The honor is awarded to the coach of the top team in each conference on February 1. The Pistons, at 32-11 overall, are five games ahead of the No. 2 Boston Celtics and thus have the highest record in the East through January, a week before the deadline.
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Bickerstaff is the first Pistons coach with an All-Star nod since Flip Saunders in 2006, and the fourth all-time, after Saunders, Doug Collins in 1997 and Chuck Daly in 1990.
He will coach one of the three All-Star Game teams, in the first year of a new format for the annual exhibition. This year’s game will be a round-robin tournament with three teams: two featuring American players and a world team made up of international players.
The tournament, scheduled for Sunday, February 15 at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, will feature four 12-minute games and each team will have a minimum of eight players.
Cade Cunningham was named the starter in the All-Star Game on January 19, becoming the first Piston to start the game since Allen Iverson in 2008-09. Cunningham, a reserve last season, is the first Piston to make consecutive All-Star Games since Chauncey Billups from 2006-08.
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Reserves will likely be named in early February, with Pistons center Jalen Duren a possible choice.
Meanwhile, second-year forward Ron Holland is a candidate for the Rising Stars Game on February 13.
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Contact Omari Sankofa II at osankofa@freepress
This article originally appeared in Detroit Free Press: Detroit Pistons’ JB Bickerstaff to coach in 2026 NBA All-Star Game