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Keith Langlois

We’re perhaps on the cusp of an NBA Finals between two teams built without benefit of lottery fortune. If the Pistons – or Pistons fans, for that matter – needed any incentive to stay the course, Miami – provided the Heat don’t become the first NBA team of the 150 who’ve taken a 3-0 series lead to not finish the task – and Denver are here to deliver.

The Miami story is especially compelling. The two unquestioned stars of the Heat are Jimmy Butler, the 30th pick in 2011, and Bam Adebayo, the 14th pick in 2017. They’ve survived the loss of Tyler Herro, the 13th pick in 2019, in large measure because of their remarkable knack for mining the undrafted free agent rock pile for gems.

Even before the highest-drafted player on their roster – Victor Oladipo, No. 2 pick in the star-crossed 2013 draft – was lost for the season in these playoffs, he was playing behind some or all of the four critical UDFAs that have made possible this improbable Heat run.

That’s a roundabout way of saying Troy Weaver and the Pistons haven’t curled up in the fetal position since last week’s lottery delivered them their worst possible outcome, the fifth pick.

You know who would have been available at the fifth pick in past drafts? Everyone on Miami’s roster except Oladipo and everyone on Denver’s except Aaron Gordon, the fourth pick in 2014.

Let’s step back for a minute and look at a different column from those two rosters: experience. Denver’s starters have a cumulative 38 years of NBA experience or an average of 7.6 apiece. Miami’s starters have 41, an average of 8.2.

If the Pistons line up with a starting five of Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Jalen Duren, Isaiah Stewart and Bojan Bogdanovic next season, they’ll have a combined 16 seasons – and more than half of them, nine, will belong to Bogdanovic. If you swap in the No. 5 pick for Bogdanovic, they’ll go into the regular season with a combined seven years of NBA experience under their belts.

That doesn’t mean patience is the only ingredient needed for the Pistons to blossom into an NBA finalist. But it does imply that patience is absolutely one of the ingredients required. Talent is an absolutely essential element of a championship-worthy roster, but talent alone puts you on a treadmill, not a conveyor belt.

You probably don’t need both hands to count the number of players this century who came to the NBA and had immediate impact on winning at a high level. It took LeBron James, unquestionably the most accomplished player drafted this century, until his third season to even make the playoffs. It wasn’t until his fourth season that two-time MVP Nikola Jokic – drafted 41st, don’t forget – made an All-Star roster.

The Pistons have time on their side, but it’s not lost on Weaver – and won’t be on whomever he chooses to succeed Dwane Casey as coach – that time only works in their favor if they maximize its use. The passage of time by itself will net the Pistons nothing. But go back to what Weaver said last month when he mused about the qualities he would seek in Casey’s successor.

“I know what this team needs,” he said. “It’s simple. Discipline, development and defense. That’s going to be the call for the next coach. That’s our marching orders.”

Those things are all intertwined, too. A rigorous development program requires discipline. A coherent defense requires development and discipline. All of them require time, which the Pistons have in spades, and patience, which requires its own brand of discipline in exercising.

The Pistons will line up with six lottery picks from the past four drafts, five of them top-seven picks, when they open the 2023-24 season, a cohort that doesn’t include other young players such as Isaiah Stewart, Marvin Bagley III and Isaiah Livers. That’s a lot of young talent – and both halves of that descriptive are doing a lot of work. The right mix of time and patience, of discipline and development will be needed to make it come to life as Weaver and Pistons fans desire. They might not yet have 100 percent of the necessary ingredients in place, either. But the means to get there, to a far greater extent than they could say at any point in recent memory, are within their reach.

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Lesson of the playoffs: Patience a necessary ingredient for Pistons

The Pistons will pick first in the 2023 NBA draft … in the second round. Not quite the same. But not nothing, either.

You could field a legitimate title contender composed of second-round picks over a 10-year period that starts in 2011. It often takes a season or two for teams to realize exactly what they have with second-rounders for a confluence of reasons that includes the sometimes greater development needed or the lack of opportunity afforded, which explains why our search started with the 2011 draft and ran through the decade.

