draft

Keith Langlois

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

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Pistons Draft History Quiz

CHICAGO – Russ Smith doesn’t have a sure path to the NBA, but he’s pretty sure about this: He wouldn’t have the shot he has without the influence of Peyton Siva in his life.

Smith led Louisville in scoring each of the past two seasons, averaging 18.7 points as the Cardinals won the 2013 NCAA title and 18.2 as a senior, when some of the playmaking duties that Siva handled so adroitly in their first three seasons together fell to Smith.

He assumed the NBA would welcome him with open arms after his tour de force through the ’13 NCAA tournament – Smith averaged 22.3 on Louisville’s six-game ride – but came to find out the league wasn’t clamoring for 6-foot shooting guards.

“I was devastated,” he said at this week’s NBA draft combine in Chicago. “I wasn’t even being talked about in the first round. It was kind of like, ‘Man, I don’t know what I have to do. You win a championship, you’re an All-American, you average 25 points in the tournament against elite competition and you’re gone, right?’

“And I’m not playing against Joe Blows. I’m playing against guys they drafted, lottery picks. I played against first-rounders. My history speaks for itself.”

But the draft process isn’t going to beat Smith down. He saw how Siva carried himself a year ago, earning a draft spot late in the second round with the Pistons when he wasn’t necessarily projected to be taken, and seizing the opportunity to quickly win a roster spot and finish his rookie season with a flourish.

“I’m totally confident. Not just because of Peyton, but Peyton’s (experience) is just a testament of how good a person he is. That’s a guy who wasn’t talked about getting drafted and he got in. He can play and he’s a great guy off the court. He’s no problems, a great locker-room guy. That’s one of those guys you look up to and say you want to be like him.”

Smith says he has and will continue to pick Siva’s brain as he embarks on this six-week journey to the draft, which will include perhaps a few dozen individual workouts for NBA teams from coast to coast. It’s a physically and mentally grueling schedule, which in itself is a test teams use to gauge the mental toughness and willpower of the wide pool of players who are candidates to be taken where Smith is – anywhere from the late first round to off the chart.

“He’s been an integral part of my life,” Smith said of Siva. “He’s one of the most humble guys I’ve ever met. He helped get me through college and helped me with coach (Rick Pitino). I took a lot of criticism with the media, from coach, and being that guy and being the guy to win or lose a game and I’m strong enough to handle it. Most of that goes to Peyton.”

Siva told him to expect to be challenged in the weeks between the combine and the draft, but to enjoy it and not to let it become consuming or overwhelming.

“He said it would be a lot of work – not excruciating, but mentally fatiguing and you’ve just got to get your rest and do all the right things. It means something because they’re words that come from Peyton and everything he’s about.”

Just as Siva’s resume and production overcame whatever concerns scouts had about physical limitations when the Pistons grabbed him with the 56th pick, Smith’s selling point to the NBA is his game tape on college basketball’s biggest stage and the numbers he put up at one of the nation’s elite programs.

To those who criticize him as an out-of-control gunslinger – the “Russdiculous” persona – Smith counters with a compelling argument.

“I averaged 13 shots a game this year and at the end of the day, I was the most efficient player in the country the last two years in Ken Pomeroy (an efficiency rating based on a compilation formula). For somebody to say I just run around and jack shots, that’s kind of mocking my game.

“That’s really disrespectful. I work hard, I play both ends of the floor. This year I shot 48 percent from the floor and I shot 40 percent from the 3-point line and I averaged five assists. Last year, maybe you could pull that card, but I still was the most efficient player in the country. So when you say that, you’ve got to say it low key. This year, I don’t think there’s any room for anyone to discuss that. And I made my teammates better.”

That’s a trait he observed in Siva and adopted as his own.

“He was selfless. He was team first. He cared about how the team played and he cared about others. He cared about me and he knew that he needed us for him to be good. That’s the thing – he’s very selfish as far as his teammates. He wants all of them to do good so he can do good, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

It was a trait that won over Siva’s young teammates, Andre Drummond foremost, in Summer League within days of the 2013 draft, and something that moved the Detroit front office to quickly ink Siva to a contract that guaranteed him a roster spot, an unusual move for a late second-rounder. In Louisville, no one was surprised, Russ Smith least of all. He’s hoping to walk the same path to the NBA.

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Russ Smith hoping to follow Peyton Siva’s path to NBA

If Lady Luck merely chooses to leave the Pistons alone at next week’s lottery – neither boosts them into a top-three pick nor permits them to be jumped and thus lose their lottery pick altogether – then they’ll surely be staring at a pretty lengthy list of candidates to consider with the No. 8 pick.

How lengthy? I’d include at least 11 names right now, six weeks before the draft. That allows for the virtual certainty that three players – Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker and Joel Embiid – will be off the board before the eighth pick. You can argue that at least a few others, most likely Dante Exum and Julius Randle, also will be gone. But there are enough gray areas with both, and with everybody outside the big three, to warrant a thorough vetting by the Pistons if they stay at No. 8.

Here’s a brief look at all 11 and how they might fit. We’ll do much more expansive looks at all of them in the True Blue Pistons draft series if the lottery plays to form next week. If the Pistons get jumped and lose their first-round pick … well, then we’ll drop back and punt.

draft

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