The reason the Detroit Pistons have been bad for so long
Detroit Pistons draft: Missing in the 1st round every year
2012
Andre Drummond: To be fair, this draft was awful after Drummond. You can’t blame Detroit too much for missing on Draymond Green in the second round, and they did draft Khris Middleton, one of the better players in the draft only to trade him away for nothing. Drummond had a good career for Detroit but they never should have tried to build around him. Detroit was still adding offensively-challenged bigs while the league was going in a different direction. The Pistons’ failure to recognize this was a huge problem that they still haven’t recovered from. Troy Weaver may be at it again after the Wiseman trade, which is puzzling and troubling.
2013
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope: KCP has rounded into a very good role player and a guy who has been key in these playoffs. This was another case of Detroit being good at drafting role players, but missing out on the star, as they could have at least had CJ McCollum, or gulp…. Giannis Antetokounmpo, both who went not long after KCP. Oops.
Related Story. 7 players the Pistons gave up on too soon. light
2014
The Detroit Pistons didn’t even have a first-round pick in 2014 thanks to some not-so-cleaver wheeling and dealing. They did find Spencer Dinwiddie in the second round, a guy who became a good player, but not with Detroit, as they gave him away for nothing, just like Middleton. To show you how bad the Pistons have been at evaluating talent, they chose to play Steve Blake over Dinwiddie at the time.
2015
Stanley Johnson: A bust who the Pistons took instead of Devin Booker. Any wonder why this team hasn’t won a playoff game in 15 years?
2016
Henry Ellenson
Puke emoji. Possibly the worst player the Pistons have ever drafted in the 1st round. Caris LeVert, Pascal Siakam and Dejounte Murray all went later. Honestly, at this point you’d think they were trying to be bad.