When the Pistons and Reggie Jackson signed off on a reported five-year, $80 million deal in July 2015 it drew howls from several pundits and even one notable NBA player: John Wall, who’d agreed to a contract on the same terms two years earlier.

In the 15 months since that deal was consummated, the interest from other NBA front offices in trading for Jackson confirmed Pistons made the right move.

Not that Stan Van Gundy had any doubt. He proclaimed as soon as it was announced that it would be looked at as a value contract the following summer with the anticipated escalation of NBA salaries as a new wave of TV money washed over the league.

“It seems like a lot of people – I don’t mean teams – but a lot of people who do the analysis of all these moves are a year behind in terms of their vision and the way they analyze moves,” Van Gundy said. “We got killed for signing Reggie for too much money and then we were hit with virtually every team in the league wanting to trade for him because he’s locked in at what now is a very, very good salary.”

The Pistons drew criticism for signing Aron Baynes to a reported three-year, $20 million deal in the same week as the Jackson agreement and this summer for signing both Jon Leuer (four years, a reported $41 million) and Boban Marjanovic (three years, a reported $21 million).

Van Gundy feels more than comfortable with all of them. When he was asked about criticism of Leuer’s contract earlier in training camp, he said, “Yeah, we’ll see. It’s all a matter of how guys play. I thought one of the more astute things I’ve heard in the last few years is there’s no such thing as a good deal on a guy who can’t play. You can laud all these deals. ‘Oh, they got that guy for only $2 million.’ Yeah, well, he can’t play, so it doesn’t matter. If the guy can play and helps you win games, then you’re rarely disappointed and Jon’s going to help us a lot.”

The Marjanovic signing, in fact, was precipitated by the conviction of Van Gundy and the front office that Baynes will command more than they are permitted to offer him next summer. Because the Pistons only will hold partial Bird rights to Baynes, they’re limited to offering him 175 percent of this season’s salary when he becomes a free agent in July – a little less than $12 million.

The Pistons felt it more than likely – in light of contracts given to backup centers Bismack Biyombo (four years and a reported $72 million, or a higher annual average than Jackson) and Ian Mahinmi (four years and a reported $64 million) – that Baynes would command more than they could offer.

“We have Baynes on a very good contract, one that he will, unfortunately, almost certainly opt out of,” Van Gundy said. “We saw good backup centers getting 16 to 18 million a year and we wouldn’t even be allowed to chase him anywhere near that market. The market changes everything. The media killed us that we paid Baynes too much and now everybody in the league would die to have him at six and a half million dollars. I guarantee you, he’s going to make a lot more than that this coming summer. You have to have some look at what the market is.”

Van Gundy can’t know the motivation of teams calling to ask about Jackson. It would seem curious to think the Pistons would part with a player so integral to their offense and the future of the franchise. But he can speculate.

“I don’t know that they think he would be (available),” he said. “They just want to see how hard they could push it. Initially, we got criticized at the size of the contract, so maybe they think we’re going to react to that. He’s just always been a guy who’s had great interest.”

And that interest picked up, even, as news of his knee injury broke.

“He’s a guy with a great, great contract and those guys are all looking. And then people think you’ll panic a little bit when a guy has an injury. He’s a very good player on a good contract and when we signed it there were a whole lot of people criticizing it. It’s people who look at things differently and in the moment and hadn’t adjusted to what’s going on. There’s been interest in him and there’s always interest in good players. There’s interest in Andre (Drummond), obviously, and interest in Reggie. People are always just seeing what you’re thinking and seeing if you’ll move on any of those guys and what it would take. And Reggie’s a guy that drew really, really good interest.”

Anything that made the Pistons think twice?

“No. Not even close,” Van Gundy said. “We haven’t had any interest in any of that.”