The Detroit Pistons may have created a problem for themselves

Now that the Detroit Pistons have adopted the position of a rebuild, is it something that can be sustained moving forward?

The Detroit Pistons found themselves forced into a situation this season that they’ve been reluctant to accept as reality for the better part of a decade. It’s time to rebuild.

This situation was caused by a multitude of injuries that inevitably derailed their season, most notably the season ending surgery undergone by Blake Griffin, Reggie Jackson missing the opening three months to the season, and Luke Kennard suffering from bilateral knee tendinitis, which he still hasn’t recovered from.

Detroit wound up falling into a hole that they couldn’t climb out of. Not only did they begin losing games that they had they been healthy they could have easily won, but the product on the floor just wasn’t looking formidable.

There was a severe lack of cohesion due to the lengths Dwane Casey would have to go to in order to put together a lineup, and nothing productive could be put together on either end of the floor.

With the Pistons being in a competitive limbo for several years now, many had speculated that this could be the final straw for the front office, and they’d accept a new direction.

Sure enough once the trade deadline arrived on February 6th, Detroit made their decision clear by trading Andre Drummond to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

This was followed by two buyouts, one for Markieff Morris and one for Jackson, who each immediately found themselves on contending teams.

With a decimated roster, fans could finally breathe a sigh of relief knowing that there was potential hope in the future now that the franchise is going to start from scratch.

This however creates an issue. It’s easy to look at this current Pistons roster and assume that in longevity they could continue to lose games and “tank” their way to quality selections in the draft.

That is, until you realize that they won’t have this roster going into next season.

Assuming there aren’t any trades that shake up the rotations, when opening night rolls around next year Detroit will have a fully healthy Griffin, Rose, and Kennard returning to the lineup.

Assuming they’re all able to play even 80 percent of the season, it’s going to become rather difficult for the Pistons to actually lose. In longevity, the objective of a rebuild doesn’t need to explicitly rely on continuous losing, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

You no longer need to be historically bad in order to land a top pick in the draft. With the new lottery structure, the top three worst records in the league all have the same chances at landing the number one overall pick.

Even then, you look at a team like the 2018-2019 Pelicans who won 33 games and were rewarded with the top pick, which ended up being Zion Williamson.

So with a potential lineup of Rose, Kennard, Tony Snell, Griffin, and Christian Wood, is that going to win you too many games in the Eastern Conference?

The worry here has to come down to talent. The Pistons may be too good to tank next season and even if that isn’t the actual goal, the last thing that you want is to stumble into the playoffs if your objective is to rebuild.

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Falling out of the lottery would be an enormous mistake, and that’s what could realistically happen.

Even if Griffin returns and he’s a slightly worn down version of his 2018-2019 self, he’d still be more than capable of helping his team succeed. The additional input of Rose, Kennard, and whoever they select in the draft could put them over an edge that they don’t want to be near.

It’s easy to say that in order to avoid this happening they could just trade Griffin or Rose. While the latter is certainly true, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to move Griffin with his contract.

It could very well turn into a situation that Cleveland has found themselves in with Kevin Love, where teams feel like they should be rewarded (with draft capital, young assets, etc.) for taking on so much salary, but the Cavs feel they should be rewarded for trading such a substantial player.

This creates an impasse that can be really tricky to navigate.

Detroit likely wouldn’t have an issue trading Rose, but moving Kennard has to be out of the question.

if your team is too good to lose, but not good enough to win anything significant, where do you go from there? This could cause the Pistons to remain stagnant and keep them in the purgatory state that’s plagued the franchise for years.