Pistons on the hunt

Opportunism and optimism make a healthy itinerary for a team rises from ashes of their own making.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Hunters in the Snow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565

Last week, lost in all of the bitter scandal that weighed on the National Basketball Association, the Utah Jazz traded Bojan Bogdanovic to the Detroit Pistons for Kelly Olynyk and Saben Lee. It’s weird piece of work considering that the Jazz had reportedly been looking for a draft pick for the veteran sharpshooter and that most expected Bogdanovic to land on a contender, not a team that finished with the league’s third worst record.

Lee is a prospect in that he is a young player, but he didn’t play a major role for a very bad team, so that tells you a good bit about how he grades out among all the possible prospects the Jazz could have picked up. Olynyk is 31 with another year on his contract.

The Jazz appear to have done this deal simply to slice $5 million off of their salary cap sheet for the 2022-23 at the cost of adding a bit of salary in 2023-24. Utah is well below the tax line but may have designs on swallowing salary in exchange for further picks or swapping out Mike Conley in an uneven deal. Whatever the case, the Jazz’s goals of hitting rock bottom are furthered in moving an important offensive piece.

But what of the Pistons?

At minimum, this is an opportunistic ploy at no real cost, assuming Detroit has decided Lee doesn’t have a serious future in Motown. Bogdanovic is on an expiring contract, which means that if the Pistons are really bad again they can potentially flip him at the deadline for someone looking for a final piece outside the buyout market. If the Jazz couldn’t get a draft pick for Bogdanovic in the offseason surely the Pistons will struggle to get one at the deadline. But there wouldn’t be any pressure on Detroit in any case due to the low cost of acquisition to get Bogdanovic and the lack of stakes in the season, should it come to that.

The more alluring scenario is if the Pistons are actually decent and Bogdanovic is a select veteran that helps Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Saddiq Bey and the Pistons’ young centers hit some solid milestones on the path to rebirth.

We’ve seen the value of solid veterans on rising teams in the very recent past. The surprising Cleveland Cavaliers last year had Ricky Rubio and Kevin Love playing major roles. The Minnesota Timberwolves had Patrick Beverley; the Memphis Grizzlies had Steven Adams and Kyle Anderson; the New Orleans Pelicans have C.J. McCollum (a step or three above these other names) and Jonas Valanciunas. It’s hard enough being a young, developing point guard without having a set of teammates on the fringe of the NBA. Watching Bogdanovic get to spots and pull some defenders out of the paint should really help Cunningham find his own space, something he honestly doesn’t seem to need that much help doing. A solid teammate and opponent in practice, someone who has been through teams good and bad in the NBA, a professional. There’s real value here to a young team, even if the margins of the Pistons’ season don’t inform the play-in tournament or, hold your breath, the actual playoffs.

But they could. The play-in required 43 wins in the Eastern Conference last season. That’s a 20-win ladder for the Pistons. But Detroit is not really as bad as its 23-59 record from last season; Cunningham had a rough start adjusting, but certainly began to put it all together to great effect. To wit, the Pistons went 10-14 after the All-Star break when tradition and logic would say they should have been tanking out. A handful of fringe NBA players were getting regular minutes in that span, and the Pistons were still winning almost half of their games. More growth from Cunningham, Bey, Marvin Bagley III, Isaiah Stewart and perhaps Killian Hayes. Some juice from Ivey and Jalen Duren. Some steady presence from Bogdanovic, Alec Burks and Nerlens Noel. That’s a 10-man rotation, if everyone’s healthy. I see it.

Opportunism, optimism and playing to win: that’s a nice itinerary for a team rising from the ashes of their own making.