Where Do The Pistons Go From Here?

by

Wow, that one stung.

If the pain of missing the playoffs for the fifth consecutive year (especially when they were expected to break that streak this season) wasn’t enough, then it was last night that put many Pistons fans over the edge. With the 8th spot in the NBA Draft Lottery, the Pistons had an 83% chance of holding onto their pick. If any team jumped up into the top 8, the pick would be lost.

Of course, in a turn of events that we should have seen coming, the Cleveland Cavaliers managed to jump all the way up to the top spot, which in turn gave the Pistons’ selection in one of the deepest drafts in recent memory to the Charlotte Hornets. At that point, I really couldn’t express the disappointment that I was feeling.

After having some time to think it over, though, I realized that not all hope is lost. The team still employs one of the best young players in the game in Andre Drummond, they just hired an incredible coach in Stan Van Gundy, and there are some pieces here that could make this team work. Along with that, they have more than $20 million in cap space this summer to play with, and Joe Dumars is no longer around to overpay an aging veteran.

The failed 3-big man experiment of last year with Josh Smith, Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond will more than likely be coming to an end, too, which is a positive. With Monroe as a restricted free agents, Van Gundy will have some options for how he wants to sort that out.

The first course of action should be to handle the pending unrestricted free agents, and those that have options for next year. Right off the bat, the team needs to let guard Rodney Stuckey and forward Charlie Villanueva walk. While the reasons behind letting Villanueva go can go without being said, the call to let Stuckey go may be a little bit more difficult.

While he’s decent at getting to the rim and creating his own shot, he doesn’t do much else. He shoots quite a bit without hitting very consistently (43% last season), and he’s not really into the whole “passing” aspect of the game, as evidenced by his Usage Rate of 24.3 rivals that of known shot-chucker Jordan Crawford.

Beyond those two, both Jonas Jerebko and Chauncey Billups have options for next year. Unfortunately, Jerebko’s $4 million is a player option, which he’ll likely opt into. While I don’t think he’s a bad player by any means, I think $4 million is way too much for what he brings to the table, but I digress.

As for Billups, his $2.5 million happens to be a team option, which absolutely, positively needs to be declined. As someone who wasn’t opposed to bringing him in last year, it’s safe to say that it’s time for Mr. Big Shot to call it quits. He’s had a great career and led Detroit to a title, but he only played in 19 games last year and he isn’t getting any younger.

With all of that cleared up, we’re sitting with around $39 million in salary commitments towards next year. With the cap expected to rise to $63 million, that would put the team’s cap space at $24 million. Once you take out Greg Monroe’s cap hold of approximately $5 million, that number drops to a still manageable number of $19 million. That means it’s time for some fun.

Although many fans are clamoring for the Pistons to trade Josh Smith and resign Monroe, I have a few problems with that line of thinking. The first is that they would get absolutely no value in return for Smith just based on the amount of money and years left on his contract. The next is that Smith fits better next to Andre Drummond as a power forward given his versatility on both offense and defense. Another reason is because Monroe is going to receive a max contract this offseason from some team, and I truly just don’t think he’s worth that given his limitations.

Luckily, Monroe does have quite a bit of value as a sign-and-trade piece. Given that the Pistons don’t have a first round pick, they should begin scouring the market for a way to flip Monroe into a draft pick in this year’s draft. Two destinations stand out amongst the others: Philadelphia and Orlando.

Both of these teams have multiple picks in the lottery, and given Monroe’s youth, he’d fit in with the approach that they’re both going for. We’ll start with Philadelphia. Currently, Jabari Parker is being projected to end up with the 76ers with the 3rd overall pick, which would create a great nucleus with Michael Carter-Williams and Nerlens Noel already in place. By the time the 10th pick comes around, they’d probably be looking for a big man to compliment Noel.

I have my doubts that any NBA-ready big man will be available for them at that position, so they may be willing to turn the 10th overall pick over to Detroit for Monroe. It likely wouldn’t be that easy to completely for Philly, though, as they might have to throw in Thaddeus Young, too. With the 10th pick, the Pistons could look to add the shooting that they so desperately need.

If that doesn’t work out, they could try giving the Orlando Magic a call. The Magic, who own the 4th and the 12th picks in the draft, could also use a big man of Monroe’s caliber to build around. They’ll likely go with a guard with the first of their two picks, and once again, I don’t really see any franchise big men in the 10-12 range in this draft. Much like the Sixers deal, the 12th pick alone probably wouldn’t get the job done, so Orlando could potentially throw in Arron Afflalo.

The last path I could see them heading down would be a deal with the Utah Jazz. The Jazz are a team that also has a valuable restricted free agent, and he happens to be someone that fits the Pistons needs. A swap of Greg Monroe for Gordon Hayward would be a deal that would leave both teams happy, however that deal is incredibly unlikely.

At that point, the Pistons lineup would be looking one of three ways:

Any of those three lineups in my mind looks a whole lot better than anything the team put on the court last year, and there would still be money to play with to shore up the bench. In any scenario, there would still be around $10-15 million to play with once free agency rolled along.

In the first situation, I would feel a little uneasy to have Thad Young play small forward, just because we’ve seen first hand what the results of playing a power forward there can be. I would go out looking for someone who could fill the void. Rather than spend essentially all of their space on someone like Luol Deng, they could look to a cheaper option like Trevor Ariza or Shawn Marion. Marion made $9 million this past season, but given his age he’s likely going to take a pay cut. A two-year deal in the $6-7 million range would work for both sides in my mind.

We’ll skip to the Utah deal just to handle starting lineup holes. The team is in need of a starting two-guard, and preferably one that can defend and step out beyond the arc if need be. Luckily, the perfect man for the job is out there in Thabo Sefelosha. He fell out of favor in Oklahoma City for stretches this past season, and he might find that it’s time to move on. He made less than $4 million this past season, so a modest raise to $5 million should do the trick.

In any scenario, the team’s bench will need to get better. Guys like Kris Humphries (side note, please get Kris Humphries), Emeka Okafor, Jodie Meeks, Kent Bazemore and Alan Anderson should all be available for relatively cheap and would add the depth that this team needs to compete. Let’s take a look at each completed team:

I don’t know about you, but I’d be incredibly pleased with either of these three scenarios. Losing the 8th pick certainly hurt, but it’s not the end of the world. There’s more than enough reasons to remain optimistic about this team going into next season.

Thanks for reading.