Pistons’ Blessing in Disguise

Although Stan Van Gundy will begin his Detroit tenure without a lottery draft pick, it may not be so bad after all. Here’s why…

By: Miles Wray

Much of the work that immediately faces the new Detroit Pistons brain trust — coach and President of Operations Stan Van Gundy and general manager Jeff Bower — revolves around undoing the crippling mistakes of its predecessor, Joe Dumars.

Despite having a championship-winning 2004 team on his résumé, Dumars’ 15-year term as Detroit’s President of Basketball Operations probably lasted a few years too long. As time carried on, Dumars fell into an inexplicable habit of devoting considerable resources to uninspiring, high-volume shooters.

For instance, this year the Pistons’ two highest-paid players, Josh Smith and Charlie Villanueva, were given kingly salaries ($13.5M and $8.58M, respectively) to produce dreadful field goal percentages (41.9% and 38.0%). While Villanueva’s crippling 5-year, $37.7M contract has mercifully ended, Smith and his wildly inefficient shooting are on Detroit’s books for $13.5M a year until 2017. It remains to be seen if and how Van Gundy can construct a winning team with this singularly toxic asset sucking up so much of the Pistons’ financial resources.

There is a trade that Dumars made in June 2012 that still weakens the team with its destructive aftershocks. In the trade, the Pistons received Corey Maggette from the Charlotte Bobcats while relinquishing Ben Gordon and a protected first-round pick. The swap of Maggette and Gordon is the NBA equivalent of two neighbors switching garbage cans with one another. Putting the first-round pick in the mix is like if one neighbor included a valued family heirloom as part of the exchange.

The first-round pick that Detroit sent to Charlotte was going to be sent to Charlotte some year between 2013 and 2016. At the time of the trade in 2012, neither side knew exactly which year would see the pick moving from the Pistons to the Bobcats because of the pre-agreed conditions based on Detroit’s draft slot. The agreement was:

• 2013 Draft – Charlotte receives the pick only if Detroit ends up with pick 15 or later.
• 2014 Draft – If Charlotte hasn’t received the pick, Charlotte receives the pick only if Detroit ends up with pick 9 or later.
• 2015 Draft – If Charlotte hasn’t received the pick, Charlotte receives the pick only if Detroit ends up with pick 2 or later.
• 2016 Draft – If Charlotte hasn’t received the pick, Charlotte receives the pick regardless of Detroit’s draft position.

In the 2012-13 season, the Pistons sagged to a 29-53 record and drew the eighth overall pick in the 2013 Draft, a position that was within the protected range. The Pistons were able to keep their pick, which they used to select Kentavious Caldwell-Pope — but Charlotte was still owed a pick.

This past season, the Pistons once again finished 29-53, only this time fate and the ping-pong balls gave Detroit the ninth overall pick in this year’s draft, meaning that the pick has been transferred to Charlotte. This is the best possible scenario for the Hornets, as they receive the highest possible pick – per conditions of the trade – that they were eligible to receive.

Since Lottery Night, the working assumption has been that, since this transaction has worked out so magnificently well for the Hornets, then it is equally and oppositely bad for Van Gundy’s Pistons. After all, Van Gundy is assuming control of a lottery team that is not receiving a lottery pick.

I want to propose that the way this year’s lottery has worked out is in fact not a bad thing for the Pistons.

The reality of Detroit’s situation — before Van Gundy was hired, before Lottery Night shook out the way it did — was that they owed Charlotte a first-round draft pick. The only question was whether they would owe Charlotte the pick in 2014, 2015 or 2016. If Detroit ended up in picks 1-8 for this year’s draft, it would have retained that pick — but its bill would still have come due in 2015 or 2016. And, looking at the terms of the deal above, those picks were hardly as well protected as this year’s was.

By sending the pick to Charlotte in the 2014 Draft, the Pistons are now effectively empowered to experiment — which could mean a lot of losses — in the 2014-15 season. While Van Gundy has never had a losing season in his eight seasons (or portions of seasons) as a head coach, it’s entirely possible that next year could be his first. With these Pistons, Van Gundy is simply not inheriting the caliber of team that he did with the Miami Heat and Orlando Magic.

Center Andre Drummond, the presumed centerpiece of all of Detroit’s future plans, has a large and expansive future. But he’s not quite dominating the way that Dwight Howard did in the 2006-07 season, just before Van Gundy’s arrival in Orlando. Drummond has yet to show the levels of offensive and defensive prowess that Howard already possessed before Van Gundy turned the Magic into contenders:

The other staple of Van Gundy’s elite Magic teams — tremendous 3-point shooting — is nowhere to be found on the Pistons’ current roster. The Pistons made 32.1 percent of their three-pointers in 2013-14, good for 29th in the league, with their most prolific shooters being: Brandon Jennings (33.7%), Smith (26.4%), Kyle Singler (38.2% — not bad at all!) and Caldwell-Pope (31.9%).

Van Gundy is a proven winner in the NBA, but it could be some time before he finds a way to patch the myriad of holes left for him on the Pistons’ roster. It would definitely boost short-term morale if the Pistons had a first-round pick in the 2014 draft. But that’s not the way things worked out. The way things worked out, Detroit no longer has any pressure to scrap together empty wins in 2014-15. The Pistons may find themselves in the lottery once more in the spring of 2015 — the difference being that a long-term plan for success will be firmly in place.