The Sekou Doumbouya era is over for the Detroit Pistons.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the Pistons have traded Sekou Doumbouya and Jahlil Okafor to the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for DeAndre Jordan and four 2nd-round picks.
ESPN Sources: Brooklyn is trading C DeAndre Jordan, four future-second round picks and $5.78M to Detroit for Jahlil Okafor and Sekou Doumbouya. Pistons plan to work through a buyout on two-years, $20M owed Jordan; Nets will save $47M in salary and tax on deal.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) September 3, 2021
The Pistons will reportedly buy DeAndre Jordan out, which will make him a free agent. On the surface this trade doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for the Pistons, as they are a rebuilding team and just traded away one of their youngest players for a bunch of future picks and a guy who isn’t going to play for them.
The trade of Doumbouya is not surprising, as he was likely to be the odd man out and he was the last holdover from the previous regime. He showed flashes in Detroit but apparently the team wanted to go in a different direction.
The Pistons are now going to have more dead money on their books for the sake of four second-round picks, which tells me they must have something else planned.
Who will get the Detroit Pistons’ open roster spot after the Sekou Doumbouya trade?
I can’t imagine the Pistons wanted to pay a bunch of money just to get rid of Doumbouya and Okafor unless they were going to do something with the open roster spot.
They had a couple of guys who stood out in Summer League but no one who would make you want to pay DeAndre Jordan to play for the Lakers.
This move seems like the prelude to something else, so it’s possible we’ll see some further movement in the next couple of days.
Troy Weaver has made many moves that seemed strange before you saw the big picture, so I have confidence that this trade was made for a reason.
For now it doesn’t look great for Detroit, but this could just be the first in a series of moves.