A team of second-rounders from that 10-year period would start with two-time MVP Nikola Jokic at center. He was the 41st&nbsp;pick in 2014. And if you think luck doesn’t play a significant role in the art of compiling an NBA roster, consider: Jokic wasn’t the first center nor the first European player Denver selected in that draft. The Nuggets made Jusuf Nurkic the 16th&nbsp;pick that year.

We can flank Jokic at power forward with four-time All-Star, eight-time All-Defense honoree and four-time champion Draymond Green, the 35th&nbsp;pick by Golden State in the 2012 draft. Opposite him at forward from the same draft, taken four spots later by the Pistons, is three-time All-Star and 2021 NBA champion Khris Middleton.

Backing up the forwards can be Bojan Bogdanovic – the first pick of the second round in 2011 – plus Jerami Grant, the 39th&nbsp;pick in 2014. Other highly functional forwards considered include Jae Crowder (34th, 2012), Joe Harris (33rd, 2014), Dillon Brooks (45th, 2017), Jared Vanderbilt (41st, 2018), Cody Martin (36th, 2019) and Jalen McDaniels (52nd&nbsp;2019).

The Pistons have their own candidate in Isaiah Livers, the 42nd&nbsp;pick in 2021, though that’s one year after out cutoff. And don’t forget that nobody drafted Cody Martin’s twin, Caleb, currently seen with his fingerprints all over Miami’s stunning 3-0 lead over Boston in the Eastern Conference finals.

There are worthy guards, too. Jalen Brunson, the 33rdpick in 2018, was the best player on a Knicks team that crushed Cleveland in the first round of the playoffs before running into the torrid Heat. Malcolm Brogdon went 36th&nbsp;in 2016, Gary Trent Jr. 37th&nbsp;in 2018, Norm Powell 46th&nbsp;in 2015, Terance Mann 48th&nbsp;in 2019 and Bruce Brown 42nd&nbsp;and De’Anthony Melton 46th&nbsp;in 2018.

The first pick of the second round has long been seen as a highly desirable pick for a few reasons. It can be used for a European prospect not quite ready to make the leap to the NBA, as Brooklyn did with Bogdanovic in 2011. He starred for three more seasons in Turkey before coming to the NBA a more fully formed product in 2014.

Lots of times older college players get leapfrogged as first-round selections by younger players seen as having higher ceilings and those players – Green, Brunson and Brogdon are shining examples – can often have immediate and long-term impact.

That’s what the Pistons will be hoping to find with the 31st&nbsp;pick. They won’t have a ton of roster spots to play with next season and they’ll also have the fifth pick and $30 million in cap space, so Troy Weaver can go in a lot of different ways at 31. There won’t be any pressing need to land a player ready to step into the rotation on opening night – not the way there might be for peers with impossible cap situations compounded by a changing collective bargaining agreement – but this draft looks pretty strong through the early second round with players who come with significant college experience.

Some of them include UCLA senior Jaime Jaquez, the Pac 12 Player of the Year; Houston senior Marcus Sasser, a consensus All-American and the American Conference Player of the Year; UConn junior wing Andre Jackson, seen as the heart of UConn’s NCAA championship team; or Kansas senior forward Jalen Wilson, a consensus All-American and Big 12 Player of the Year.

If the Pistons were to pick from the European bucket, Serbia’s 6-foot-10 Tristan Vukcevic has stirred some buzz. And if they go for a home-run swing on high-ceiling prospects, South Carolina’s G.G. Jackson – a very late reclassification after he was set to enroll at North Carolina with the class of ’23 before switching to South Carolina late last summer – or Texas’ Dillon Mitchell, a top-five recruit, could be on the radar.

It's the pick the Pistons originally traded on draft night 2019 when they shipped second-rounders in 2021 and ’23 to Philadelphia for the 38th&nbsp;overall pick they used on Khyri Thomas. It wound up with the Knicks and Weaver shrewdly got it back last summer when the Pistons helped facilitate New York’s free-agent pursuit of Brunson by taking on the contracts of Alec Burks and Nerlens Noel.

