The NBA rumor mill is in full production, and whispers and conjecture and signs and portents are swirling around the league. All-Stars from Jimmy Butler to Zach LaVine to Brandon Ingram are being bandied about as potentially on the move.
The Detroit Pistons have been out of the All-Star Game for quite some time. Their last All-Star selection was Blake Griffin in 2018-19, and they haven't had a true tentpole franchise star since Chauncey Billups. Cade Cunningham hopes to rise to that level, but he hasn't arrived yet.
The Pistons would love to find themselves in the mix for an All-Star player, someone to take some of the load off of Cunningham and make them a more impactful offensive team. If these star players are truly available, could the Detroit Pistons trade for them?
It's certainly possible, but given this team needs to continue adding young talent and that their chances of doing much of anything even with an All-Star on board are slim, it's extremely unlikely that they will trade for a star player this season.
Yet at the same time, they may be the single-most likely team to be a part of a star trade.
The Detroit Pistons are sure to be involved
Only one team in the NBA has cap space right now: the Detroit Pistons. That gives them the most flexibility of any team in the league to be involved in a trade. They can take back players without sending any salary out, they can pull off unbalanced trades where they send out a small amount of salary and take back a lot, or even add a player, waive them, then add another.
That could be helpful if the Pistons were trying to improve the roster heading into the stretch run, in order to arm themselves for a push into the Play-In Tournament. Hopefully, Troy Weaver and the organization understand where they are in the life cycle of their team, and instead weaponize their cap space to help other teams make their win-now moves. In the process, they can stockpile valuable draft capital to use in building a sustainable winner in Detroit.
The new salary cap restrictions for teams in the luxury tax are draconian, and the most common restriction laid onto other teams is that they cannot take back more salary than they send out. Get together two teams in such a situation, and you need both teams to lower their salary in a trade -- enter a team like the Detroit Pistons who can take on a contract and allow both teams to make their trade.
The Charlotte Hornets did this over the offseason, working to help the New York Knicks and Minnesota Timberwolves facillitate a trade. They took on salary to make the deal legal for both sides, and in the process were paid in draft picks for their efforts. A third team joining a deal to take on salary is not something that started under the new CBA, but it has become all-the-more important.
With Detroit being the only team in the league with cap space, they are now sitting in the catbird's seat. Any teams trying to pull off a deal that need salary relief have to outbid one another to pull off a trade; if they want to make it happen, they almost certainly need the Pistons to do it.
To see this in action, let's look at a trade recently pitched by Kevin Pelton at ESPN. It's a massive blockbuster deal involving Jimmy Butler, Brandon Ingram and Klay Thompson -- and it's only possible because of the Detroit Pistons.
Breaking down a blockbuster trade
Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat are setting fire to the last vestiges of their relationship, and it appears very likely he will be on the move. Whether or not that happens by the Trade Deadline likely depends on whether another team can work out a trade that is financially legal and makes it worth the Heat's time.
The Pistons could theoretically make a competitive offer for Butler, as they have a lot of draft capital, young prospects and can lower the Heat's salary out of the luxury tax entirely. Yet, as we discussed above, it makes no sense for the Pistons to trade for an aging, win-now veteran. They are not at that stage of their team rebuild yet. Adding Butler might not even get them into the playoffs.
The Dallas Mavericks, however, are a win-now team and were on Butler's short-list of preferred destinations. They could very well justify making a move for Butler to form a three-headed monster of Kyrie Irving, Luka Doncic and Butler. To do so, however, they need to move a lot of mid-tier salaries.
The Heat aren't necessarily interested in a pu pu platter of veteran contracts, and the best two players the Mavericks would like to send out -- Klay Thompson and Daniel Gafford -- are duplicitous with the two stars remaining in Miami, Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo. So a third team is needed.
The New Orleans Pelicans could be a third team, one who needs a starting center and could benefit from an elite shooter like Thompson. They also have a former All-Star wing in Brandon Ingram who is younger than Butler and likely will be less expensive to re-sign next summer. Ingram and Daniel Theis could route to the Heat from the Pelicans alongside Naji Marshall, while Gafford and Thompson could come to the Pelicans.
The problem is that all of the teams involved need to avoid adding money, which is where the Pistons step into the chat. If this construction was being negotiated by the three teams (what a conference call that would be) one of the teams would call up the Pistons and see what the cost of their cap space would be. In this scenario, that player would be Maxi Kleber.
In ESPN's version of the deal, the Mavericks pay a 2025 first-round pick (lottery-protected, although the odds of the Mavs falling out of the playoffs are slim to start) for Detroit to take back Kleber, who is owed $11 million both this season and next.
Jimmy Butler to Dallas, Klay Thompson to New Orleans, Brandon Ingram to Miami. The Pistons and their fans must be prepared to be a part of these star-studded trades but not actually landing the stars. The hope is that stockpiling draft assets means setting themselves up to draft such a star in the future, someone to grow alongside Cade Cunningham. That's their best path to long-term contention.
For now, however, they are going to be receiving a lot of phone calls about that cap space. If the Pistons are ready for it, they can be the grease to make the dreams of other teams come true. All it's going to take are a few choice draft picks.