The Detroit Pistons have hoped to build a steady pipeline of talent from the draft to the NBA and they have a fair start with the group they have assembled.
But they’ve also had plenty of the opposite, with guys making Detroit their last stop before they leave the NBA for their sofas or for teams overseas.
The Pistons have had questionable drafts, evidenced by only having one young player ranked in the top-100 players, but they’ve also been bad at finding talent outside of the first round of the draft.
They’ve missed on second-round picks, reclamation projects and first-round busts whose upside they were never able to untap.
One of those reclamation projects was Hamidou Diallo, who the Pistons traded Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk and a second-round pick to acquire back in 2021.
He is the latest former Pistons player to leave the NBA, as Diallo recently signed with the Shanxi Loongs of the Chinese League according to Sportnado.
Earlier in the summer, Evan Fournier, who last played 29 games for the Pistons, accepted a deal to play in Greece.
The Pistons to out of the league pipeline continues.
Former Detroit Pistons who are no longer in the NBA
Every team has a certain amount of turnover with guys at the ends of their careers or end-of-the-bench players who fell short.
The Pistons have had guys like Nerlens Noel and Joe Harris, salary dumps Detroit took on who were never expected to play meaningful roles, though both were even worse than expected.
The Pistons have churned through too many two-way and back-of-the-bench guys to list here but some of the notable recent ones are Troy Brown Jr., RJ Hampton and Frank Jackson, who are all currently out of the NBA.
But it’s not just fringe guys and old players that have used the Pistons as their final stop.
The Pistons missed big on draft picks Stanley Johnson (Turkey), Sekou Doumbouya (Spain), Isaiah Livers (homeless) and Killian Hayes, who had to sign a one-year minimum deal with the tanking Nets after the Pistons waived him last season and no one wanted him.
Not all your draft picks are going to be homeruns, but you’d hope that first-round picks could at least stay in the league, which hasn’t been the case for many of the guys the Pistons have chosen over the years.
Part of it was Troy Weaver’s poor drafting and insistence on taking chances on players that were busts for other teams, so hopefully Trajan Langdon will end that cycle.
The Pistons have been a feeder system for the leagues of the world and Diallo is just the latest to use Detroit as his final stop before heading overseas.