Not it winds up as the valuable first pick of the second round and gives the Pistons leverage that can used in several different ways – perhaps even to trade back into the first round if one of those cap-strapped teams picking in the 20s wants out of the guaranteed contract slot that comes with first-rounders.

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First pick of 2nd round gives Pistons a valuable chip

No matter how hard you tried to bring your vision of Victor Wembanyama donning Pistons colors to life, there was always an 86 percent chance it wasn’t going to happen. Dropping to fifth was essentially a coin flip – 52 percent it wouldn’t happen, 48 percent it would – and that’s the sphere of reality that Troy Weaver was occupying.

And no matter how many shortcuts to relevance landing Wembanyama would have provided the Pistons, the fact remains: There aren’t a handful of teams among the 30-member NBA with more pathways to improvement over the next few months than them.

Weaver goes into the off-season with the No. 5 pick and $30 million in cap space – more than all but four teams – to bolster a team that already stands to be bountifully bolstered by the return of Cade Cunningham. Let’s also not forget the Pistons played the final third to a quarter of the season without some or all of Bojan Bogdanovic, Alec Burks and Isaiah Stewart, too.

Weaver didn’t sound like a man who’d been run over by a Mack truck when he spoke with reporters minutes after the lottery results last week. And he said something that made a few ears perk up when he talked about his expectation for the fifth pick.

“We think it’s another high-end draft where there’s a lot of high-end talent at the top. Obviously, one” – safe to assume he’s referencing Wembanyama here – “was a different tier. But we’re excited about where we are to add another young player to our core.”

It sounds as if Weaver thinks this draft is comparable to last year’s draft in quality at the top and he fully expects to come away with a player who a year from now will be viewed in the same light as Jaden Ivey, picked fifth last season.

This part was of note when Weaver was asked about the perception that there were three players considered at the top of this draft:

“A lot of people had it tiered that way. I saw it was one and then it was another tier. But where we’re picking, five, we like the talent pool that’s there. I think you can get a very good player at five. I think you could scramble it up pretty much from three to eight and we’re in that range at five.”

If Wembanyama is alone at one and you could throw a blanket over the group at three to eight, then that suggests Weaver sees someone – the guess is Scoot Henderson, but perhaps Brandon Miller – is also in a tier of his own at two. Three to eight is a group of six players and good luck guessing which six. The next six players by consensus would appear to be twins Amen and Ausar Thompson, Cam Whitmore, Jarace Walker, Anthony Black and Taylor Hendricks.

They’re all wing-sized players. You can argue if Amen Thompson is best utilized as a point guard and Walker and Hendricks as power forwards, but they’re all of a size and athletic package that would be appealing to a Pistons roster that now has four young big men and three recent lottery guards.

Only one of that group figures to be off the board when the Pistons get on the clock, assuming the top three stay locked in. Weaver will be in strong position to be picking from the top of his tier as opposed to the bottom of it.

As always, he’ll prioritize character – the Pistons definitely have a type – and put a premium on high-end outcomes over immediate impact. There’s a real chance the No. 5 pick will have a tough time cracking the rotation next season, too. Bogdanovic and Isaiah Livers are almost certainly going to be in the rotation on opening night and the bulk of that $30 million, in all likelihood, will be directed toward that position.

We’ll be diving into specific prospects in the one month from now until the June 22 draft. In the meantime, take a deep breath. The Pistons will have company – 28 other teams – in not employing Victor Wembanyama next season. They plan to field a team regardless.

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Life after the lottery: Many paths to progress for Pistons

You didn’t need to be a hardened personnel evaluator to grasp Jaden Ivey’s appeal in the run-up to the 2022 NBA draft. His athleticism stands out as clearly as a windmill amid a cornfield.

But the waiver wire is littered with the names of high-end athletes who failed to leave a mark on the NBA for one reason or another, be it lack of focus, an inability to harness that athleticism or a failure to develop the skill set necessary to weaponize it.

Ivey answered all those other questions with exclamation points during his dynamic rookie season. It remains to be seen where his journey takes him, but he got farther down the path as a rookie than all but a few of the greatest names in Pistons history.

