Every team in the NBA has made regrettable decisions they wish they could undo and that includes the Detroit Pistons.
This is the nature of sports, as teams are often faced with choices to try and get better in the short term at the expense of the future.
It can also go the other way, with teams making decisions based on “potential” while ignoring what is right in front of them.
For years the Detroit Pistons were a mediocre team stuck between the 8th seed the the lottery, exactly the place you don’t want to be.
This led to some poor decisions in a misguided effort to win with teams that were never very good or had mismatched parts.
In the end, all of these choices eventually led us to where we are now, and most Pistons fans are happy about the current state of the team, as they have a lot of young talent and the number one pick Cade Cunningham as the foundation of a new era.
But here are five choices they’d like to have back.
Detroit Pistons: Drafting Stanley Johnson over Devin Booker
There are plenty of draft choices the Detroit Pistons would love to go back and change, but that is true of literally every team in the NBA.
The NBA Draft is a crapshoot and outside of LeBron James, there are really no sure things.
You could easily put the 2011 Draft here, as the Pistons took Brandon Knight over Kemba Walker, Klay Thompson and Kawhi Leonard.
But none of those guys were considered sure bets coming out of college and Knight actually made the All-Rookie team in his first season.
Stanley Johnson, on the other hand, has pretty much been a complete bust. The crazy thing about this choice is that the Pistons desperately needed shooting at the time and Booker was sitting right there. The Pistons reportedly even told Booker he was their guy and then inexplicably pivoted to Johnson.
Stanley Johnson always looked the part but has zero basketball skills other than being a plus athlete. He’s bounced around since and most recently signed with the Bulls while Devin Booker just led his Suns to the Finals last season.
Detroit Pistons: Trading Brandon Knight and Khris Middleton for Brandon Jennings
This was near the end of the Joe Dumars era in Detroit and one of the reasons we were glad to see him go.
This was the classic “giving up on a guy too early” trade, as Khris Middleton was a second-round pick who had yet to play much for the Pistons and was just tossed into the trade. Pistons fans are hoping this isn’t going to happen again with the recent trade of Sekou Doumbouya.
This trade really made no sense at the time, as Jennings was an inefficient ball hog (sorry it’s true) who was best suited coming off someone’s bench as an instant offense scorer.
Jennings did have some electric games for the Pistons, but he was wildly inconsistent, something fans tend to forget when they are waxing nostalgic about his time in Detroit.
In the end, Middleton went on to be come an All-Star and NBA champion with the Bucks, while Jennings wasn’t long for the league.
Even Brandon Knight ended up having a better career than Jennings, as Knight put together some good seasons for the Bucks and Suns and was still in the league as recently as 2020 when he returned for a short stint with the Pistons.
Jennings only had one complete season after this trade and hasn’t really been seen in the NBA since 2017.
It’s rare that a team can screw a trade up this badly, so at least the Pistons went big on their mistake.
Detroit Pistons: Why oh why did the Pistons trade for Blake Griffin?
The only reason that I didn’t put this number one is that the Blake Griffin era went so badly that the Pistons ended up bottoming out and getting the number one pick Cade Cunningham, so thanks for that, Blake!
The Griffin trade was a disaster from the beginning, as the Pistons had a very mediocre roster and he was pretty much washed and not a guy who could any longer carry a franchise.
Not only that, the Detroit Pistons gave up a king’s ransom to get him, including one of their best players (Tobias Harris) and a couple of future draft picks. The Clippers were giddy to get out from under Griffin’s albatross of a contract, which was one of the worst in the NBA at the time and still haunts the Pistons to this day.
The Clippers were able to use the package the Pistons sent them to rebuild their roster. In fact, the Clippers ended up flipping Tobias Harris for a huge haul, which begs the question of why the Pistons didn’t do the same thing.
The Pistons should have been rebuilding themselves at this point but instead doubled down on a veteran who had exactly one high-level season left in his legs.
Griffin did give the Pistons some big moments, like his 50-point game against Philly, and did drag the team to the playoffs to get swept.
In the end he was bought out and headed to the Nets to chase rings. I don’t have any ill will towards Griffin, who did give everything he had in Detroit, but this trade should have never happened in the first place and just prolonged the inevitable rebuild that we are seeing now.
Detroit Pistons: Drafting Luke Kennard over Donovan Mitchell
This draft pick is the perfect example of why you shouldn’t let your coach be the GM of the team.
Stan Van Gundy was coaching and making personnel decisions, which is usually a recipe for disaster, as coaches want to win now while executives have to think about the future.
SVG’s team needed shooting and Kennard was meant to be the best shooter in this draft, so the Pistons drafted for need instead of talent and ended with with the dud Kennard instead of superstar Donovan Mitchell.
Kennard never looked like much more than a role player, and he could still end up being an effective one for the Clippers, as he can shoot the lights out.
The problem is that he can’t do anything else, especially defend, so he is hard to keep on the court when other teams can just pick-and-roll him to death.
I will say this, Kennard eventually brought the Pistons Saddiq Bey, so for that, I thank him. Bey is already better than Kennard, younger and on a rookie deal that doesn’t pay him $16 million per year.
Trading Kennard was probably my favorite Troy Weaver move so far, as it showed he wasn’t going to double down on mistakes like the Pistons routinely did in the past.
Detroit Pistons: Drafting Darko Milicic over literally anyone else in the 2003 NBA Draft
The Joe Dumars era was eventually undone because he always thought he was the smartest guy in the room and made moves to prove it instead of just doing the obvious thing.
This was never more evident than the Darko Milicic draft pick, as there were a couple of proven college players in Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade who the Pistons bypassed in favor of the unknown “potential” of Milicic.
To be fair, the Darko decision was one many GM’s would have made, as the Pistons were already good, so why not swing for the fences on a high-ceiling pick?
Darko was projected to be a seven-footer who could shoot, the original Unicorn, so in many ways his potential represented where the league was headed.
But he never reached it (even though he did get a ring with the Pistons) and ended up as one of the biggest draft busts of all time.
The Pistons had a rare opportunity to add a top draft pick to a team that was already good, and if they had just taken Carmelo, they might have won a few more titles.
The 2003 NBA Draft was one of the biggest “what-ifs” in league history, as it could have changed the entire future of the league had it gone a different way for the Detroit Pistons.