No NBA team is set up for long-term success better than the OKC Thunder, who just won the title with the youngest team in the league, have elite young talent locked into long-term deals and a ton of future draft picks. The Detroit Pistons have some of these elements but need to find a way to stockpile some extra picks.
The Thunder spent nearly a billion dollars this summer on the trio of players they see as their core, MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren. The rest of their payroll is rounded out with quality role players and guys on rookie deals, something that will keep coming, as OKC has 13 future first-round draft picks and 16 second rounders.
OKC had superstars to trade, which is how they ended up with all of these picks, a luxury the Pistons were not afforded. Detroit only just regained control of all of their first-rounders, which is good, but it would be nice to have a couple of extra picks banked, as it will be crucial to team building.
Cheap talent should be a high priority for the Pistons
The Pistons may have their own trio of players to lock into deals in Cade Cunningham, Ausar Thompson and/or Jalen Duren and Jaden Ivey. As of right now, only Cunningham has a second contract in hand, and the Pistons may eventually have to choose three of these four players to commit to, starting with Ivey and Duren, who are both eligible for extensions and will be restricted free agents if they don’t get them by the start of the season.
The Pistons also have quality role players on team-friendly deals, so they have some of the ingredients OKC used to win a title last season.
What they don’t have is 13 future first-round picks, a boon that will allow OKC to keep a constant influx of talented young players on rookie deals. The Thunder will be a 2nd-apron team next season, but aren’t sweating it, as they know there is more cheap talent coming and they can just keep flipping out players to get more.
As players other than their top three start to get more expensive, they can flip them for more picks and replace them with younger, cheaper talent, which will be crucial to sustained success under the current CBA.
Fans are mostly looking for ways to trade for stars, but it will be equally important to garner more draft picks and to consistently hit on them as a way to keep inexpensive talent subsidizing the big contracts at the top.