Detroit Pistons general manager Troy Weaver has received pretty good marks overall since taking over in June, 2020. However, no one is perfect.
With the off-season about to wind down, lets look at five moves that, we won’t call them mistakes, but ‘Trust in Troy’ transactions.
Weaver’s most positive off-season moves are covered here:
Captain Hindsight is probably the only true person who can make basketball evaluations; as you really have to give it a year or two to see how moves pan out. How many people were upset when the Pistons signed Jerami Grant to a three-year, $60 million contract last year? Pretty much everyone panned it as a major overpay.
Now, Grant’s contract is seen as a bargain. He probably (not counting the late add-ons) made less than any other member of the USA Olympic team.
So, how a move is seen can change over time (but some don’t, like drafting Henry Ellensan and Stanley Johnson will always be known as wrong). Bearing that in mind, we are not going to call these ‘errors’, as whether they were bad moves won’t be known for a while.
Let us just call them ‘Trust in Troy’ moves, as, we might not understand them at the moment, but trust Weaver had a reason to do it.
All Pistons transactions after May 16, 2021, the date of its last game, will be considered.
The top 5 ‘Trust in Troy’ moves of the 2021 NBA off-season
(all official transactions information is from basketball-reference.com)
5. Bye Sekou (and Okafor), hello 2nd-rounders
When Sekou Doumbouya was drafted with the No. 15th overall pick in the NBA Draft, it was a popular choice in Detroit. Here was an 18-year-old, 6-foot-9 athlete with tons of potential that many mock drafts had going in the top 10.
Doumbouya played well with the Drive in the G-League and had flashes of fine play in Detroit. But, only flashes (like 24 points against the Lakers the year they won NBA title).
Weaver showed what he thought of Doumbouya this off-season by drafting Isaiah Livers of Michigan and signing free agents Kelly Olynyk and Trey Lyles, all of whom can play Sekou’s position.
Don’t forget, the Pistons starting forwards are Olympic gold medalist Jerami Grant and Team USA Select team member Saddiq Bey, so it not like there is a lot of playing time for subs as it is.
With not enough room for all the players with guaranteed contracts, Weaver shipped Doumbouya as well as Jahlil Okafor, to the Brooklyn Nets for DeAndre Jordan’s contract and four second round draft picks.
The Nets had 47 million reasons to find someone to take on Jordan’s contract. Doumbouya and Okafor’s were probably the choice of players Weaver wanted to give them. On a loaded Brooklyn team, any player the Pistons sent them in the deal would be a benchwarmer.
The four second-rounders replaces the four second’s Detroit sent to the Clippers as part of the Luke Kennard trade (they were sent because the Clips said they needed insurance on Kennard’s creaky knees, then they turned around and signed him to a long-term deal).
But giving up on a 20-year-old who just two years ago you used a high draft pick on, that is a bit eyebrow-raising. As many have pointed out, Doumbouya was the only player left not acquired by Weaver
Was this simply dumping off a player with no lane to playing time, and you think never will. Or, is there some desire to make the team ‘all yours’. We will have to see how Doumbouya’s career develops for the real answer.
Right now, we have to just ‘Trust in Troy’.
4. The Yo-Yoing of Deividas Sirvydis
Pistons GM Troy Weaver’s handling of Deividas Sirvydis has simply been strange.
The Pistons gave up three second-round draft picks to move up to the 37th spot in the 2019 draft to take him. This was before Weaver arrived, as Senior Advisor Ed Stefanski was in charge at that point.
However, Weaver was the GM when Sirvydis came over at the start of last season, was given a roster spot and signed to a four-year contract, with the first two guaranteed.
Normally, Sirvydis would have been sent to play a lot with the Grand Rapids Drive in the G-League but, with the pandemic, the Drive never had a season. Sirvydis basically sat on the bench until the last few games of the season, when he showed some promise.
Now, Weaver had to know know there was not much of a chance of a G-League season (eventually some teams played in a bubble in Orlando for a month, the Drive did not participate), so when he inked Sirvydis, he knew that it would probably be a year of sitting and learning with the big club.
Then came this summer’s moves.
First, the Pistons released Sirvydis, eating the $1.5 million he is owed for 2021-22 season.
Secondly, they then had Sirvydis play on Detroit’s summer league team. He did not do that well, but what if he had? Would Weaver resign a player you just cut? How bad would that look? It seemed to be pointless.
Like Doumbouya, Sirvydis is young (21) and the Pistons invested some heavy capital to bring him here (But, like Sekou, before Weaver arrived). Yet, he is being shown the door, costing the Pistons over a million dollars just to get him off the roster.
What happens to Sirvydis will also be watched by Pistons fans,
This is definitely a ‘Trust in Troy’ moment.
3. Resigning Rodney McGruder
When the news came out that the Detroit Pistons were bringing back guard Rodney McGruder, most fans had the same reaction: Why?
Now, if it was just to throw it in the face of Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, who said publicly McGruder would not be in the league next season, following a Warriors-Pistons game, that might be a better reason than most could come up with.
It was nothing personal. According to all reports, McGruder is a great guy and very positive locker room influence. But he never played.
McGruder saw action in 16 games, starting twice. He usually played only due to injuries to the other guards. Sometimes he was a point guard, sometimes a two-guard. Coach Dwane Casey liked his versatility. When McGruder did get on the court, he was actually pretty good, but those times were rare.
