In the wake of the devastating Malik Beasley news, the Detroit Pistons have to quickly pivot to new offseason plans.
Detroit now has money at their disposal, especially if they are unable to retain Dennis Schroder or Tim Hardaway Jr., which would mean some fairly large changes to the roster that no one saw coming.
The Pistons were widely expected to re-sign Beasley to a 3-year deal which now appears to be on hold pending his investigation.
Now Detroit may be forced into other moves to clear the cap space necessary to pursue free agents and trades according to Mike Scotto, who had this to say about Detroit:
“Sources: Pistons gauging trade market on Simone Fontecchio (expiring $8.3M). With Malik Beasley's gambling investigation, Kings to pursue Dennis Schroder, if DET loses Tim Hardaway Jr, & a Fontecchio trade, DET may create $24M in space to pursue Nickeil Alexander-Walker & others.”
It’s not surprising that the Pistons are looking to dump Fontecchio, who had a down year and lost his spot in the rotation in the playoffs.
But if Beasley, Fontecchio and Schroder are out, what’s next for the Pistons?
Detroit Pistons free agency: Nickeil Alexander-Walker and who else?
The Pistons are reportedly in some kind of bidding war with the Atlanta Hawks for the services of Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
Detroit has a slight advantage in that they have cap space which would potentially allow them to offer a higher annual salary on a shorter deal with a team option, while Atlanta would have to offer three fully guaranteed years using their trade exception.
For now NAW is the only name we're hearing, but with $24 million in cap space potentially at their disposal, the Pistons could shift to bigger names or sign multiple guys.
Even if the Pistons were to land NAW, there are still a lot of holes to fille, especially if they dump Fontecchio to clear more cap space.
Detroit lacked shooting even with Beasley and THJ, so losing both, as well as Schroder, leaves plenty of bench scoring the Pistons will have to find elsewhere.
If they were able to land NAW along with a stretch four like Santi Aldama, it would help some of those concerns, but ideally the Pistons need a high-volume shooter to replace Beasley.
They could bring back Luke Kennard on a minimum deal, and there has been talk of Duncan Robinson and Caris LeVert, options that aren’t going to excite fans and may not represent the upgrade they need when it comes to shooting.
The Malik Beasley news threw a huge curve ball at Trajan Langdon, who probably thought he was going to have a relatively quiet summer but now has to make major shifts in strategy.