John Wall is not the answer for the Detroit Pistons

With the Washington Wizards announcing that they are looking to possibly trade their stars, point guard John Wall could be on the block. The Detroit Pistons shouldn’t even think about it.

The sputtering Washington Wizards are (allegedly) ready to start seriously thinking about blowing the team up. Or at least thinking about re-tooling. Reports have suggested that both John Wall and Bradley Beal could be gotten for the right price.

Wall has instantly been a topic of interest for many Detroit Pistons fans. Upgrading at point guard from Reggie Jackson has been on the mind of many supporters of the Pistons for more than a year, and the possibility to upgrade to a five-time All-Star and former All-NBA player like Wall makes him an obvious option.

Desipte this, Wall would be a very bad idea for the Pistons for a myriad of reasons.

First off, despite being a five-time All-Star, Wall is already showing signs of declining. The offensive numbers remain impressive, but a huge amount of Wall’s value comes on the defensive end.

In the past, Wall has been an All-Defensive Team caliber player, and while he still occasionally turns it up, he rarely displays his former defensive levels.

Beyond the signs of decline for Wall, the fit just isn’t good – even when he is playing well.

Wall is just as poor a shooter, if not worse, than Jackson is, and is even worse off-ball overall.

Despite having a blinding top speed, Wall has regularly been rated as one of the slowest moving players in the entire NBA. When he doesn’t have the ball in his hands, he stands and waits for it to come back to him.

Lastly, John Wall’s contract remains a problem. After this season, a max contract kicks in, and Wall will be making $37 million next year. He’ll end up making $46 million in 2022-23 at the age of 32.

For a player like Wall, who’s game is almost entirely based around his athleticism, that is an ugly proposition.

But the Pistons won’t have cap space anyways who cares?

This is actually a pretty common misconception.

Despite the massive contract of Blake Griffin (and the less massive but still large one of Andre Drummond) the Detroit Pistons are not actually that far away from potentially having space to change things up if they want to.

Ish Smith, Reggie Bullock, and Stanley Johnson are all off the books (if they want them to be) after this season. Reggie Jackson, Jon Leuer, and Langston Galloway‘s contracts will be expiring.

If things go poorly, the Pistons could be able to re-tool after this season, and certainly after the next one.

But if they add John Wall, they’ll be in just as poor a salary cap position as everyone thinks they are now. Between Wall and Griffin, they would then be paying $80 million between two players.

The Detroit Pistons were correct to take that risk on Griffin. He’s a better player in the first place, his contract isn’t quite as absurd as Wall’s, and his game will age better.

And, as stated above, even with Griffin’s contract the Pistons are not as screwed for cap space long-term as many seem to believe.

If they trade for Wall, and things go poorly, they’ll be out of options.