11 People who turned their backs on the Detroit Pistons

#5: Sean Elliott 

Sean Elliott played just one season for the Detroit Pistons and at that point, it was the worst of his career. You can forgive a player for having a bad season, but that wasn’t the worst of it. 

The Pistons had given up Dennis Rodman to trade for Elliott in the first place, and at the time both Elliott and the shady San Antonio Spurs hid the fact that he had a serious kidney disease. 

After this was announced, the Pistons had to drop him for nothing, and the Spurs swooped right in and grabbed him. Miraculously, Elliott was suddenly fine, arguably having the two best seasons of his career with the Spurs. 

I wrote about the incident in detail and how it affected the team well into the future. You can read it here. 

A cynic would say Elliott and the Spurs orchestrated this whole thing to get Rodman and then get Elliott back for nothing, which they did. 

But it also might have been that the severity of his illness and how it was going to affect his career was initially misunderstood.