Advanced metric shows some Pistons fans were right about their GM

Fans of the Detroit Pistons have widely varying opinions on the job GM Troy Weaver has done so far.

You have the “Trust in Troy” crowd who thinks every move he makes is part of some large 3-dimensional chess game. They largely support most everything he does and think the Pistons have one of the most promising young cores of players in the league.

You have others who look at the lack of progress in the win column, the absence of big moves, some missed draft selections (Killian Hayes) and the unbalanced roster and say Troy Weaver should be fired if we don’t see a big leap this season.

A recent article in Yahoo Sports tried to quantify this debate by ranking GMs based on their draft picks, trades and free agent acquisitions.

Detroit Pistons: Troy Weaver ranked 7th among NBA GM’s

Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo Sports used what he calls “The Danny Ainge System, which he explains thusly:

"“The method was originally created to rate draft histories, and we have expanded it this time around to cover an executive’s entire record across three categories: draft picks, trades and free-agent signings.Each transaction is still categorized in baseball terms based on the original formula (for the most part):HR: Bona fide All-Stars3B: Top-flight performers2B: Front-end rotation players1B: Other noteworthy contributorsBB: Lateral and inconclusive movesK: Diminished returnsWe then calculated every executive’s on-base and slugging percentages, combining them to determine their OPS within each category and overall.”"

Although Troy Weaver of the Detroit Pistons didn’t rank in the top 5 in any category, he came in 7th overall, largely based on strong draft choices and trades for Jerami Grant and Bojan Bogdanovic.

Weaver fell between Koby Altman of the Cleveland Cavaliers (8) and Pat Riley (6) of the Miami Heat, so he is in pretty good company.

The rest of the top five was rounded out by Kevin Pritchard of the Trail Blazers (5), James Jones of the Suns (4), Brian Wright of the Spurs (3), Masai Ujiri of the Raptors (2) and Danny Ainge of the Jazz.

You can make what you want of his system, but when you look at the final rankings, they mostly represent the GM’s of the best teams in the NBA.

Troy Weaver is not there yet, but according to these metrics, he’s closer to the “Trust in Troy” evaluation than he is to getting fired.