Troy Weaver making same mistakes that set the Pistons back years

The Detroit Pistons exited the Troy Weaver era without a single extra draft asset even though they had been the worst team in the league for most of his tenure. 

This is because Weaver waited too long to trade the few coveted players he had over the years until it was too late, a mistake he’s likely repeating right now as GM of the New Orleans Pelicans. 

He has Trey Murphy III, a guy who was getting a lot of attention prior to the draft to the point it looked as though he would be moved, especially after the Pelicans made it clear that they wanted into the 2026 Draft. 

But a deal never materialized, partly because of the asking cost, which is reportedly astronomical. TMIII is a very good player, but it’s hard for teams to justify giving up their best prospects and picks for him. 

Weaver likely already missed his best opportunity to cash in around the draft and has now left his team in the exact spot he always left the Pistons, with a team in competitive purgatory sitting on deteriorating assets. 

The Detroit Pistons know this story all too well 

Troy Weaver was very good at drafting, and you have to give him credit for selecting most of the top players the Pistons currently employ, including superstar Cade Cunningham. 

But he was terrible at everything else, often to the point that I wondered if he was actually working for the Knicks or the Pistons. 

Of his many bad decisions, setting a ridiculous asking price for players and then sitting on them as their value declined, was probably his worst. 

He did this with Jerami Grant, Bojan Bogdanovic and to a lesser degree, Alec Burks. All of these guys had far more value prior to Weaver actually dealing them, and in the case of the latter two guys, he ended up having to give them away for nothing. 

He just kept waiting for a team to get desperate enough to cave, but it never happened, and the same could be brewing for Trey Murphy III and Herb Jones. It’s reported that Weaver is looking for TWO first-round picks for Jones, a defensive specialist who is already 27 years old, which is a price I doubt anyone will pay. 

Maybe he envisions just keeping these players and trying to actually compete next season, but that’s not likely to happen anyway, so he’s left his roster the same as he did in Detroit, in complete competitive limbo between being a playoff contender and a lottery team. 

It’s still possible someone will bite on Weaver’s high asking price for TMIII, but if not, his asset management will be called into question just as it was with the Pistons. 

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