ORLANDO – Stan Van Gundy went into draft night believing he’d come out of it with a critical addition to the Pistons young nucleus but not necessarily a 2015-16 starter. Stanley Johnson’s utterly impressive Orlando Summer League might ultimately convince him otherwise, but Marcus Morris is a pretty nice security blanket no matter how things turn.
The trade with Phoenix to add Morris couldn’t have come at less of a dip into the Pistons chest of assets. All it cost to get Morris, the 14th pick in the 2011 draft, was a second-round pick … five years away. He signed an extension to his rookie contract last off-season that kicks in now and gives the Pistons four years of control at a bargain rate, $5 million per season, for a guy who’s been a part-time starter and offers positional versatility.
Morris, 25, probably goes into training camp as the favorite to start opposite Ersan Ilyasova, also obtained in trade for precious little cost – the non-guaranteed deals of Caron Butler and Shawne Williams. Van Gundy said Plan A in free agency involved the pursuit of two unrestricted free agents and the assumption was that they were San Antonio’s Danny Green and Atlanta’s DeMarre Carroll.
By lunch time on the first day of free agency, both those options had evaporated. But free agency opened another unforeseen opportunity for the Pistons. Phoenix, desperate to open cap space for its long-shot pursuit of LaMarcus Aldridge, agreed to send Morris, Reggie Bullock and Danny Granger to the Pistons for next to nothing merely to get enough financial wiggle room to make an Aldridge deal possible.
Carroll cost Toronto a reported $16 million a season. In Morris, the Pistons think they have a chance to get a player about to blossom – much as Atlanta’s play for Carroll two years ago, signed to a two-year deal worth $5 million total, paid off.
With the salary cap about to take big leaps in each of the next two years, having a starting-quality player on team-friendly terms of that magnitude will give Van Gundy and Pistons general manager Jeff Bower wide latitude to seek roster upgrades elsewhere as similar unforeseen opportunities present themselves.
Morris, a four-year veteran, is a career 36 percent 3-point shooter who averaged 10.4 points in 25 minutes a game for the Suns. As Johnson, 19, matures and commands more of the minutes at small forward, Morris can slide to power forward if it suits Pistons needs.
Granger, a one-time All-Star whose career was hijacked by a degenerative knee condition, is a long shot to factor into the mix. But the Pistons are surely intrigued by Bullock, the No. 25 pick in the 2013 draft. He’s got great size for shooting guard at 6-foot-7 and the belief coming out of North Carolina was that Bullock would become a high-level 3-point shooter in some role. He hit 44 percent from the college arc as a Tar Heels junior before entering the draft.
There will be competition for a roster spot and minutes at shooting guard if Bullock makes the cut with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Jodie Meeks and No. 2 pick Darrun Hilliard – also logging impressive work in Summer League – crowding the depth chart. But to get a free look at a 24-year-old two years removed from being a first-round pick is a pretty nice bonus to what was already a team-friendly deal.
As always, results will write the verdict on who won and who lost in free agency. But Johnson’s strong showing and promise might have convinced the Pistons they had better ways to allocate resources than pouring eight figures a year into another small forward anyway if free agency had started after Summer League games began instead of before.
Getting Marcus Morris for one-third what it might have taken to land plans A or B looks like a pretty nice alternative for the Pistons.