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Detroit Pistons

American professional basketball team

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ169661 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Detroit Pistons are an American professional basketball team based in Detroit. The Pistons compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Central Division of the Eastern Conference. The team plays its home games at Little Caesars Arena, located in Midtown Detroit.

The Pistons are one of the NBA's "Original Eight" charter teams. They were founded as the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, a semi-professional company basketball team based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1937. The club would turn professional in 1941 as a member of the National Basketball League (NBL), where they won two NBL championships (1944 and 1945). The Pistons later joined the Basketball Association of America (BAA) in 1948. The NBL and BAA merged to become the NBA in 1949, and the Pistons became part of the merged league. In 1957, the franchise moved to Detroit. The Pistons have won three NBA championships: in 1989, 1990 and 2004.

Editorial summary

“Detroit Pistons” enters the record as american professional basketball team. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Detroit, Pistons and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1937, 1941, 1944, 1945—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1941, 1937—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Detroit, Pistons and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Detroit Pistons” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Detroit, Pistons and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q169661. VIAF identifies the subject as 143108199. The Library of Congress control number is n83184663. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1937, 1941, 1944 and 1945.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Detroit Pistons”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Detroit Pistons primary sources, Detroit Pistons archive and Detroit research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Detroit Pistons”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Detroit Pistons” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.