He scored in double figures in the season’s last 39 games to break Dave Bing’s record of 33. Ivey joined Cade Cunningham, Grant Hill and Isiah Thomas as the only Pistons rookies to average at least 15 points and five assists. Unofficially, he led the Pistons in getting to the practice gym first and he surely led them in getting kicked off the court following visiting arena game-day shootarounds.

“The guy really works,” said the man who drafted him, Pistons general manager Troy Weaver. “The kid continued to grow. He got better in all aspects. He’s got a big-time upside but what makes that so attractive is he works. That’s what sold us during the process. The kid’s a big-time worker and he’ll be in and improve. Whatever his weaknesses are, he’ll work through them. Whatever he’s supposed to be as a player, he'll become because he’ll put the work in.”

Here's a look at Ivey’s past, present and future:

PROFILE: 6-foot-4 guard, 21 years old, 1 NBA season

2022-23 STATS: 16.3 points, 5.2 assists, 3.9 rebounds on 41.6 percent shooting and 34.3 percent 3-point shooting in 31 minutes a game over 74 games

STATUS: Ivey is entering the second year of his rookie scale contract after being taken with the No. 5 pick in the 2022 NBA draft. He will remain under Pistons team control for a minimum of three seasons.

DID YOU KNOW?: Ivey’s roots in Detroit run deep. His grandfather, James “Hound Dog” Hunter, was the 10th overall pick in the 1976 NFL draft by the Detroit Lions after finishing his college career at Grambling (La.) State. His father, Javin Hunter, was a star football and basketball player at Detroit Country Day in the ’90s, was an excellent receiver at Notre Dame and played one season in the NFL for the Baltimore Ravens, who picked him in the 2002 sixth round. His mother, Nielle Ivey, starred at Notre Dame and led the Fighting Irish to the 2001 national championship, averaging 12.1 points and 6.9 assists. After playing in the WNBA, including a stint with the Detroit Shock, Ivey is currently head coach at her alma mater.

A LOOK BACK: Ivey grew up on the Notre Dame campus practically as his mother was an assistant coach at her alma mater for most of his formative years. He spent his first three high school seasons playing for Marian High in Mishawaka, Ind., before spending his final season at national prep powerhouse La Lumiere – he missed being teammates with Isaiah Stewart by a year – about 30 miles away in La Porte. Though Ivey was recruited by several high Division I programs – he chose nearby Purdue over offers from Ohio State, Indiana, Butler and, of course, Notre Dame – he was ranked 87th in the composite recruiting rankings in a class topped by No. 1 Cade Cunningham. He quickly outplayed his ranking, named to the Big Ten All-Freshman team after averaging 11.1 points and getting continually better over the course of the season. When the Boilermakers were upset by North Texas in the NCAA tournament, Ivey scored 26 points. He starred on the USA Basketball U-19 team in the summer of 2021, finishing second in scoring at 12.3 points for the gold medalists. Ivey entered the 2021-22 college season on all the watchlists and didn’t disappoint, averaging 17.3 points and being named a consensus second-team All-American. He joined Michigan State’s Draymond Green and Ohio State’s Evan Turner as the only Big Ten players over the past 30 years to amass 600 points, 175 rebounds, 110 assists, 30 steals and 20 blocked shots in a single season.

THE SEASON THAT WAS: Ivey was widely considered no worse than the fourth-best prospect in the 2022 draft but was still available to the Pistons with the fifth pick. He showed enough in Summer League, voluntary team workouts and training camp to be installed as an immediate rookie starter. Ivey, as he’d done as a Purdue freshman, made notable month-over-month gains as an NBA rookie. Before the All-Star break, Ivey averaged 15.2 points and 4.6 assists while shooting 42 percent overall and 33.2 percent from the 3-point line; after the break, Ivey averaged 19.3 points and 7.1 assists while shooting 40.6 percent overall and 36.4 percent from the 3-point arc. The slight dip in overall shooting percentage is more than offset by an increase in true shooting percentage as Ivey’s 3-point attempt rate went from 33.8 to 39.7. Numbers aside, Ivey’s improvement was most discernible in his feel as a pick-and-roll ballhandler and decision-maker. Ivey showed striking ability to find 3-point shooters in the weak corner and developed strong chemistry as a lob thrower with the team’s big men, fellow rookie Jalen Duren in particular. And Ivey became a much more responsible defensive player as the season progressed, as well. Over the season’s last eight games, Ivey had five outings of at least 23 points and seven assists with highs of 32 points and 10 assists.

