The trade deadline came and went on Thursday afternoon.
Contenders looked to add a final missing piece while those squads bound for the lottery made moves to set up their future.
The Detroit Pistons. They did nothing at all. And nobody can really figure out why.
Make no mistake. This is assuredly not going to be the year for the Pistons. There won’t be some grand entrance into the postseason, followed by a memorable run through the bracket. These Pistons have established exactly who they are, and that is a 22 and 32 team that just got blasted in consecutive games by the generally woeful Charlotte Bobcats.
There is no confusion as to what should be the strategy.
Forget about this year and start preparing for the next five. But with a deafening silence coming from Auburn Hills on the NBA’s most frenzied day of the calendar, you can’t help but wonder if there really is any plan at all.
Lacking An Identity
When you look at this Pistons’ roster, it is almost impossible to determine if this is a team trying to build now or for the future. It would seem Joe Dumars is trying to do both at once, but it doesn’t really work like that.
He shrewdly selected Andre Drummond, a Ben Wallace-esque rebounding demon to pair with his other young frontcourt ace, Greg Monroe. You’d think, “Okay, find a couple more young pieces to go with these guys and maybe in 2-3 years you really have something here.”
But Joe D did nothing of the sort. He went out and inked Josh Smith, a forward entering his 10th year, a guy becoming a more irresponsible shot-taker with each passing game. Couple with that the addition of the wildly erratic Brandon Jennings and you have a complete and utter contrast in the “present or future” debate.
Professional sports nowadays require that your franchise has a “direction.”
Are you setting up for a title run this year? Are you rebuilding? Are you on the doorstep of contention, feeling like you’re just a piece or two from getting over the top? Fan bases take comfort in knowing that their hometown teams have this under control, that they’re not just flying by on the seat of their pants hoping that mere dumb luck will win the day.
With today’s lack of action from Dumars and in effect, Tom Gores, the front office is essentially throwing its hands up and admitting, “We have no idea how to fix this.”
A Broken Roster
And with this current batch of Pistons, I can’t claim to have the answer, either. Dealing Greg Monroe, who will be an restricted free agent this summer, makes the most sense, but he is one of the few players that brings effort on most nights. Trading him doesn’t necessarily make you better now or in the future.
The player that the Pistons would most like to ship elsewhere (Smith) also happens to be the one no other team in the league has any desire to take. The four-year deal he signed last July might as well be 40. You’re more likely to find someone willing to take that holiday fruitcake off your hands than you would an NBA franchise open to acquiring Smith.
You’d think that Dumars might have been able to receive some value for Rodney Stuckey, a reliable scorer off the bench that could help a Western power like the Blazers or Rockets. But alas, it appears the Pistons have become the NBA’s version of the Lions; “Don’t touch those guys. They’re contagious and you don’t want to catch what they may have.”
A Missed Opportunity
The answer to this mess will likely take years to play out. A new coach will be ushered in for the umpteenth straight year, and for the first time in a long time, possibly a new general manager as well. There are so few pieces of actual worth within this current crop of Pistons that an overnight miracle is obviously unrealistic.
But today could have been some kind of start. Rumors swirled throughout the afternoon that teams were open to acquiring Josh Smith, albeit for pennies on the dollar. The return haul shouldn’t have mattered. Sometimes addition by subtraction is the only viable solution Dumars and company needed to get the ship back on some type of logical path, and instead, they fell asleep at the wheel.
It’s been 2,096 days since the Pistons last won a playoff game.
Yet, somehow the organization stood firm today, unchanging, with no discernible direction moving forward.
One of the NBA’s storied franchises has become a laughingstock. And nobody in Auburn Hills seems to notice or care.
