The Detroit Pistons said change were coming and they made good on that promise by completely revamping the roster before the NBA trade deadline.
It wasn’t a complete home run and many national pundits lamented the lack of return the Pistons got from trading veterans Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks. But the Pistons did get younger, faster and hopefully better defensively by adding Simone Fontecchio and Quentin Grimes.
The flurry of trades and cuts left the Pistons with an open roster spot that they reportedly filled yesterday by giving Tosan Evbuomwan a 10-day contract.
The Pistons are signing F Tosan Evbuomwan on a 10-day contract, @georgelangberg of GSL Sports Group tells ESPN. Evbuomwan — a rookie off Princeton’s Sweet 16 team — recently completed a 10-day with Memphis. He’s averaged 15 points for G League’s Motor City Cruise this season. pic.twitter.com/mmvnuWXeVa
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) February 11, 2024
Evbuomwan has spent most of his season with the Motor City Cruise, but recently completed a 10-day contract with the Grizzlies, which may be part of the motivation for bringing him back to Detroit.
It’s nice to see the Pistons finally use their G-League.
The Detroit Pistons sign Tosan Evbuomwan
Evbuomwan only played in four games for the injury-depleted Grizzlies and didn’t do much, but he was having a nice season in the G-League, averaging 15 points and seven rebounds per game on 55/39/86 shooting splits, though he wasn’t shooting a big volume from long range.
It was somewhat surprising to see the Pistons not give this spot to Stanley Umude, who has played well in limited action this season and came up to give the Pistons some minutes after the trade deadline left them with just seven active players.
The Pistons have been criticized by many (including me) for their lack of production in the developmental level, as they have gotten next to nothing from their G-League affiliate and/or two-way contracts over the last several seasons.
This is unacceptable for a team whose sole goal was player development and has had a lot of free minutes to give players a try at they tanked away the last three seasons.
Evbuomwan has good size for the wing and can shoot a little, so it will be interesting if he sees spot minutes during this 10-day contract. The Pistons could use this open roster spot to try out some additional G-League players for the rest of the season and see if one of them can stick.