A LOOK AHEAD: After earning second-team All-Rookie honors, Ivey enters his second season firmly established as worthy sidekick to Cunningham. They only got to play 11   games together – Ivey missed one October game – before Cunningham was shut down 12 games into the season and the Ivey that evolved over the ensuing months was a very different player than the one Cunningham experienced. But the high end of expectations the Pistons held for the synergy their pairing could create is now looking more like a realistic probability than a remote possibility. Ivey still has plenty of room for growth as a finisher and with his scoring feel in the mid-range, but the strides he took as a decision-maker and a 3-point shooter in just a few months – combined with the sense the Pistons as an organization reached for Ivey’s work ethic and quest for greatness – give everyone involved boundless confidence he’ll get there. While Cunningham is highly likely to remain in place as lead playmaker, it could be a lot closer to a 50-50 partnership than anyone envisioned even six months ago. Look for Ivey to come back with improved strength and look to establish more of a defensive presence in his second season while continuing his offensive maturation. An All-Star future appears within his reach.

MONEY QUOTE: “It takes everything you’ve got, every single night. It takes a certain lock-in, certain focus, from Game 1 to Game 82. I feel like this year it was getting the grasp of that, growing along the way. I made steady improvements all year from what the coaches said and that’s the most important thing. There’s still more to look forward to.” – Jaden Ivey on learning what it takes to succeed in the NBA as a rookie

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Season Rewind: Dynamic debut sets Ivey up for bright Pistons future

You can make a strong case for any number of Pistons who’ll most benefit from the return of Cade Cunningham. Take your pick from any of the four young big men – Jalen Duren, Isaiah Stewart, James Wiseman or Marvin Bagley III, all of whom project as beneficiaries of Cunningham’s pick-and-roll feel and open-court vision.

Then there’s Jaden Ivey, Cunningham’s likely running mate into the distant future as they strive to put their names in the same paragraph as gilded Pistons predecessors like Isiah Thomas & Joe Dumars or Chauncey Billups & Rip Hamilton.

But low key, you know who might benefit most from Cunningham’s return? Isaiah Livers. They’ve barely played together despite being 2021 draft classmates and teammates for two seasons after Livers was limited to 19 games as a rookie and Cunningham to 12 in the season just completed.

But Livers has seen and experienced enough to know. As a rookie, he got his first insight into Cunningham’s impact.

“It was like my third game,” Livers recalled after his rookie season. “He knew a little about me, but he didn’t know everything. But he saw how I was always ready to shoot. This dude was watching film one night – it was about 11, midnight – and I get a text from Cade. ‘Hey, I see you over there ready to shoot. I’m going to hit you next game.’

“And he did. I remember having like four threes the next game and two of ’em were those cross-court passes he was making. So we work perfectly together.”

They’ll hope to put dozens of more games together under their belts in year three.

Here's a look at Livers’ past, present and future:

PROFILE: 6-foot-7 forward, 24 years old, 2 NBA seasons

2022-23 STATS: 6.7 points, 2.8 rebounds on 42.6 shooting and 37.8 3-point shooting in 23 minutes a game over 53 games

STATUS: Livers signed a reported three-year contract after being drafted 42nd overall in the 2021 NBA draft and is entering the final year of that deal in 2023-24.

DID YOU KNOW?: Livers was named Michigan’s Mr. Basketball in 2017 in one of the closest votes in award history. Livers, who played at Derek Jeter’s alma mater Kalamazoo Central, actually received fewer first-place votes than Xavier Tillman of Grand Rapids Christian, 363-333, but made up for it with more down-ballot votes to finish with 2,811 total points to 2,739 for Tillman. The two teams met in the Class A quarterfinals that year with Tillman’s prevailing only to lose in the title game to Clarkston, led by 2018 Mr. Basketball winner Foster Loyer. Tillman would go on to Michigan State and play three seasons there before entering the 2020 NBA draft and being picked 35th overall by Memphis.