Casey did not like McGruder enough to play him a lot. We are not talking about sitting on the bench of the Utah Jazz, a team winning lots of games and hoping to make a deep playoff run. McGruder could not find playing time on a 20-52 team going nowhere.
Detroit did decline his option for next season, making him an unrestricted free agent. But they came back and signed him to a one-year deal at the veterans minimum, the lowest salary they could give him.
With the drafting of Cade Cunningham, there is even less chance of McGruder getting to play this year. Honestly, except for the guaranteed money, one wonders why McGruder would even want to return to Detroit. The guy started a bunch of games with Miami, until coming here, he was used to seeing time.
The fact, at the time, the Pistons were facing a roster logjam, made the signing even more of a head-scratcher. If McGruder is not brought back, does that leave room to keep Doumbouya? We will never know.
Definitely a ‘Trust in Troy’ moment.
2. Mason Plumlee salary dump trade
If this trade does not work out, literally the Hammer of Thor will be brought against the Detroit Pistons.
On NBA Draft Day, before Cade Cunningham got selected, it was announced that the Pistons were sending starting center Mason Plumlee and the 37th pick in the draft (Yes, the same spot two years earlier they had spent three picks to move up to) to the Charlotte Hornets for the 57th overall pick in the draft.
With the 37th pick, the Hornets selected JT Thor, a very promising young forward out of Auburn.
Many mock drafts had Thor going late in the first round, so this was a steal for Charlotte. Their starting center, Cody Zeller, was a free agent so Plumlee will slip right into his spot in the lineup. A very good trade for the Hornets.
Plumlee had a good season for the Pistons, averaging 10 points, nine rebounds, a fine passer out of the post and created great picks for Jerami Grant to use. In terms of level of expectations, Plumlee probably exceeded them.
This trade was obviously lopsided. It was the classic salary dump. Detroit had no problem with Plumlee, they just needed to get rid of the $8 million he was owed for next season.
Only Grant made more money, and Detroit was not getting rid of him. Plumlee was a victim of all the dead money Detroit had piled up, particularly carrying the last year of Blake Griffin’s contract. This upcoming season, 34-percent of the Pistons payroll will be ‘dead money’.
Because no one else except Grant had a contract for more than $6 million for next season, Plumlee basically had to be sacrificed. And Weaver still had to attach a juicy draft choice to get Charlotte to accept the trade.
With the 57th pick the Pistons got back, they drafted Balsa Koprivica, a center out of Florida State who will play in Europe this season.
Most of the opened up cap space was used to sign forward-center Kelly Olynyk. Unlike Plumlee, he can shoot from the three-point line, opening up the middle more, at least that’s the theory.
Olynyk is making $12 million a year, so Plumlee’s salary did not cover the whole thing. Olynyk is a nice player, maybe a better fit, but he is 30, so not part of the young core.
Maybe Olynyk is an upgrade on Plumlee, but it was still a high cost to make room for his salary. If Thor goes on to hammer the opposition in a successful NBA career, this move will be looked back at as a mistake.
Another ‘Trust in Troy’ move.
No. 1: A Detroit-hater comes to Motor City
There was a lot of publicity when Jalen Green said he found the city of Detroit boring, and only wanted to go to the Pistons because of the honor of being the No.1 overall draft pick.
Naturally, this statement was not taken well in Detroit. When Green comes in with the Houston Rockets, he will be booed lustily.
However, Green is a player on another team. Imagine a player actually wearing a Pistons uniform saying Detroit was a terrible place.
Well, Troy Weaver actually signed one, using the salary cap space that the Pistons had left.
In the biggest head-scratcher of the off-season. Detroit inked Trey Lyles to a two-year, $5 million contract (second year a team option).
Lyles fell out of the rotation of the San Antonio Spurs, and they had little interest in bringing him back when he became a free agent.
Detroit is his fourth team since being selected No. 12 overall in the 2015 draft by Utah (having missed out on Lyles, Phoenix would settle for Devin Booker at No. 13)..
Lyles is a career 34.1-percent three-point shooter, so he really does not help the Pistons in that area. What he brings to the table is to be seen. Is Lyles really an upgrade on Sekou Doumbouya?
But forget the basketball stuff, what makes this No. 1 is Lyles does not like the city of Detroit: As he said several years ago, when asked what his least favorite cities were on a Richard Jefferson podcast:
"Lyles, who grew up in Indianapolis after moving from Canada as a 7-year-old, rattled off four cities: Detroit, Memphis, Milwaukee and Sacramento (“It’s horrible,” he said)."
Detroit seemed to be No. 1 on his horrible city list. (Ironically, Mason Plumlee, then with Denver, was also on that podcast, but he had no hate for Detroit)
So Lyles does not like Detroit. OK fine, its a free country. Yet Lyles is coming to a city he thinks is terrible. Why? Look at the bargain basement price … no one else wanted him.
Troy Weaver figured he was getting a serviceable big with a decent outside shot for a low price. Not a great idea, but a reasonable one.
But Weaver has also stated many times wanting high character people, particularly players who can represent the city of Detroit. Lyles has trashed Detroit, so not much of a representative.
Signing Trey Lyles is, undoubtedly, the top ‘Trust in Troy’ moment of this off-season.
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