Are the Detroit Pistons “going to be great next year?”

The Detroit Pistons are near the bottom of the NBA standings again this season, but according to Bojan Bogdanovic, they don’t plan to be there long.

According to a recent report, Bojan Bogdanovic said the team not only gave him assurances that he is part of their future plans, but that those plans include a big leap next season.

Here is what Bojan had to say:

"“Having conversations with the club, Troy (Weaver), and the owners, they assured me that we’re going to be great next year,” Bogdanovic told HoopsHype. “We have a lot of cap space to sign great players. We’re going to have a high pick again, so that’s going to help us a lot. We have a great young group of guys. When Cade (Cunningham)went down, that kind of hurt us big time. We were thinking that maybe we’d be fighting for the play-in tournament, but when he went down, he was our main guy. All of our offensive strategies were connected to him.”"

There was a whole lot to unpack in this quote, but the part that really stuck out to me was the notion that the Detroit Pistons are “going to be great next year.”

Of course, this could have just been a paraphrase, a mistranslation or simple hyperbole. I am not pedantic enough to think those were the exact words the team said to Bogdanovic, nor that they necessarily meant them that way even if they were. Great can mean a lot of things in this context.

Bogdanovic has consistently been the subject of trade rumors, so this could also just be a way of assuring the soon to be 34-year-old that the team won’t be this bad forever and has plans to improve.

So let’s take a look at the rest of the quote, which somewhat outlines the plan for how the Detroit Pistons could “be great next year.”