A LOOK BACK: Livers started 69 of 119 career games at Michigan including all 44 in which he suited up over his final two seasons. Livers’ college career ended abruptly in the 2021 Big Ten tournament when he suffered a foot injury that would eventually require surgery and likely cause him to fall to the middle of the second round of the 2021 draft. The Pistons used the pick acquired from the New York Knicks in the Derrick Rose trade to pick Livers, who missed a big chunk of his rookie season – he debuted in December but was shut down with pain from the recovering stress fracture and then came back in late February – and ultimately appeared in only 19 games. But Livers quickly won the favor of Dwane Casey for his high basketball IQ, positional size and versatility plus an advanced 3-point stroke. Livers hit on 42.2 percent of his 3-point attempts as an NBA rookie and established himself as a reliable defender and effective two-way transition player.

THE SEASON THAT WAS: Injury again delayed the start of Livers’ season, this time a hip injury incurred during a training camp in which he was a standout and earned raves for strides in strength and athleticism over the off-season. Livers missed the first two games but returned and played 22 consecutive games, starting the last seven of them and becoming Casey’s top perimeter defender after a battlefield promotion resulted in Livers effectively defending Trae Young during an October match with Atlanta. Then on Dec. 1 while guarding Dallas star Luka Doncic, Livers suffered a shoulder injury while navigating a screen and missed 20 games over the next six weeks, aggravating the injury midway through his rehabilitation during a workout. Livers immediately resumed his role as a rotation staple and defensive stopper, alternating between starting and coming off the bench. His 3-point shooting dipped slightly over his rookie showing though remained above league average. Livers has taken more than 70 percent of his shots from the 3-point arc in each of his first two seasons, though he showed more off-the-dribble panache during his second season.

A LOOK AHEAD: Livers goes into the off-season in position to claim a bigger role in 2023-24, though general manager Troy Weaver said in April that he would address the wing position over the summer to bolster the depth chart. “We can use another wing defender,” he said. “We’ve got Livers, who fits that bill. We’d like to get another guy, wing defender, probably, that can shoot the ball as well. A wing defender that can shoot it, I would say. That’s maybe the one tool we don’t have.” About to turn 25 and with restricted free agency looming for Livers a year from now, it will be a critical year for him to prove he can stay healthy for prolonged periods and conclusively establish himself as a rotation staple for a rising team.

MONEY QUOTE: “The thing about the NBA is, you’ve got to find your role. Find what you’re good at and then work on weaknesses in the summer. I plan on taking the next step in my career next season. Come back not completely different, but elevated. You take that belief into the off-season and come back a better player.” – Isaiah Livers after the season as he looked ahead to 2023-24 and beyond

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Season Rewind: Livers provides what Pistons need around injury absences

Ben Wallace was the lucky charm when he represented the Pistons in the 2021 NBA draft lottery where they landed the No. 1 pick and the right to draft Cade Cunningham. Karma caught up to him – and the Pistons – on his return trip to the lottery.

The Pistons wound up with their worst possible outcome, falling to fifth, with San Antonio winning the No. 1 pick followed by Charlotte, Portland and Houston. They’ve been a part of 16 lotteries over the 39-year history of the system and moved up exactly once, 2021.

But general manager Troy Weaver says he wasn’t crestfallen by the result because he had no expectations coming into the lottery – and he’s confident the Pistons will get a value pick commensurate with what happened last year when the fifth pick yielded Jaden Ivey, who had a dynamic rookie season.

“My grandfather said the man who expects nothing can’t be disappointed, so I’m not disappointed,” Weaver said from Chicago where he’s attending the NBA draft combine. “It’s not one or bust. I’m watching LeBron James, who was (the first pick), who’s been a tremendous player, but he’s playing against (Nikola) Jokic who was 41 and back-to-back MVPs.”

