With 15 days left until draft day, how the Pistons use the 12th pick – or whether they trade it – and talk of Andre Drummond and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope dominate the topics in the latest edition of Pistons Mailbag.
Darrell (Detroit): I watched nearly every Pistons game from the past season and I’m not convinced that Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is work $18 million to $20 million per season more than Reggie Bullock. Bullock is the Pistons best shooter and I’m not too sure Reggie’s defense is a significant dropoff from KCP’s. In terms of luxury tax and roster flexibility, I think the Pistons would do well to sign Bullock for $6 million to $8 million per year and trade KCP to a team that doesn’t want to compete to obtain him in exchange for a decent player or future first-round pick.
Langlois: Caldwell-Pope has led the Pistons in minutes per game in each of the past two seasons and – if you eliminate Reggie Jackson, who didn’t play with the Pistons over the first two-thirds of 2015-16, and Josh Smith, who was waived after 28 games that season – essentially for all three of Stan Van Gundy’s seasons as Pistons coach. Nothing could be a more emphatic declaration of Van Gundy’s trust in Caldwell-Pope than that. Bullock has generally been a productive player over his two seasons, but the biggest gamble in penciling him in as the starter would be durability. He’s missed a lot of time for a guy who has only rarely held a regular spot in the rotation. To expect that to change with a more prominent role would be pure finger crossing. It will be interesting to see what type of activity Bullock generates as a restricted free agent. Whether the Pistons can retain him will depend to a large extent on timing. If they get Caldwell-Pope’s contract resolved quickly, then do they prioritize using their mid-level exception to address another need or do they attempt to hang on to Bullock, as well? He has a cap hold of $5.6 million and the Pistons might decide to renounce their rights to him before making other moves with the cap foremost in mind. The draft could play a role there, as well. If they draft another wing player, will there be room for all of Caldwell-Pope, Stanley Johnson, Bullock, the lottery pick, Darrun Hilliard and Michael Gbinije keeping in mind the presence of Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris? The Pistons have options on the contracts of Hilliard and Gbinije, Hilliard’s due in early July and Gbinije’s in mid-July according to reports.
Buk (Bangkok, Thailand): Do you think Detroit (and other teams struggling to attract superstar free agents) will take the Bucks’ approach of high risk-high reward draft picks? This seems like the best way for Detroit to land a potential superstar without tanking.
Langlois: I’m not sure the Bucks adopted “let’s swing for the fences” as an organizational philosophy or if John Hammond – recently departed to assume the job as Orlando Magic general manager under Jeff Weltman, who coincidentally left the Pistons to accompany Hammond in Milwaukee when Hammond left Joe Dumars’ side with the Pistons in 2008 to become Bucks GM– simply believed Giannis Antetokounmpo and Thon Maker to be the best values in the 2013 and ’16 drafts. Antetokounmpo was the real mystery man with very few talent evaluators getting to see him play actual five-on-five basketball (or any other kind, really) before the draft. Maker at least had been in the pipeline for a few years, though there wasn’t much in the way of a body of work to study with him, either. I don’t think there’s really anyone comparable to either player in this year’s draft. If you’re going to roll the dice, there at least has to be someone with obvious and overwhelming raw skills – if a modest resume – to gamble on.
John M. (@Johnnyboytellum): Are the Pistons trading their first-round pick?
Langlois: Probably not a question we can answer until about 8 p.m. on June 22 when the Pistons’ turn to pick comes around. As I wrote last week, it should be no surprise that the Pistons would explore the possibilities. They’ve got plenty of youth now and Stan Van Gundy has made clear his desire to add 3-point shooting to the roster. That’s not a quality you generally expect rookies to be able to deliver with anything approaching consistency. The trouble the Pistons run up against in any attempt to deal their pick for a veteran is the salary cap. In Van Gundy’s first three off-seasons running the Pistons, they carried cap space into the summer. That’s not the case this year. And while acquiring a veteran making somewhere in the high seven figures wouldn’t necessarily preclude their ability to add players with the mid-level exception, it would be difficult to do both while retaining Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and avoiding the luxury tax. Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do it, but there’s a lot to consider there.
Ja’Onte (@juicy_jaonte): Can they draft someone to help us win now?
Langlois: The odds of that are … less than great? I’d give it about a 25 to 50 percent chance with the variance allowing for the readiness of the draft pick to contribute immediately. If the Pistons were to draft someone like, say, Justin Jackson of North Carolina, who worked out for them on Tuesday, or Duke’s Luke Kennard – guys with more than a single season of college basketball under their belts and also players whose strength, scoring, is a need – then maybe. They’d still have to win minutes from whichever veteran players are left after Stan Van Gundy and GM Jeff Bower do whatever they can manage over the summer to inject some scoring into the mix, but they’d have a chance, at least. If they were to draft a big man – someone like UCLA’s Ike Anibogu or Kentucky’s Bam Adebayo, both freshmen, each of whom have worked out for the Pistons – then the odds would be on the lower end, more than likely. But it’s all supposition. If Andre Drummond were to miss extended time, somebody would have to soak up some minutes. If the Pistons combine assets on the wings to trade for another area of need – packaging two or more of the players currently on the roster – then that would create an opening for a younger player, as well.
Kevin (Hamtramck, Mich.): Is it possible for a player to win Rookie of the Year and MVP at the same time?
