Detroit Pistons: Potential landing spots for Blake Griffin

The Detroit Pistons season has started horribly and the time to rebuild is getting here faster and faster. Blake Griffin would likely be be the first domino to fall.

Blake Griffin is the star of the Detroit Pistons and probably the one that will net the best assets in a trade. Andre Drummond may get you more but moving Drummond’s expiring deal without moving Griffin doesn’t make much sense.

In addition, the kind of assets that you can get from a Griffin trade will determine the path the front office takes from then on. Can you get multiple picks and bad contracts for Griffin? Promising young players and mediocre veterans?

The type of deal you make at first plays a big role in the following decisions. For example, if you can only get draft pick capital and bad contracts back, the next move is to move Drummond as well. If you can get a couple of 22-24-year-olds with potential, the plan changes.

The most important thing is to get as much value as possible out of your best player. If you’re going to do a move just to clear the salary off your book, then it’s probably best not to make a move. If your trade partner sees Griffin’s contract as a negative asset at 35 million dollars for the next three years, then he’s not the right partner.

If another team sees Griffin as a stepping stone to turn around their franchise or even get them over the hump, then it’s time to make a deal. Similar to the trade the Pistons made with the Clippers for Griffin initially.

They wanted Griffin to take them out of mediocrity, which unfortunately hasn’t happened, so they were willing to part with valuable assets like Tobias Harris and a first-round pick. If the Clippers had settled for just a salary dump, they wouldn’t have had the assets to pull of the Paul George trade later on.

Arguably, Griffin has even more trade value now than what he had at the time of the trade. He has transformed himself into a modern point forward and he has fewer years into his contract than he did when the Pistons made that commitment.

Any team that has Griffin on their target list knows that they’ll get a big man that can handle, pass and score at an elite level for this year and the next two. Griffin will only be 32 years old when his contract expires.

With the way he plays, he should be able to maintain high levels of performance for the remainder of his contract. Griffin attempted seven threes per game last season, which led all players over 6’10”, making over 36 percent of them.

Even more impressive was the fact, that four of those were pull-ups, which is more than double of what the second big man on the list had. The same trend can be seen in made pull up threes. Griffin shot pull-up threes with an accuracy of 35.8 percent.

The fact that he can shoot so well at such volume with the ball in his hands and finish at the rim makes him a match up nightmare that any team would want to have on their side. He’s also a top-four big man passer and ball handler.

Plus, he offers a level of leadership that few players in the NBA can offer. Blake Griffin had an effect on his teammates from the moment he stepped in Detroit. He brings a high level of maturity and basketball IQ on and off the floor and good teams value that.

First, let’s look at the teams that probably won’t be trade partners and why. This exercise will give us a good look of his trade market and what kind of deals the Pistons should avoid, which tells us which ones they should consider.