Did the Detroit Pistons blow it with the Saddiq Bey trade?

Did the Detroit Pistons blow it with the Saddiq Bey trade?

Let’s start with the fact that the offer that the Hawks just settled for likely wasn’t one they would have taken at the trade deadline before the financial details of the new CBA were implemented or understood. This was a salary dump that the Hawks didn’t feel they needed to make at the time, so Detroit wouldn’t have had this kind of leverage.

Collins may be better than Wiseman (debatable) but he should be considering he’s making twice as much money. Do you really want to pay $25 million a year for a guy who is fresh off a season when he scored 13 points per game and shot 29 percent from the 3-point line? Me neither.

Sure, he could bounce back with the right coach in the right situation, but the same could be said of Wiseman, who is still on a rookie deal. Trading for Collins would have eaten up a sizable portion of the Pistons’ cap space.

This way, they get to try Wiseman out for a season or trade him, but either way, they still have the money to pursue a free agent like Cameron Johnson, Jerami Grant, Harrison Barnes or even Dillon Brooks, all guys I’d rather have than Collins, a player Atlanta has been trying to trade since before the ink was even dry on his contract.

The Pistons made the decision that they didn’t want to pay Bey’s next contract, so why in the world would they take on Collins, who is also a player with big limitations and likely making even more than Bey will get on his next deal?

John Collins is a good player, and would have been a fit on Detroit in some ways, but was also a major risk given his lack of production and contract, and the Pistons can likely do better on the free-agent market.

The Bey trade wasn’t ideal, but it served the same purpose as the Collins trade: Getting rid of an underperforming player who either makes too much or will soon.