According to Pistons general manager Jeff Bower, the team has engaged in dialogue with both Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Reggie Bullock about potential contract extensions, tweets Vincent Ellis of The Detroit Free Press. Bower added that both players like their situations in Detroit.
Caldwell-Pope and Bullock were both first-round picks in the 2013 draft, with KCP coming off the board eighth overall, while Bullock was selected with the 25th pick. Because they signed their rookie-scale contracts that year, and haven’t been waived since then, both players are heading into the final year of those deals, making them eligible for a rookie-scale extension by October 31.
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While C.J. McCollum and Giannis Antetokounmpo have each signed rookie-scale extensions already with their respective teams, most negotiations around the NBA will likely go down to the wire, with teams and their extension candidates potentially reaching agreements during the final week of October.
The Pistons had an extension candidate a year ago at this time, in Andre Drummond, but ultimately waited until this summer to lock up the star center. If Detroit opts not to extend Caldwell-Pope and Bullock yet, they’d be eligible for restricted free agency in the summer of 2017. Still, team head coach and president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy said today that “in a perfect world” the Pistons would get deals done for both players within the next few weeks (Twitter link via Rod Beard of The Detroit News).
Caldwell-Pope, the Pistons’ starting two guard, set new career highs in 2015/16 when he averaged 14.5 PPG, 3.7 RPG, 1.8 APG, and a .420 FG%. As for Bullock, in his first season with the Pistons after being traded to Detroit from Phoenix in 2015, he played sparingly, averaging 3.3 PPG and 1.8 RPG on 11.6 minutes per contest (37 games). He did make 41.5% of his three-point attempts, though the sample was relatively small.