Langlois: Nothing prevents it. There have been two in NBA history, the most recent being Wes Unseld a mere 48 years ago. Wilt Chamberlain did it, as well, in 1960. Big difference between then and now? Unseld was 22, Chamberlain 23. Players spent four years in college back then. Of the consensus top 10 picks projected for the June 22 draft, eight are under 20 and the two others, Josh Jackson and Lauri Markkanen, only recently exited their teens.
Detroit Young Guns (@ShhhhhImSleepin): You think the Pistons would take Collins if available?
Langlois: Depends … depends on who else is available. Also depends on which Collins you mean, Zach or John. Zach is generally considered the more likely lottery prospect so I’ll assume as much for the sake of our discussion. First, I’d put the odds on Zach Collins getting to the Pistons at less than 50 percent, perhaps closer to 30 percent. If he was still on the board at 12, I have a hard time imagining a scenario where he wouldn’t be in their top two, maybe three. Indeed, if he were available at 12, he’d be no worse than 50-50 to be the pick in my view. The caveat there is if the Pistons believe Collins is at least equally capable of playing center as power forward. If they see him more a power forward, then the overlap with Henry Ellenson would be too great and I think they’d have to knock him down a peg or two on their draft board. Of course, they might think he’s the No. 9 player, for instance, and knocking him down a spot or two might still leave him the highest-rated player on their board at 12. But, yeah, he’s got too many qualities Stan Van Gundy likes – shooting ability, mobility, toughness – to believe the Pistons wouldn’t be highly motivated to draft him if he’s available.
Don (@OGchamp): Could the Pistons trade their first-round pick and Andre Drummond to the Knicks for Kristaps Porzingis?
Langlois: Porzingis is to the Knicks what Drummond was to the Pistons when Stan Van Gundy took over the Pistons, two years into the league and still on a rookie contract for two more seasons. The reality changes when you score a big contract, as Drummond did, and command a major chunk of your team’s cap space. Don’t underestimate that factor when weighing trade value. Porzingis, given his size and shooting range but also very much because of his contract, probably has as much trade value as all but a select few handfuls of players. There was a lot of smoke at season’s end that Porzingis, who skipped his exit interview to return home to Latvia, had a bellyful of Knicks dysfunction. But it’s tough to imagine that’s enough to scare off Phil Jackson and actually drive the Knicks to look for trade possibilities. Jackson seems more logically focused on looking to find a home for Carmelo Anthony and building around Porzingis. I can’t imagine him being available in any reasonable scenario.
Peter (Jackson, Mich.): Have the coaches ever put together a tape of superior shot blockers for Andre Drummond? He does not seem to anticipate very well and does not recognize angles. Maybe watching great shot blockers would help.
Langlois: Stan Van Gundy isn’t big on showing players past greats and asking them to emulate them simply because he doesn’t find that to be a very effective teaching tool. But your point is valid, to a degree. Drummond at times exhibits terrific shot-blocking instincts. It’s not consistent. Players don’t like to leave their man and then get burned when he scores via a lob dunk or an offensive rebound and that’s happened too often to Drummond when he does leave to challenge dribble penetration. It’s absolutely been a point of emphasis for Van Gundy in his conversations with Drummond over the years. Van Gundy has consistently said the area where he’d like to see Drummond improve more than anywhere else is in his defensive consistency. Repetitions are the best way to move that along.
Chris (Auburn Hills, Mich.): Here is my master plan: The Celtics and Sixers are open to trading the first and third picks. So, the Pistons trade Andre Drummond for the first overall pick and get Fultz. Then trade Reggie Jackson, Stanley Johnson and the 12th pick for Joel Embiid, Nerlens Noel or Jahlil Okafor (whichever one Philadelphia wants to give up) and the third pick. Enter Josh Jackson. Now use the newly opened cap space from the Drummond trade to snag Blake Griffin in free agency. Then negotiate a sign and trade, KCP for Jimmy Butler. Pistons would have Fultz, Butler, Griffin, Tobias Harris and Okafor/Embiid/Noel with a bench of Josh Jackson, Marcus Morris, Ish Smith, Boban Marjanovic, Reggie Bullock and Henry Ellenson.
Langlois: That’s … ambitious. I’d start by pointing out that Noel was traded to Dallas midway through the season. Philadelphia (and the rest of the NBA) value Embiid and Okafor waaay differently. The 76ers tried peddling Okafor at the trade deadline and couldn’t get it done. Boston resisted trading its lottery pick, from all credible reports, in moves for Paul George and Butler at the trade deadline – and that was when the Celtics had no more than a 25 percent shot at No. 1. Now that they have it, I’d be more than a little surprised if they would deal it for anything less than a bona fide star who can carry an offense with multiple years of team control remaining. (Sorry to punch so many holes in your master plan, but we’re just warming up.) Sign-and-trade deals, as you propose for KCP and Butler, have too many moving parts – starting with a need for Chicago to target Caldwell-Pope and him to agree to any contract in order to sign off on a sign and trade – to actually build an off-season strategy around one. Landing Griffin would be just as wildly speculative. He’s an elite free agent, though his injury history might scare a suitor or two away, and history says they land with title contenders, not teams coming off of lottery appearances, more often than not. And for all of your maneuverings, you’ve still put a loaded roster’s fate in the hands of a rookie point guard whose college team went 2-16 in the Pac-12 last winter.