The silver lining for the Pistons is that the strength of the draft through the middle of the lottery is in wing players who fit a roster need. The big prize, of course, is 7-foot-5 French teen Victor Wembanyama, who’ll shake commissioner Adam Silver’s hand June 22 wearing a Spurs cap. Other players almost certain to be off the board when the Pistons go on the clock with the fifth pick are G League Ignite point guard Scoot Henderson and Alabama wing Brandon Miller.

Charlotte, Portland and Houston also will pick ahead of the Pistons. Among the prospects who figure to be on Weaver’s short list include the 6-foot-7 Thompson twins, Amen and Ausar, of Overtime Elite; 6-foot-7 Cam Whitmore, a Villanova freshman; and 6-foot-8 Jarace Walker, a Houston freshman.

“You look at where we’re picking, a lot of the strength of the draft is wings,” Weaver said. “We’ll make sure we add something that fits us, has the same attitude and mentality to grow with the group. I owe it to those guys in the locker room to bring in a guy that fits and come in and work and want to be a part of what we’re doing in Detroit. So, absolutely, I’m excited about that.”

Weaver alluded to Wembanyama being the cream of the draft crop, saying, “We like the draft. We think it’s another high-end draft where there’s a lot of high-end talent at the top. Obviously, one was a different tier. But we’re excited about where we are to add another young player to our core.

“I think you can get a very good player at five. I like the talent pool. I think you could scramble it up pretty much from three to eight and we’re in that range at five. We’re excited to land there and get another young player.”

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Draft’s strength in wings matches up with Pistons slot at No. 5

To paraphrase Rasheed Wallace, math don’t lie. Yes, it’s true that no team had a better chance to land the No. 1 pick in Tuesday night’s NBA draft lottery. But it’s every bit as true that the overwhelming single greatest probability was that the Pistons would come out of the lottery with the fifth pick.

San Antonio was the lucky winner of what will forever be known as the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes. The 7-foot-5 French teen has been hyped for at least the last two years as the most coveted NBA prospect since Anthony Davis in 2012 and perhaps since LeBron James in 2003. If he’s not the No. 1 pick when commissioner Adam Silver steps to the podium June 22, something has gone terribly awry.

Just as a year ago when the Pistons landed the fifth pick, there are three names almost certain to be off the board when they go on the clock. Last year it was Paolo Banchero, Chet Holmgren and Jabari Smith Jr. and then went 1-2-3. When Sacramento somewhat surprisingly took Keegan Murray, the Pistons wound up happily left with Jaden Ivey.

This year the two prospects in addition to Wembanyama likely to be unavailable to the Pistons are G League Ignite point guard Scoot Henderson and Alabama forward Brandon Miller.

Among the prospects who could be in play for the Pistons are twins Amen and Ausar Thompson of Overtime Elite, Villanova freshman forward Cam Whitmore, Houston freshman forward Jarace Walker and Arkansas wing/guard Anthony Black.

The Pistons went into the lottery with a 14 percent chance to land the No. 1 pick and 13.4, 12.7 and 12.0 percent chances of winding up with the second, third and fourth picks. Houston and San Antonio shared those odds. The Pistons, though, had a 47.9 percent chance to land on five, their only other possible outcome.

Charlotte wound up with the second pick, Portland the third and Houston the fourth.

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Math prevails: Pistons wind up with 5th pick in NBA draft

For a guy who spent two years at a Power 5 college conference and 12 more in the NBA, Alec Burks’ ability to roll out of bed and hang 20 points on anybody remains one of basketball’s best-kept secrets.

The Pistons didn’t get to fully exploit the wondrous scoring runs Burks is consistently capable of producing amid a season roiled by injuries early and often. But with the anticipated off-season career growth spurts coming from a young roster with several building blocks firmly in place and a little better luck on the injury front, Burks’ scoring gifts could prove vitally important – not only to the quest for winning games but to the overarching organizational priority of maximizing the careers of Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Jalen Duren and the many other young prospects the Pistons have brought on board over the past three years.

