WASHINGTON – A trade rumor broke last week. A whopper. It sprang from a source that sent those upon whose ears it rang false scrambling to Google its credibility, which … zip, zilch, zero.
Stan Van Gundy, apprised of its rumbling momentum, was somewhere west of bemused and east of appalled.
“This whole fake news thing – sports started it. Boy, I tell you, we were right on the verge and then …,” he said, playing along for a nanosecond. “It’s amazing how those people find out before it even comes to our mind. Just amazing. It’s incredible. Yeah, it’s just being finalized.”
So, no, the Pacers are not about to send Paul George to their division rival.
But the story did have one foot – or a toe, at least – in the real world, if only to this extent: The Pistons now have enough assets stashed in their cupboard to at least muster the audacity to make calls on such players if they’re so moved.
And that speaks to the work – an amazing body of it, when you step back and allow a little perspective – Van Gundy and general manager Jeff Bower have done in 2½ years since inheriting a mostly bereft roster.
Van Gundy had a 20-year-old Andre Drummond, full of potential after two NBA seasons, and decided immediately he was a player around whom to build a roster – and a franchise. He had Kentavious Caldwell-Pope coming off a rookie season that stamped him more of a mystery than a building block. He had Greg Monroe, already determined to get a fresh start elsewhere, and two veterans with spotty reputations, Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings.
And a week into the job, Van Gundy learned he had to hand over his lottery pick to Charlotte.
Since then, he’s traded for Reggie Jackson, Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris for shockingly little cost, added Aron Baynes, Jon Leuer and Ish Smith – the heart of a vastly improved bench – in free agency and drafted two players with vast upside, Stanley Johnson and Henry Ellenson. He’s retained all of the franchise’s future first-round picks in those lopsided trades for three quality starters, too.
That gives the Pistons an enviable trove of assets. Johnson has struggled in his second season, adjusting to a niche role after a lifetime of having his name on the marquee, but is coming off a promising outing in Dallas. Ellenson is buried behind Harris and Leuer on the depth chart, but showed Van Gundy enough in the first two weeks of training camp to see a budding scoring star.
Two years ago, they would have been used of dire necessity. Even last season, Johnson was more a need than a luxury. The addition of Leuer has limited him to backup minutes at one position (shooting guard) instead of two (small forward, too) and that could well have something to do with Johnson struggling to find a rhythm in fewer opportunities than he’s ever experienced.
Van Gundy said midway through preseason that Ellenson, sooner rather than later – sometime this season, perhaps, or early next season – would force some decisions on frontcourt minutes.
As those two first-rounders mature and emerge, as Harris and Morris and Caldwell-Pope continue their career ascents, as the Pistons add another young player in next year’s highly anticipated draft, the assets drawer is going to start bulging.
It guarantees that the phones are going to ring with a frequency unknown to Van Gundy and Bower that lonely first summer as they plotted a course out of the woods. It also means that when they place phone calls to their peers, they’ll be answered on the first ring.
Van Gundy likes his roster – like, a lot – and now that Jackson is working his way back, he’ll have a handle soon enough on where he thinks it can take the franchise. But if at any point he sees an opening to climb another rung or two on the NBA ladder, he might yet place one of those phone calls of the sort that led to last week’s head fake. When he goes to the market now, he’s going with stuffed pockets.