Josh Smith is officially no longer on the Detroit Pistons payroll
Josh Smith’s time with the Detroit Pistons was short lived and underwhelming. With the conclusion of the 2019-2020 season, he’ll officially be off their payroll.
Although the NBA season hasn’t officially been cancelled, it appears things could be headed in that direction. Whenever that point does arrive, the Detroit Pistons will officially no longer be paying Josh Smith.
Smith, who hasn’t actually played a game in Detroit since the 2014-2015 season, had been owed $5.3 million per year after he was bought out.
After originally signing a four year contract worth $54 million, his time with the Pistons was remarkably underwhelming. At the time of his signing, the fan base was divided from the start.
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It almost felt like your dedication to the team and to the sport dictated how you felt about the move. If you were regularly keeping up to date with basketball, you were skeptical of the move from the very beginning.
If you casually watched the game, this felt like a good opportunity for Detroit.
The former crowd wound up being correct. Smith was never a high volume three-point shooter, but he was taking enough that it was considered a regular part of his game.
As soon as he started playing with the Pistons, he completely stopped all together. In 2014-2015 he only made 9 of his 37 attempted threes. He was never considered to be a strong perimeter shooter either, but that’s just bizarre.
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He had very clearly begun to hit a steep decline in his career. Where he was once a valued scorer in Atalanta, he was never able to establish confidence in the Pistons’ organization that he was worth the money he commanded.
After a season and a half of poor shooting, poor defense, and inefficiency at the free throw line, Detroit made the decision to part ways with Smith.
The team was under new management at the time, with Stan Van Gundy and Jeff Bower controlling all personnel moves, they felt it was best to let Smith play out his career elsewhere.
The issue was that there was still two years and $26 million left on his contract.
So, Detroit was still required to pay him $5.3 million per year until the full amount was paid out. With the conclusion of the 2019-2020 season, we’ve arrived at that point!
His time with the Pistons was short lived and filled with frustrations. The irony is that Van Gundy wanted to make the move in order to free up minutes to develop some of their younger players and build the future up.
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Now we’ve arrived at a point where the Pistons have expressed the same exact thing after trading Andre Drummond, and we’re entering a rebuild.