Detroit Pistons: Nets trade could be Troy Weaver’s first major mistake

Detroit Pistons: Buying out Jordan is going to put a hit on Detroit’s future cap space

DeAndre Jordan is not going to play in a Pistons uniform. Pistons fans can at least take solace in the fact that they will not have to deal with another Drummond-like player roaming around the court of Little Caesars Arena.

However, Detroit will have to pay Jordan some portion of his nearly $10 million annual salary over the next two years. That will only further harm their cap situation for the near future.

This is a franchise that had to continue paying Josh Smith through the 2019-20 season despite waiving him in 2014. Now they are paying Blake Griffin roughly $29.8 million this season after buying him out last year. They are also still paying Dewayne Dedmon nearly $3 million through the 2024-25 season after they waived and stretched his contract the previous offseason.

Weaver will now be adding Jordan’s money to Detroit’s dead cap. Continuing to have to pay players to not be on the team is not the ideal route Detroit Pistons fans wanted to go down. They have been scared enough from the Josh Smith debacle.

Taking on additional dead cap space is not necessarily a terrible move, but the return for Detroit is not exactly great.

Four second-round picks are cool and all, but one thing the NBA has proven is that they are practically worthless. NBA teams can trade cash considerations for second-rounders. They are often thrown in as filler on trade packages, and they get thrown around the league like no one wants them.

No, the Nets could not have offered any first-round picks in this trade, all of their first-rounders are tied up in the James Harden trade from last year. But that does not mean Weaver should have settled for second-round picks.

Detroit needed to make roster space in order to accommodate all of the players they wanted on their roster. They needed to open up one roster spot in order to make room for Hamidou Diallo who was the final player to re-sign with Detroit this offseason. Weaver did not need to take on a big contract in order to do so.

Simply releasing Okafor would have saved the Detroit Pistons a lot of money as the former first-round pick was only due $2.13 million for this season. Taking a much smaller cap hit for just a single season is a lot more appealing than nearly $10 million over the next two seasons.

Overall, four second-round picks in exchange for paying for Jordan’s buyout and Doumbouya is not remotely close to a beneficial trade package for Detroit. Those four second-rounders could very well end up just being used in a future trade as Detroit tries to dump salaries in an attempt to open up more cap space for themselves.

This trade also means that Weaver is quickly giving up on an incredibly raw but talented prospect in Doumbouya.