After winning three of four games, the Detroit Pistons have dropped three straight to push their record to 12-56 on the season.
Though they did lose one on a last-second shot, the games were a painful reminder that the gap between the Pistons and the good teams is still wide. There is no shame in losing to Miami (twice) or Boston shorthanded on the road, but they are hardly going to raise a banner when only one of the games was really close. I'm not overreacting to a few losses, just as we shouldn't have overreacted when the Pistons won three of four games against bad, shorthanded teams. The record is what it is and the Pistons are bad.
The bar for this team has been set so low that heartbreaking losses are seen as a sign of improvement even though the team is on its way to the worst record in franchise history if they don't win a few more games. The standards could not be lower.
The big question is whether there is anything to suggest it won't be the same next season if the Pistons bring back the same cast of players. Will a few months of offseason be enough for this team to make meaningful progress next season? I have my doubts.
The fit of the Detroit Pistons Core Four
We've talked a lot about this, but there are legitimate questions about the viability of the "Core Four" as they've inappropriately been named. Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Ausar Thompson and Jalen Duren have all shown star flashes as individual players, and in a vacuum, all of them have big potential. But do they work as a group?
Three of the four can't shoot and when you throw Isaiah Stewart into the mix, you have a starting five whose skills don't complement each other. They are young. They can improve and almost certainly will, but how long can the Pistons wait? Will all of these players be on their second contracts?
Jaden Ivey has regressed as a shooter and needs the ball in his hands to be effective. Thompson has improved of late but is shooting 18 percent from 3-point range this season. Duren just dunks.
This is not a knock on any of them as individual players, but unless something changes, their fit with Cade Cunningham as a group are questionable and that's before you even get to the defense, which is currently the worst in franchise history.
And it's especially trying when you have a young group that has done nothing but lose together, which is one of the challenges of building exclusively through the draft. All of your best players are the same age, learning the same bad habits of losing teams at the same time.
This is why their best chance for meaningful change may be to trade one or more of them.
Trading from the Core Four
With limited free agent options, the Pistons' best chance to shake up their roster and build a more logical one may be to trade one or more of their young players for some established help.
The Pistons can't trade their 2024 draft pick until draft day and still owe one to the Knicks, so they don't have the big chest full of draft assets to use in a trade.
That leaves one of the young players. Jaden Ivey and a top-5 pick (if the Pistons have one) is the start of a trade package that could move the needle for a more established player.
Jalen Duren has value for a team looking for a young center and could net a forward in the right deal. If I'm the GM of the Pistons, pretty much everyone is on the table in a deal that brings back the right guy.
Adding 2-3 role players to this roster is not likely to be enough to push them into competitiveness anytime soon. Trading a young player is always a risk, and it always has the potential to bite you, but so does sticking with the wrong thing for too long.
Another question: Do you trust this front office to make sweeping changes?
The Detroit Pistons and Troy Weaver
If Troy Weaver doesn't get fired at the end of the season, he will be under pressure to put a winning roster together for the first time in his career as GM.
This is a frightening proposition, as a desperate GM is a dangerous one. Unless Weaver has been given assurances about his job security, allowing him to make sweeping, long-term changes to the roster could be a huge mistake.
If the Pistons are going to shake up this roster even more, they have to get it right, especially if it involves moving one of their young players. And if that is the case, do you trust this front office to do it? Should the Pistons bring in a new point of view? These are valid questions.
This isn't going to be easy, as there isn't a clear star target, so the Pistons may be stuck with internal growth as their main source of improvement, and signs are pointing to that not being enough, at least not in the immediate future.
Making the necessary changes to the roster and front office won't be easy, which is why we might not see them, in which case I'll likely be writing some version of this next year.