When Trajan Langdon took over as president of the Detroit Pistons there was immediate speculation about what he would do.
Some of it turned out to be well founded, as Langdon emptied the front office and fired the coaching staff, moves that already seem to be paying dividends.
The next question was what he would do with the roster. Would he tear it down? Would he trade the young players and start from scratch?
He didn’t do any of those things, instead electing to take a measured approach, adding much-needed veterans and shooting before doing anything drastic.
A lot has been made of the moves Langdon made, but it’s the ones he didn’t make that may end up being the smartest.
Not trading Jaden Ivey or Jalen Duren looks like the right move early
There was rampant speculation that the Pistons would move on from one or both of Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren.
Ivey because he wasn’t a fit with Cade Cunnigham and Duren because he is not a defensive enforcer at age 20.
It’s far too early to say whether either of those things are definitively false, but preseason has given us hope and Langdon was smart not to be hasty.
How would we know if Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey are a good fit when the roster around them was such a mess? How would we know when Monty Williams yanked Ivey in and out of the starting five, never establishing a clear role?
How would we know if Jalen Duren can be a good defender? Not only is he only 20, but he was working within a broken defensive scheme with out of position, poor defenders around him.
It was impossible to judge what these players could be with a dysfunctional roster flanking them, something Langdon is hopefully on his way to remedying. Just adding Tobias Harris and Malik Beasley has made a noticeable difference in the offense, which makes you wonder what Troy Weaver was doing all that time.
The last four seasons have seen a Pistons roster populated with below replacement level players, making it challenging to know if some of the issues were fit or just the product of an awful team.
Both Ivey and Duren have shown improvements in key areas so far in preseason, but will obviously need to do it consistently in real games before it matters. If they do, Langdon will look smart for not selling low this summer when these young players had the stink of a historically bad season on them.
The Detroit Pistons are far from a finished product and still have everything to prove, but there is more confidence that Langdon was right to be patient with young players who may have just needed a new coach and a few passable NBA teammates to show what they can do.