Detroit Pistons: The 3 part nightmare of losing Cade Cunningham

Detroit Pistons: What to do with the veterans?

The Detroit Pistons have several players in Alec Burks, Bojan Bogdanovic and Nerlens Noel who could potentially be traded at some point.

There was a good chance that one or more of these guys was going to be moved anyway, as Burks and Noel are essentially on expiring deals and could net some assets at the trade deadline.

But the truth is that both Burks and Noel are the types of veterans a young team needs and are on reasonable contracts, so there was also a possibility that this team was going to start playing better at full strength, which might have led to the Pistons keeping them around.

Same for Bojan Bogdanovic, who has had a red-hot start to the season, which will make him one of the hottest trade targets on the market.

The shame is that we never even got to see how these guys really fit with Cade Cunningham or see this roster at full strength. I don’t think they were making the playoffs either way, but it would have been nice to at least see how they play together and how all of the pieces fit.

Trading these guys now would be selling blindly, as Detroit doesn’t even know what they have in this roster. Of course, they could have all been traded anyway, but at least we’d have more data about what worked and what didn’t.

This also applies to coach Casey, who now gets another free pass without ever having to answer for how bad this team has been.

Instead the franchise is stuck in limbo, with no chance to develop its core or evaluate the role players, which is pretty much the worst-case scenario for the Detroit Pistons.