Detroit Pistons pay first visit to an old friend

The Detroit Pistons will head to Atlanta tonight to take on the Hawks in State Farm Arena.

The Pistons have the worst record in the league, while the disappointing Hawks are clinging to the 8th spot in the Eastern Conference.

The Hawks made the splashy move for Dejounte Murray last offseason, but it hasn’t paid dividends yet, which led to the firing of their coach and a move at the deadline to acquire former Pistons’ forward Saddiq Bey.

Bey is doing a bit less for the Hawks but is getting more efficient results, as he has morphed into the 3-point specialist that the Detroit Pistons needed him to be. Bey is only averaging 10 points a game, lowest of his career, since joining Atlanta, but he is shooting 45 percent from 3-point range and taking more than 60 percent of his shots from behind the arc.

This will be the first meeting between the Pistons and their 2020 NBA Draft pick and Bey will be looking to have a big game against the team that sent him away.

Detroit Pistons vs. Atlanta Hawks: Saddiq Bey will be ready

It’s still far too early to know who got the better of the trade that sent Bey to the Hawks and James Wiseman to the Detroit Pistons. Wiseman has played well of late and probably has the higher ceiling, but Bey is already a solid rotation player and should be for years to come.

The divorce between Bey and the Pistons didn’t seem to be acrimonious at first, but Detroit did leak information about Bey’s refusal to take on a smaller role, to shoot more three’s and not try to create as much off the bounce. This seemed like as much a failure of the Pistons’ coaching staff as Bey, and the leak was really unnecessary.

There was also a report that Bey wanted “insane money” that the Pistons did not want to pay. I’m sure the normally low key Bey isn’t going to say much about how his former team kind of threw him under the bus, but you know he’ll have a little extra energy in his step tonight when he sees his old teammates take the floor.

Wiseman will also be out to prove that he is worth the investment, particularly since he is due for an extension this summer that would represent a similar risk and investment as the one the team didn’t want to make in Bey.

This game is fairly meaningless when it comes to the standings, but there will be some subplots as Bey and Wiseman each try to have monster games to impress their new teams, and in Bey’s case, show what the old one gave up.