The Pistons have indicated since the regular season ended that adding outside shooting to their roster will be a priority this offseason. However, while a veteran sharpshooter like J.J. Redick – who is a free agent and played for Stan Van Gundy in Orlando – looks like an ideal fit on the surface, Detroit’s cap situation will make it difficult to pursue a player of that caliber, writes Vince Ellis of The Detroit Free Press.
As Ellis explains, the Pistons will be well over the cap if they retain Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and would only have the mid-level, bi-annual, and minimum salary exceptions at their disposal to add free agents in that scenario. The bi-annual and minimum exceptions are too modest to add an impact player, and even the MLE – which is expected to rise in value to about $8.4MM – likely wouldn’t be enough to land someone like Redick. That means Detroit may have to get creative in trades or target under-the-radar free agents in order to acquire the shooting help they need.
Ellis’ entire piece, which touches on a handful of Pistons-related offseason topics, is worth checking out. Here are a few more items out of Detroit:
- One shooter who may be attainable for the Pistons is Duke’s Luke Kennard, who is a candidate to be selected in the lottery by Detroit or another club. Brendan Savage of MLive.com examines Kennard’s potential fit with the Pistons.
- After a solid rookie year, former eighth overall pick Stanley Johnson took a step backward in 2016/17. While Johnson’s development remains a work in progress, he wasn’t discouraged by his underwhelming sophomore season, and the Pistons remain hopeful that he can blossom into a key piece for the team, writes Rod Beard of The Detroit News.
- In a separate piece for The Detroit News, Beard previews this week’s draft combine from the Pistons’ perspective and passes along a few quotes on the subject from Van Gundy.
As a Pistons fan I would LOVE it if we could pick up a guy like J.J..
The Pistons should probably just get rid of whatever players they can for whatever picks they can. Andre Drummond is making way too much money to be a center with declining defensive skills who doesn’t show up every night to live up to his 20/20 potential. Tobias Harris is making $17 mil a year and probably has the most skills and potential out of everyone on the roster, and Stan Van Gundy barely inserted him into the starting rotation like 10 games before the year was already done. He’s a solid player but with a $17 million salary, realistically no team is going to trade for him. Reggie Jackson needs to go but his trade value is so far negative it’s insane. KCP is not a true max player but they have no young players developing to fill any roles so they’ll have to match anything he’s offered. SVG’s favorite player is Aron Baynes and he hasn’t gotten any playing time the past two years because Van Gundy had to justify his signing Jon Leuer to such a lucrative deal. Which in turn made him sit Boban Marjanovic on the bench all year. Let me first just say any team in 2017 that still has Josh Smith’s contract on the books for this year, let alone two more years (!!!) is not going to ever compete in the playoffs. Van Gundy should cede control of the roster the same way Mike Budenholzer did and the same way Doc Rivers should do. Coaches should not be presidents of basketball operations and it’s as simple as that. I do hope the Pistons figure something out but it looks like they need to hit the reset button as quickly as they can.