Detroit Pistons: Risks and benefits of extending Jerami Grant

Detroit Pistons: Jerami Grant’s salary

I think most fans of the Detroit Pistons would have Grant back at the right price, but that price differs wildly depending on who you talk to. Signing him to a deal that pays over $28 million a year certainly carries some risk moving forward, but there might be some benefits to such a deal as well.

Jerami Grant’s salary: The risk

The reason Jerami Grant is being discussed in so many rumors is because he is on a value deal right now. It seems crazy that $20 million a year is a “value” deal, but it is minimum wage for an NBA starter who is not on a rookie deal. When you factor in Grant’s production on both ends, he has one of the more “team-friendly” deals in the league.

But if he is making $8-10 million more per season, that deal suddenly looks like far less of a value, which would make it much more difficult for the Detroit Pistons to trade him. It’s not hard to find plenty of teams around the league who have a a $20 million contract to trade or a couple of guys who add up to that, but teams with  $28-30 million worth of contracts are harder to come by, especially if the Pistons don’t want to take back any bad deals.

If the Detroit Pistons extend Grant, they would have a harder time trading him if they wanted to, and he’d be eating up a good chunk of their payroll on a team that just won 43 games combined in the last two seasons.

The benefit

One of the big sticking points to Jerami Grant’s trade value right now is that he is on an expiring contact, so teams don’t really know what they are going to get.

Teams are reluctant to give up much for a one-year rental, so having Grant under contract may actually make him easier to trade since teams know they are getting more than one year and know exactly how much those future years are going to cost.

Right now they’d have to do a handshake deal that Grant would re-sign, which carries a lot of risk for the team trading for him and lowers his value on the market.

There is also a strong possibility that the salary cap is going to go way up again in the near future. The last time that happened, deals in the $12-15 million range started to look like huge bargains, and role players were getting more than that on the open market. Remember the last time the cap spiked? Guys like Luol Deng and Meyers Leonard were getting huge deals, as the entire league was flush with cap space with nothing to spend it on.

If that happens again, Grant’s deal could once again be viewed as a bargain, as $30 million per year might be below the going rate for an NBA starter. It’s very possible that the cap is going to spike in the next three seasons, in which case Grant will once again be on a value deal that would be easy to move or absorb on the cap sheet.

I still have no idea what the Detroit Pistons are going to do with Jerami Grant, but my gut tells me that he is either going to be traded for a top-10 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, or he’ll be extended by the Pistons.

There are risk and benefits associated with any decision they make, and I am glad I am not the one who has to make it, as this move will define the Pistons one way or another for the next several seasons.