Detroit Doomsday: What if the Pistons Fall from the Top Five in NBA Draft?

While the hope is this piece becomes obsolete in a few months, Detroit Pistons’ fans may need to prepare for the worst and hope for the best on lottery night.

Each season, the short-term (and sometimes long-term) plans for teams can be projected by their activity during the trade deadline. Even with the extra incentive of the new play-in tournament, some teams will still inevitably ship away their assets and retool if they feel like their current roster is not ready to win.

The Detroit Pistons ignited a fire sale earlier this year, trading Derrick Rose and buying out Blake Griffin before the all-star break. Pistons general manager Troy Weaver made a clear statement through his swift actions as GM on the direction this team is headed: Free up cap space and get younger.

As it stands as of April 18, the Pistons have the third-worst record in the league and a 52.1% chance of landing a top-four pick.

Their chances of landing a top pick diminish slightly with each team that ‘out-tanks’ them. Hypothetically, if they finish with the fifth-worst record, they would then have a 42.1% chance of landing a top-four pick.

Teams like the Orlando Magic and Houston Rockets are now inclined to start over as their seasons head on a downward spiral and they have shed many of their top players.

Suddenly, the preordained top-five pick that Pistons fans have awaited may not be etched in stone, as newly tanking teams have joined the bottom dwellers in a race to the bottom. While it would be indeed disheartening, given the Pistons have followed all the proper tanking guidelines this season, it is not Armageddon.

The most alleviating part of a possible drop in lottery position is Troy Weaver’s track record of getting the most out of young talent in Oklahoma City and now Detroit.

Along with encouraging play from the current Pistons’ rookies, Weaver was also able to free up a substantial amount of future cap room since taking the reins. They will have to take on the dead cap room for dropping Griffin over  two seasons, but they don’t hold any bad contracts beyond that. Once a more hardened young core forms, it will be time to take a look at premier free agents to fill in the blanks.

For a while now, there has been a unanimous top tier of players entering the upcoming NBA draft in June.

Unless there are dramatic changes, Cade Cunningham, Evan Mobley, Jalen Suggs, Jalen Green and Jonathan Kuminga should have a good idea of five cities they will soon call home, following the draft lottery. The overall talent dropoff after these prospects seems substantial, and very well could be.

The 2021 NCAA tournament did not do much to shaking up the top five. If anything, it may have actually solidified Suggs and Mobley’s spots even more.

However, it did put a spotlight on some “second-tier” players who could have immediate impacts at the next level. The big question moving forward is if a player will solidify himself as the sixth-best prospect. At this moment, there seems to be very little consensus on that front.

The player that may have boosted their stock the most through the tournament is Baylor’s Davion Mitchell.

Mitchell was an integral part of the Bears’ championship run and showed flashes of real NBA ability throughout this year. He was named Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year, and has shown continued offensive upside in his junior campaign.

At 22-years-old, Mitchell is on the older side of top prospects, and skeptics are concerned about the lack of production from his first two years at Baylor. If the Pistons do, unluckily, fall out of the top five, Mitchell would not be a bad consolation prize, and seems to fit the mold of the franchise.

Other players who are at the top of that second tier include Connecticut’s James Bouknight, Florida State’s Scottie Barnes, Duke’s Jalen Johnson and Tennessee’s freshman duo of Keon Johnson and Jaden Springer, among others.

Things will undoubtedly change in terms of players rising and falling over the next few months, as scouts and analysts will have more have time to dissect each part of their games and teams will be able to get a closer look.

At this point, Pistons fans are conditioned to lower expectations, given their lottery luck over the last several seasons.

The hope is this team will be competitive, young players will continue to improve, and the team loses many games. Maybe every game. But so far, under Troy Weaver, we now should be conditioned to expect the unexpected.