AUBURN HILLS – In a very broad sense, the assertion that the Pistons are open to trading the 12th pick for a veteran who would almost surely be of more help in winning games next season provokes zero raised eyebrows.
Of course the Pistons – on a blank canvas – would be interested in such a deal. Take pretty much any team with their profile – already with plenty of youth on the roster, already with a playoff appearance in the recent past and greater ambitions on their side – and they’d be interested in trading a late lottery pick for immediate return.
ESPN.com’s Marc Stein sent out such a Tweet earlier this week. “Hearing Detroit is open to discussing trades for its No. 12 overall pick in hopes of acquiring more of a win-now veteran.”
The Pistons would be “open” to a lot of things. “Open” means let’s talk and I’ll see if I can get something more than I might have anticipated out of it. They’d be open to talking to teams picking in the top five, too, in case one of them is looking for a more immediate path out of the NBA cellar.
“Open” to trading the pick doesn’t mean they’d deal it for a fringe rotation player on the downside of his career and one year left on his contract, though.
The Pistons traded their 2016 pick – the one they eventually used to draft Henry Ellenson 18th – four months before the draft before getting it back when they rescinded the deal with Houston for Donatas Montieujunas over concerns about the health and long-term prognosis of his back. At the time, Stan Van Gundy said the Pistons – with five starters then 26 or under, three 23 or under, and a 19-year-old sixth man – didn’t really need another teenager to develop.
So the Pistons being “open” to trading the pick does not deserve a “breaking news” alert.
But keep this in mind, too. The Pistons structured the Houston deal oddly, in a way that made it nearly certain they would convey it last season instead of this one, contrary to the typical way teams structure pick protections. There was a reason for that. Jeff Bower’s scouting staff had already sized up the ’17 draft class and declared it of higher quality and deeper than the ’16 class.
Van Gundy over the course of the 2016-17 Pistons season made casual references which indicated that assessment still held. You can extrapolate from that to assume the Pistons are placing a fairly high premium on the value of their pick. There’s an opening big enough to trot a circus elephant – well, if there were any left – through the gap between “open” to trading and “desperately looking to move” their first-round pick.
One other consideration here. There will always be an exception, but players making a salary modest enough to not blow up their salary cap and summer plans to use their mid-level exception are rare. Marcus Morris is due to make $5 million next season – less than Ish Smith and Boban Marjanovic and half of what Jon Leuer is due to make – and if there’s someone out there like that and his team is willing to deal him for the 12th pick, then I believe that would get Van Gundy’s attention.
But if they were to trade that pick for a player making a salary commensurate with his impact, then the Pistons would have to consider the ramifications on their cap with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s deal looming. Without taking Caldwell-Pope and Aron Baynes – expected to opt out and likely to leave in free agency – into consideration, the Pistons have about $95 million in committed salary for next season.
The luxury-tax line – though it won’t be officially set until final revenue numbers on the 2016-17 season are determined in the early days of July – reportedly has been set at $121 million for next season. Let’s just guess that Caldwell-Pope’s first-year salary will be $18 million for the sake of argument. That leaves the Pistons with just about enough room -- $8 million -- to use most of the $8.4 million mid-level exception.
They’ll also have to account for the $2 million salary slot due the 12th pick. But if they trade the pick for a player making, say, $8 million, then they’ve essentially spent up to the tax line.
The Pistons could still use the mid-level exception, but they they’d be flirting with being above the apron and having to use the smaller tax-payer mid-level exception and … yeah, it gets complicated. And are the Pistons really willing to be tax payers coming off of a lottery season? That’s something teams generally avoid unless they feel they’re within reach of title contention.
Bottom line: The Pistons might be open to dealing the pick, but unless they’ve got other deals in place to move salaries around then the player they get back in trade would not only cost them a presumably desirable young player but, in fact, the ability to get a plug-and-play quality veteran in free agency, as well.