After spending the last month speculating what the market was for the Detroit Pistons in a potential Derrick Rose trade, we’re finally learning more.
In the months leading up to the February 6th trade deadline, it was widely assumed that the Detroit Pistons would part ways with Derrick Rose.
It made complete sense, given the fact that Rose had been playing at a level that we hadn’t seen from him in years. He began the resurgence of his career a season ago in Minnesota, but not on the level that he was at for the Pistons this year.
Contending teams like the Lakers, Clippers, and Sixers were all in dire need of some point guard depth, and it seemed as if Rose could have been a good fit.
After scoring 20 or more points in thirteen consecutive games leading up to the deadline, it felt as if it were a foregone conclusion that he had played his final games in Detroit.
We then began to hear that neither the Pistons or Rose wanted to split up, and this lead to even more speculation that he wouldn’t be dealt.
There were never any official trade offers that surfaced for him, but it was obvious that the interest was there. Sure enough, the deadline passed and Rose remained in Detroit.
Finally some information regarding a potential trade surfaced, when Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that the Lakers offered Alex Caruso and draft compensation to Detroit in exchange for Rose, with the Pistons declining.
Lakers offered a package that included Alex Caruso and draft compensation for D-Rose, but Detroit rejected the trade, per @ShamsCharania pic.twitter.com/DMeGZZFIBy
— Bleacher Report NBA (@BR_NBA) March 6, 2020
It’s unclear what drat capital the Lakers could have been offering. They do own their 2020 first round pick, but they don’t have another one that they could trade until 2026. They also don’t have a tradeable second round pick until 2023.
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With this in mind, it’s difficult to imagine that Los Angeles would have been comfortable not having a first round pick for the next six years, which would have been the case had they been offering their 2020 pick.
But to that same point, with the window of LeBron James‘ career getting smaller and smaller, it’s also entirely within the realm of possibility that they’d have been comfortable trading every conceivable asset in order to maximize their championship window.
For all intents and purposes, it’s for the best that Detroit didn’t accept this offer in particular. That’s not to say that keeping Rose was the right decision, however.
You’ll often find people who assumed that the Pistons were undoubtedly offered attractive draft picks for him, but this isn’t necessarily true. Up until this information came out, we had heard no official reports on anything that Detroit was offered.
Because of this, although it’s difficult to assume that there was no market for him, it’s potentially safe to at least assume that there weren’t any offers that the Pistons front office felt comfortable pulling the trigger on.
When your team is in a rebuild, you’re ideally going to sell off as many of your assets as possible in order to speed up the process. This however doesn’t mean that you make trades just for the sake of making them.
It needs to make basketball, fiscal, and future sense. For all we know, those types of offers were never there in any offers for Rose.