Central Notes: Pistons, Bulls, Murphy, Bucks

As the Pistons front office, led by team president Troy Weaver, assesses its long-term outlook beyond the 2020/21 season, the team is less worried about its young players’ present on-court fit than it is about those players’ ceilings across future seasons, writes Keith Langlois of Pistons.com.

Langlois points to the team’s recent exchange of Svi Mykhailiuk, one of Detroit’s better three-point snipers (although he is still shooting a below-league average 33.3%, on decent volume, from deep), for Hamidou Diallo, an athletic wing who has been enjoying a better overall year than Mykhailiuk but is less of a fit for the current team as a non-shooter.

There’s more out of the Central Division:

  • Rival executives speculate that the Bulls may be standing pat at the upcoming March 25 trade deadline, writes Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times. The team has several intriguing players who could be of interest to rival clubs, including veteran forward Thaddeus Young, 2021 restricted free agent big man Lauri Markkanen, the expiring contract of injury-prone wing Otto Porter Jr., and veteran guard Tomas Satoransky.
  • After spending a decade as the men’s basketball head coach at Eastern Michigan, Rob Murphy is departing the program to join the new Pistons G League affiliate team, the Motor City Cruise, as their president and general manager, according to a team press release.
  • Eric Nehm of The Athletic breaks down the Bucks‘ roster as the trade deadline nears, appraising which players are most likely to be traded, which are untouchable, and which occupy the murky real estate in-between. Nehm pinpoints Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, and Jrue Holiday as the team’s three untouchable players. Donte DiVincenzo and Brook Lopez, the team’s other two starters, would be moved only for a high-level difference-maker in return, Nehm suggests.
View Comments (7)