Detroit Pistons: Pros and cons of potentially trading Blake Griffin

Pro: Creating Cap Space

One could easily argue that the No. 1 reason to trade Blake Griffin is the amount of potential cap space it would create. There’s clearly no way to guarantee that the Detroit Pistons would only receive expiring contracts, but even a dent in the financial commitment would be ideal.

Including his player option for the 2020-21 campaign, Griffin will make $75,553,024 over the course of the next two seasons—a major cap hit.

This is compounded by the fact that Detroit has a number of decisions to make in the upcoming period of free agency. That includes the pending unrestricted status of breakout big man Christian Wood and key backup Langston Galloway.

Detroit will already see some measure of financial relief with Brandon Knight and John Henson coming off the books, but it could be reinvested into Wood.

In that scenario, the Pistons could be paying nearly or even upwards of $60 million per season to their interior players over the course of the next two seasons. That’s a hard sell when one considers that Sekou Doumbouya played 86 percent of his minutes at power forward in 2019-20.

If the Pistons have a chance to create cap space and open up playing time for younger players, that would be a difficult commitment.