Here's a look at Burks’ past, present and future:

PROFILE: 6-foot-6 guard, 31 years old, 12 NBA seasons

2022-23 STATS: 12.8 points, 3.1 rebounds on 43.6 percent shooting and 41.4 percent 3-point shooting in 22 minutes a game over 51 games

STATUS: Burks signed a reported three-year, $30 million contract with the New York Knicks in 2021 with the third year a team option. That option now is in the hands of the Pistons, who acquired Burks along with Nerlens Noel last summer from the Knicks.

DID YOU KNOW?: Burks was a three-star recruit out of Missouri but quickly established himself as one of the nation’s top players, winning Big 12 Freshman of the Year honors at Colorado in 2010 and scoring 779 points in his sophomore season, 2010-11, which still stands as a single-season record for the Buffaloes.

A LOOK BACK: Burks spent two seasons at Colorado, averaging 17.1 and 20.5 points per game and being named to the Big 12 all-conference first team as a sophomore. He entered the 2011 NBA draft and wound up a lottery pick, drafted 12th&nbsp;by the Utah Jazz. Burks would spend the first 7½ seasons of his NBA career with the Jazz and establishing himself as one of the game’s best bench scorers in short order. From 2013-14 through 2015-16 Burks averaged 13.3 points or more but injuries limited him to 58 games total in the final two of those seasons. Burks was traded to Cleveland at the 2019 trade deadline in a deal that sent Kyle Korver to the Jazz, then signed that summer with Golden State. He was traded to Philadelphia at the 2020 trade deadline and then signed with the Knicks as a free agent in November 2020 ahead of the pandemic-delayed 2020-21 season. Burks has gradually become a more prolific 3-point shooter over the course of his NBA career, going from taking 12.6 percent of his shots from the 3-point line as an NBA rookie to roughly a third of his shots from there in the middle stages of his career to exceeding 50 percent in each of the past two seasons. Burks scored a career-best 16.1 points a game while a member of the Golden State Warriors in 2019-20. He’s shot better than 40 percent from the 3-point line in each of his past three seasons.

THE SEASON THAT WAS: Burks opened the season on the injured list after undergoing ankle surgery at the conclusion of the 2021-22 season while a member of the Knicks. He missed the first 12 games and debuted Nov. 11 at New York. Burks immediately transformed the Pistons bench from one of the NBA’s lowest-scoring to one of the highest-scoring units, scoring in double figures in eight of his first nine games. When the Pistons posted consecutive upset wins of Denver and Utah on back-to-back nights in late November, Burks contributed 39 points in 40 minutes of those games and hit 6 of 11 from the 3-point arc. In a Dec. 28 win over Orlando, Burks missed a 3-point shot in the final seconds to mar an otherwise-perfect night. To that point, Burks had hit all 10 of his shots – six from the 3-point arc – and all six of his free throws to contribute 32 of Detroit’s 76 bench points. He came back two nights later to score 19 points and hit 7 of 9 shots including all four of his 3-pointers. Burks excelled at drawing shooting fouls, as well. His 6.0 free throws per 36 minutes led the Pistons. Burks sat out the season’s final 17 games with left foot soreness.

A LOOK AHEAD: General manager Troy Weaver didn’t leave much room for doubt that the Pistons would pick up the option on Burks’ contract when he cited Burks and Bojan Bogdanovic as key veterans in looking to the 2023-24 season. That always seemed the likely course given the value Burks represents at $10 million – essentially, the average NBA salary. Burks’ 3-point shooting and his ability to draw fouls and create his own shot will give whoever succeeds Dwane Casey as Pistons coach an invaluable resource at the heart of the bench unit. Teams looking to clear cap space are always on the lookout for players with team options on their contracts – trade for such players, then decline the option to create space – and that means Weaver is likely to receive calls inquiring about Burks’ availability ahead of free agency. The offer would have to be compelling given the value Burks represents for the Pistons and their goals for the coming season.

MONEY QUOTE: “Burks has been doing it for a while now. He’s been scoring the ball for a while. He comes in and puts a lot of pressure on the defense in terms of they’ve got to game plan for him. Burks is a good scorer. He’s been a good scorer.” – Cory Joseph after Burks’ return transformed the Pistons bench in November

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