There is really only one word to describe the Detroit Pistons' trade deadline: Chaotic.
At one point, they had 19 players on their roster and it seemed like they were somehow involved in every move as the busiest team in the league on the trade deadline.
Tom Gores promised change was coming and he didn't lie, as the Pistons turned over more than half their roster in two days, shipping out veterans, starting with Monte Morris.
Two trades got things started and I liked both of them for the Pistons, but for this, I am just going to look at the whole picture.
Detroit Pistons roster: Who is in and who is out?
Just to recap, here are the players who left the Pistons over the last two days:
Killian Hayes
Joe Harris
Monte Morris
Bojan Bogdanovic
Alec Burks
Danilo Gallinari
Here are the players the Pistons brought in to replace them:
Simone Fontecchio
Quentin Grimes
Shake Milton
Troy Brown Jr.
Evan Fournier
Malachi Flynn
The roster still needs an influx of talent, but the Pistons got younger, more dynamic, better defensively and didn't give up any of their financial flexibility. In fact, they opened up max cap space for next offseason.
Second-round picks also came and went (who cares?) but this was the basis of what happened.
Depending on who you ask, this was either a disaster or a home run for the Detroit Pistons.
Detroit has struggled to win this season, but you won't when you sign up with BetMGM! You'll instantly win $158 in bonus bets just for depositing $10 or more and then betting $5 or more on Detroit vs. LA. Sign up with BetMGM with this PistonPowered link today!
The trade deadline was a disaster for the Detroit Pistons
All of the people screaming that the Pistons should have traded Bogdanovic and Burks last season are patting themselves on the back today, as the two basically netted Quentin Grimes and a couple of second-round picks.
Rumor has it that Detroit turned down two first-round picks for Bogdanovic last season (this has never been confirmed) and if true, then it does look like they waited too long.
A lot of us dreamed of a world where one of the two veteran shooters would bring back a first-round pick, but the Pistons managed to trade both of them to a team that has plenty of picks to give up (including one from the Pistons that may never convey) and didn't walk away with one of them.
Most national pundits were applauding the Knicks for adding two useful veterans without having to give up a first.
The Pistons then had to cut four players completely, sending out the 7th pick from the 2020 draft for nothing. The two players they traded for last summer are gone and contributed absolutely nothing to the team.
The Pistons overvalued their own guys (as usual), just lost their best shooters for peanuts and still aren't any closer to being good.
Of course, there is a different point of view that says this was exactly what the team needed.
The Detroit Pistons' trade deadline was a home run
One thing is for certain: Both the front office and the fanbase wildly overvalued Bojan Bogdanovic, a player who is nearly 35 years old, has been injured the last two seasons and can't defend.
In an ideal world, they would have gotten a first-round pick from the Knicks, but it became clear that wasn't going to happen, even with Burks also attached. It turns out winning teams don't want a bunch of players from the worst team in the league, shocker. The Pistons pivoted to looking for two-way wings that better fit their young core.
And they got two of them in Simone Fontecchio and Quentin Grimes, guys who are both good 3-point shooters on far less volume than you'd get from Bogdanovic and Burks, but far better defenders.
Grimes is an absolute dawg and will quickly be a fan favorite in Detroit. I can't wait to watch him and Ausar get after it on defense.
Fontecchio will give the Pistons a chunk of Bogdanovic's offense. Bojan is obviously the superior offensive player, but Fontecchio is a decent defender as well. The Pistons have been scoring plenty of points of late, but their defense has been horrendous and now it is better.
Grimes has a team-friendly year left on his deal at just over $4 million and Fontecchio will be a restricted free agent who the Pistons should be able to re-sign for a reasonable amount, so they picked up two two-way wings and a couple of second-round picks without digging into their cap space.
You can argue that they should have traded Bogdanovic last season, and maybe they should have, but yesterday they could only trade the Bogey they had and he just didn't have that much value to other teams.
And can we remember that the Pistons have won exactly squat with Bogdanovic and Burks? They had to get the stink of this losing roster off of them and they did.
While there were four other players involved, these trades comes down to Grimes and Fontecchio, who are younger, cheaper, better defensively and better fits with the young core.
They aren't the final pieces to the championship puzzle, but they are solid rotation players who have been on winning teams and can fill defined roles. In fact, everyone slips into a more defined role with less of a logjam at guard and more minutes for the Core Four and Sasser.
You can argue about the past and about Weaver's asset management, which has admittedly not been great, but the Pistons are a better team than they were two days ago and I am excited to see what these new players bring.
So those are the two extreme sides of the day, and my final grade will reflect a little from each.
Grade for the Detroit Pistons' trade deadline
I'll sound like a cowardly fence rider here, but my opinion on the trade deadline falls somewhere in the big gray area between the two extremes.
It's also hard to give a grade without knowing what comes next. If the Pistons re-sign Fontecchio to a team-friendly deal, great, I love that move. If Grimes helps solve some of their defensive problems on the wing and stays on long-term, also great, I love his toughness and he and former Houston teammate Marcus Sasser have shown they can win together.
If the Pistons use their huge amount of cap space to land another impact player (Tobias Harris seems most likely now) and fill out the rest of their roster with useful role players, also great, they can turn this around in one offseason and come back ready to compete.
So we can't really judge until we know if any of those things are going to happen and we currently don't.
But based on what happened over the last two days, I don't hate what the Pistons have done. Yes, it would have been nice to get more for Bogey, so feel free to rail on about Troy Weaver's asset management and market evaluation.
But in the end, this is a better fitting roster than the one they had, the Pistons didn't do anything catastrophically stupid or give up any financial flexibility.
So I am kind of happy (weird feeling) and cautiously excited about the future for the Detroit Pistons, who jettisoned a lot of dead weight and finally tried to build a roster that fits their core. It's just too bad it took them most of a wasted season to figure it out.