Why the Detroit Pistons shouldn’t be so quick to trade Jerami Grant

For the past year or so, Jerami Grant has been a topic of discussion within the NBA rumor mill. His name has been included in more trade packages than I can keep up with, and this summer has been more of the same. However, before we sharpen our pitchforks and start chanting “trade Jerami Grant”from the rooftops, Let’s take a step back and weigh the pros and cons for the Detroit Pistons.

Jerami Grant by the numbers

Many people see Grant as a high value trade asset, but very few are seeing the flip side to that coin. If he’s valuable to another team that means he made a big enough impact for the Detroit Pistons to be sought after. Players who score 19 points a game and go over 20 points more than 20 times in only 47 games are not easy to come by. Not to mention his win share total was higher than that of Cade Cunningham, who many see as the new face of the team. He averaged the most points on the season with 19.2 and was not far off from the team block leader.

Detroit Pistons: Front office may disagree on Jerami Grant

Earlier this year NBA reporter Marc Stein (SUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED) wrote about a split decision on trading Grant. GM Troy Weaver, who obviously knows and is close with Grant, doesn’t want to trade him for scraps. If they make a deal they want an equal return. Other members of the front office seemed to have wanted an immediate trade to happen. It didn’t, but we’ll see which camp wins out this offseason and if GM Troy Weaver gets overruled at some point.

Jerami Grant and the Detroit Pistons’ culture

Various factors (including them being bad for more than a decade) has made Detroit an unappealing free-agent destination, though the Pistons are hoping that is about to change. This makes it hard to grab the interest of free agents, and even harder to get players to mention Detroit as a desirable trade destinations. With that being said, the Pistons are lucky enough to have a player who not only scores and defends well, but 100 percent wants to be part of this team. He’s all-in on the city and the culture, so trading him is not only disrespectful, but it could possibly kill the team morale and put off future free agents.

I understand that he wants a max deal that would be around 4 years/$112 million. This may be something that the team doesn’t want to do at this time. However, Jerami Grant’s value to the Detroit Pistons, who are trying to rebuild their success and culture, is measured in much more than just points and dollars.