The Detroit Pistons went from 14 wins to 44 in just one offseason, but apparently Trajan Langdon and the front office had little to do with it, according to recent rankings.
CBS Sports put together rankings of all 30 front offices in the NBA, with the OKC Thunder predictably coming in 1st and our old friends Joe Dumars and Troy Weaver coming dead last in New Orleans, an impressive feat considering they haven’t even had one full offseason.
For me, there is a sizeable gap between OKC and everyone else, and you can argue the merits and nuances of just about every other ranking.
The Pistons landed 19th, which seems ridiculously low considering they just had one of the biggest turnarounds in NBA history, which was largely fueled by changes to the coaching staff and veteran role players that Langdon added in the offseason.
Langdon immediately got veterans to complement his young core and found the right guy to coach them, two things the previous front office was never able to do. He didn’t draft most of the young talent the Pistons have, but he did a great job building around them.
Langdon got no credit from CBS for the Pistons’ success, and their rankings did have a strong bias towards lottery luck.
Detroit Pistons: A couple of ping pong balls
The most laughable ranking was the San Antonio Spurs landing at #3 even though they’ve won exactly squat and have had more lottery luck than any other team, which CBS admitted.
The Spurs haven’t been to the playoffs since 2018 and only look so stacked now because they moved up in the lottery the last three seasons, including in the year to land Victor Wembanyama, who is the sole reason they are ranked this highly.
The Washington Wizards (who are ranked 18th, one ahead of the Pistons) were one ping pong ball away from Wembanyama, so would they be third had luck gone the other way? If you take Wembanyama off the Spurs, they are a lottery team, as they were last season after he got injured. San Antonio was long the best front office in the league, but it feels like they are getting credited for luck and that any team that won the Wembanyama sweepstakes was going to be given undo credit for it.
The Spurs being ahead of the Cleveland Cavaliers and especially the Indiana Pacers, who put on a clinic of team building last season, is a joke.
I get that Trajan Langdon hasn’t had multiple years to evaluate, but he’s done more in that one year than several of the front offices ranked ahead of him, including the Warriors, Heat and 76ers who are riding on reputation, and in Philly's case, lottery luck of their own.
Langdon and the Pistons may get there eventually, but it will take more for him to get credit for this team’s success after not drafting most of them.