The Detroit Pistons are finally doing what they should have been doing all along, which is leaning hard into player development.
The previous front office did a solid job drafting players, evidenced by the fact that most of the team that carried them to the playoffs this season were guys that Troy Weaver chose.
Where they failed was in development, as Weaver and co. never put the right players around the young core to help them thrive, instead surrounding them with a motley crew of busts, aging veterans and salary dumps.
Add in a coach who never set clear roles for his players, jerked them in and out of the lineup and had them try to change positions, and you had the disaster of 2023-24.
Trajan Langdon understands that the team is only going to go as far as their young players take them, which he said in a recent press conference:
“I’ve always said ‘stay patient’ and I’m not going to change in that regard...We’re going to listen to calls, we’re going to see opportunities. We’re always going to look at avenues to get better that we think make sense for us to improve. A big thing for us this summer is going to be to develop the guys we have – the young guys we have that are 19 to 22, 23 years old and have them continue to grow. If those guys take steps, we get better. That’s what we’ve focused on and putting people with those guys that can make them better. It was a pretty good formula this year, so we’ll look at everything out there.”
So, what does “patience" look like? Some fans are not going to like it, but this is the exact formula the previous regime ignored.
The Detroit Pistons are still evaluating
Pistons fans don’t want to hear about evaluation after years of being sold that line, but the team still has plenty to do.
We didn’t get to see much of Jaden Ivey, and Ausar Thompson missed his entire offseason and training camp and then had to ramp up his conditioning on the fly. Jalen Duren is just 21 and has shown some positive signs of progress. Ron Holland is still a teenager.
It’s far too soon to know what these guys are ultimately going to be, but they are pretty good already and should continue to improve over the next few seasons.
That means the Pistons don’t need to go out shopping for stars before they even know what they have, it likely means looking for role players and bringing back their own free agents rather than chasing a big trade for a guy like Devin Booker.
That means continuing to find the right players to put around the core, of building a cohesive team whose skillsets complement one another.
The Pistons will pounce if the right deal comes up, but they don’t have to be in a hurry to find it, as the improvement they need to be contenders may come from within.