, because even though Drummond offered to hold off on signing his max deal until Detroit finished its play in the free agent realm this summer, his cap hold (at over $8 million), Smith’s lingering commitment and over $32 million combined for Harris and Jackson will keep things tight even with the increased salary cap.

This isn’t to say that any of these contracts are poor value, far from it. Morris is a steal, owed just $15 million over the next three years, Aron Baynes is worth his middling deal, Caldwell-Pope and Stanley Johnson are still on rookie contracts, and if he can return to health after a lost season, Jodie Meeks’ shooting and $6.5 million deal will come in handy.

It’s just that these things add up, and though Meeks and potentially Baynes (who has a player option) will come off the books in 2017 alongside yet another giant leap in cap space, the combination of Drummond’s max deal and $32 million sent to Harris and Jackson (and, yes, more money to Josh Smith) cloud things. And that’s not even getting into Caldwell-Pope’s ability to sign an extension that offseason.

Which would ideally mean the Pistons have to make hay in the 2016, but with the pickings so slim (and teams so giddy at the rising cap), Van Gundy and Jeff Bower are going to have to nail a healthy percentage of their contract choices. Luckily, Detroit isn’t looking for a star. The team merely needs to round out that bench, formulating a rotation around a starting lineup that doesn’t feature a player over the age of 26.

We’re interested to see who Stan Van Gundy will covet, with 86 game tape of 2015-16 to learn from.

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Kelly Dwyer

is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops