Pistons are poised to make a trade this season

The offseason put together by Stan Van Gundy this year has been understated, but could it be leading towards big things in the near future?

While other teams in the NBA spent the offseason signing players like Kevin Durant, Al Horford and Dwyane Wade, the Pistons were going about things in a much more subtle way.

They did appear to make a run at Horford, but never seemed to be truly in the race. Instead, they opted to bolster the team’s depth rather than making a huge splash, something that was last attempted by the organization back in 2013 with the disastrous Josh Smith signing.

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The Pistons signed Ish Smith, Jon Leuer, Boban Marjanovic and most recently Ray McCallum, all of whom are expected to be second on the depth chart at their respective positions, and in some cases even third. When you also factor in Henry Ellenson and Michael Gbinije who were taken in the 2016 draft, the Pistons basically have a full squad of players and a whole bunch of assets to play with.

The question is, what should the Pistons be trying to get out of these assets?

When looking at the starting five you would be hard pressed to find a trade that would net the team better players than Reggie Jackson, Tobias Harris and Andre Drummond at their positions, and Marcus Morris seems to be thriving now that he’s been given a consistent role. However could there be some potential for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to be traded?

Head coach and president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy seems to be high on Caldwell-Pope as he played him 36.7 minutes per game last season, which was a team high. Van Gundy values KCP’s defence highly and it’s hard to argue with that when he put in some impressive defensive performances against top scorers this year, most notably Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors.

However, of the 13 players who pulled on a Piston jersey last season and took more than one three per game he had the second worst shooting percentage (30.9 percent), only just slightly ahead of rookie Stanley Johnson‘s clip of 30.7 percent. These shooting numbers are a cause for concern around KCP, particularly because it was the worst he’s shot the ball in his three NBA seasons, despite last season’s overall offense being by far the best it’s ever been in his short career.

In 2014-15 he took 5.4 threes per game compared to 4.9 last season, and managed to shoot 34.5 percent, while in his rookie season he managed to make threes at 31.9 percent on 2.3 attempts per game.

If this trend were to continue into 2017 Van Gundy may start to entertain the idea of moving Caldwell-Pope along, but what could the Pistons potentially get in return for him?

One team to keep an eye would be the Atlanta Hawks. If come January neither the Hawks or Caldwell-Pope are performing well a trade for Thabo Sefolosha could make sense.

The Hawks are a bit of an unknown entity after losing two of their best three players in Jeff Teague and Al Horford, and if the experiment of bringing in Dwight Howard this season doesn’t work out they could very well be headed towards a rebuild. KCP would offer them a great young defender for the future, which would probably be preferred over the 32-year-old Sefolosha if they were to rebuild, while the Pistons would be receiving a solid defender and a better shooter.

Sefolosha shot 34 percent from behind the line last season and his shooting stats have been trending upwards for the past couple of seasons after he dropped from being a 42 percent shooter to a 32 percent shooter between 2013 and 2014.

However, maybe Van Gundy would head in a different direction and instead look to bring in a backup shooting guard instead of outright replacing KCP. Stanley Johnson would be more than capable of filling in the starting role if they were to look at someone like Mario Hezonja who appears to currently be third on the Orlando Magic’s depth chart.

Hezonja’s stats show he can shoot the ball well, and if head coach Frank Vogel doesn’t believe he’s good enough to consistently play ahead of Jodie Meeks then perhaps a trade could be enticing.

What is much more likely however, is that Van Gundy decides to flip a couple of bench pieces into something interesting.

With the signing of Boban Marjanovic speculation has swirled that Aron Baynes will soon find his spot as backup centre in danger and will eventually be shipped away. A Baynes trade has the potential to help the Pistons upgrade shooting guard depth without having to give away Caldwell-Pope, as any combination of Baynes, Darrun Hilliard, Reggie Bullock and Ray McCallum could be enough to entice a team into coughing up a better backup wing than the Pistons currently have.

Young players with upside who seem to be out of favour in their current situations like Archie Goodwin with the Phoenix Suns or Ben McLemore with the Sacramento Kings could be acquired with only reserve or backup players needing to be traded, and would most likely be an upgrade over guys like Hilliard and Bullock.

It’s not entirely clear what Stan Van Gundy is planning to do with the amount of assets currently at his finger tips, but for now it seems clear that a trade in the next five months is poised to happen.

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