Detroit Pistons fans dish out their controversial opinions

Last week we took to Twitter to have Detroit Pistons fans give us their most controversial opinions.

The NBA Playoffs are in full swing but naturally, the Detroit Pistons were left out. Other than Draft Lottery that occured last month, fans haven’t had much to talk about in recent months.

Because of this, we’ve had plenty of time to review not just this past season, but all of the one’s in recent memory. Additionally, we’ve attempted to look ahead and see how Detroit could navigate this rebuild.

Since you can only get so far with that, we thought it would be fun to stir the pot and have fans give us their most controversial opinions about the Pistons, whether it’s about a former team or their current state.

Note: Anything Darko/Melo or uniform related will be left out because honestly, there was a lot of that. 

If by “we” we’re talking about the fan base, then this is especially true. You’re going to see this be the case for seemingly every organization in the league, but with the Pistons right now, you see it more and more every single day.

It’s not to say that Detroit doesn’t have some interesting talent on their roster, because they do, but whether it’s placing unfair expectations on certain players or bloating their value in order to fit into whatever trade proposal you may have, the reality is that the Pistons current roster isn’t exactly fantastic.

In terms of being built for longevity, they’ve made some decent strides. But as it stands, we’re still waiting for a lot of those pieces to develop before we can definitively say we have something.

This may be the most controversial take that was thrown in here. Not only because it’s unequivocally wrong, but because it’s a bit staggering that someone could draw that conclusion in the first place.

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The iteration of Blake Griffin that the Pistons got during the 2018-2019 season was arguably the best that the league has ever seen. He was playing the best basketball that he had ever played and willed Detroit to a playoff berth largely on his own.

By transcending his three-point shot and his play making ability, when healthy and surrounded by the right pieces, this is a team that can make some noise. There’s a reason we had such high expectations going into last season.

But as it goes, when you continue to construct your roster in a way where your success is so heavily contingent on team health, and your best players have a significant history with injury, you can pretty much anticipate the innevitable.

Tobias Harris has arguably the worst contract in basketball. While Griffin’s is certainly large, he at the very least shows on more than one occasion that he’s capable of playing to that value.

If any other team was going to pay Harris that money, it could have been Detroit, and then we’d all be complaining about that.

Believe it or not this actually could make a bit of sense. The only way that Detroit makes the playoffs next season is if they end up being a surprise team in the way that Memphis was this season.

A team where you go into the year thinking they’re in full development mode, but it turns out they have an impeccable group of players that can cohesively play sound basketball. Depending on who they land in the draft and in free agency, it could definitely happen.

Now whether it should happen is a different question. If it does occur in the aforementioned way, then you’re excited because it shows that you’re making way better progress than you had anticipated.

Fans shouldn’t expect that the Pistons will come anywhere near the playoffs next season but, that’d be pretty neat to see.

This feels a tad bit outdated, as in recent years Detroit has made some pretty sound decisions both financially and in a basketball sense. For the better part of the last decade however, this is largely true.

However, since Ed Stefanski was brought on board, the Pistons have been a well oiled machine. Sure, maybe you weren’t happy with the return on the Andre Drummond trade but for starters, those are the same people that wanted him traded for nothing in the first place, and that’s what you got.

Second of all, in longevity it wasn’t that bad. Although we had envisioned getting at least one valuable asset in the return, but what it gave us was cap space. It freed up money that the front office can play around with in order to continue to right the ship.

Bruce Brown turned out to be a great pickup in the second round, trading Reggie Bullock to the Lakers for Svi Mykhailiuk and a future pick worked out pretty well too. They were even able to flip Jon Leuer for Tony Snell and a first round pick (that they did eventually trade away).

As the Pistons begin their rebuild, you should feel plenty comfortable with the current regime.