Detroit Pistons Draft Lottery Talk: Go Luck Yourself
“I’ve suffered through the years, and shed so many tears.” – 2Pac
Clearly ‘Pac was referencing/predicting Detroit’s draft lottery luck, or lack thereof, in this classic from Me Against the World (1995). Remember, he was wearing a Wings jersey coming out of court that one time, so he’s clearly a fan. He’s probably watching the Fox Sports Go app on that island he’s been hiding on since ’96. Have you seen T-Mobile’s 5G coverage?
Pist-on by the lottery gods
The latest case of unfortunate ball juggling came Thursday when the Pistons, owners of the fifth-worst record in the NBA at 20-46, fell to No. 7 after the 2020 draft lottery process. This marks the 14th consecutive lottery the Pistons have been involved in where they have been unable to improve their selection slot relative to their final position in the standings.
Can we let that marinate for a moment?
Detroit has never – not even once – improved its draft position since the NBA draft lottery came into existence in 1985. No matter the format, which has changed several times throughout the years (envelopes –> ping pong balls, top 3 –> top 4 draws, weighted odds adjustments, etc.) fate has never shined upon this franchise in this particular exercise.
What about 1994 when they drafted Grant Hill at No. 3, you might ask? Nope, the Pistons finished tied for the second-worst record the previous season, so that’s a net -1.
What about the Darko draft? Everyone knows the Pistons passed up a parade of future hall of famers to take the human victory cigar second overall in 2003. Can’t count that as a lucky year either as that was technically the Grizzlies’ selection (Detroit owned Memphis’ first-round pick via trade). Yes, that means Detroit had to give up something just to make one of the worst draft misfires in NBA history.
While failing to land the top spot in the lottery isn’t exactly rare territory – 10 franchises have never won that little song and dance – never once benefitting from the process in its 36-year history is a special kind of hell.
It doesn’t take a jump to the top spot to have a franchise-altering talent unexpectedly fall into your lap. In fact, immediately following the lottery restructuring of 1990, middling teams began finding themselves the beneficiary of all-star and even hall of fame level talent that they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to, even without “winning” the lottery.
In 1990, a Seattle jump from 10 to 2 meant an upgrade from a Rumeal Robinson (Go Blue) -type player to Gary Payton. How about the Hornets jumping from Todd Day to Alonzo Morning territory after a six-spot rise to No. 2 in ’92? Charlotte ran it back in 1999 when they parlayed a winning season into a 10-spot jump to No. 3, landing Baron Davis.
This is far from an exhaustive list, and we’ll get back to those pesky Hornets in a minute, considering they just did it again in 2020.
The wonderful nerds over at FiveThirtyEight crunched some numbers and quantified each franchise’s lottery “luck” over the course of history. They determined that, despite landing the top spot in the draft for the second time in the past six seasons, the Minnesota Timberwolves are actually the league’s unluckiest team, logging a net -15 movement over the course of their 23 lottery appearances.
I’m gonna have to call BS on that one.
When you’ve had 23 cracks at the lottery – second only to Sacramento’s 25 (and MIN didn’t even join the league until 1989) – and you enter with an average pre-lottery position of 5.43 (AKA in 23 of the past 31 years, they have been roughly the fifth-worst team in the NBA…WOOF!), there is a lot more room to move back than up.
Determining overall luck based on total movement over time is inherently flawed. Were the T-Wolves not lucky in 2015 when they entered the lottery with the worst record (and therefore the best odds) and landed the top pick with only a 1 in 4 chance to do so? Of course they were, despite it registering a zero on the plus/minus movement scale.
The Pistons aren’t the only team that thinks the lottery gods have some splaining to do. A quick review of the lottery luck table shows that the Heat, Mavericks, and Nuggets (see that precision typing, John Focke?) all have been left at the alter by lady luck more often than not. But my tears are reserved for my team and my city, not yours.
That.Damn.Rona
At the end of the day, this is all the damn ‘Rona’s fault. The Pistons were settling into a really nice groove before the world ended, from my perspective at least.
Detroit lost 12 of their final 13 games before the shutdown and informally announced their intentions to rebuild. The kids were getting a ton of developmental run after finally giving Andre Drummond the boot (good riddance) and the buyouts of the vets they couldn’t flip at the trade deadline. The roster on any given night functioned as a glorified training camp, with players being plucked off the scrap heap and given 10-day contracts in the hope of striking gold.
Oddly enough, nearly every loss was competitive, regardless of the opponent, even more so than when the Pistons had 8-seed dreams earlier in the season. Christian Wood’s coming-out party was becoming appointment television, because he’s a bad boy. He seemingly set a new career-high in scoring every night, including a 30-spot on March 7th against Rudy Gobert, who is in the running for his third consecutive Defensive Player of the Year award, and a 32-point feast with all the stuffings against Joel Embiid in the final game before the shutdown.
A murderer’s row of an end-of-season schedule made a bottom-3 finish something between likely and a foregone conclusion. Given the fact that a bottom-3 finish is all that’s required to claim a share of the best lottery odds, third from the bottom is somewhat of a rebuild sweet spot.
But alas, the shutdown locked the Pistons into the fifth-best lottery odds, only one win and mere percentage points ahead of third-place Minnesota, who eventually claimed the top spot.
It’s salt in the wound when you consider the two teams that leapfrogged Detroit, pushing them back two slots to No. 7, are the Chicago Bulls and Charlotte Hornets. Both are Eastern Conference teams, with Chicago being a Central Division rival, which means if these teams nail their picks we will be seeing plenty of said player over the next several years. And it’s not like Charlotte needs any help disposing of the Pistons, as that thoroughly mediocre team has dusted Detroit 10 consecutive times.
Like I said, special kind of hell.
Dream Weaver
I’m getting better at handling disappointment, despite what my every-word-I-type-on-this-site might suggest. But there’s room for improvement in my game. My rational brain tells me that when things (like lotteries) are purely luck based you don’t have to worry about all the noise and extenuating circumstances that come with being a Detroit sports fan. At some point math will take over and give your roster construction opportunities a much needed shot in the arm. Right? RIGHT!!!!?
Enter new Pistons GM Troy Weaver, who has something for me and anyone else who is out here crying about bad bounces:
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Oh, you got me right in the feels with that one Mr. Weaver. That’s the slap in the face I needed. Probably my favorite quote since my man C-Wood, after a kerfuffle with Julius Randle of the Knicks, responded by saying “I play in Detroit. I gotta bring that Detroit grit”.
Some subtle, some overt, this franchise is making some culture shifts that suggest they are laying the foundation for something sustainable in the D. And Weaver is correct in the notion that if you’re relying on luck as your primary business model you have major problems with your infrastructure. You’d love to have the greatest allotment of resources possible, but there is more than one way to build a team.
Weaver is ready to get his hands dirty here and is perfectly happy picking 1st, 7th, or 13th. So let’s stop bawling start balling. We didn’t want the top pick anyways, amirite?
Time for some good old-fashioned narrative spinning.
This draft is going to be a crap shoot
Look at 100 different draft boards and you might get 100 unique combinations of how the top-10 of this draft is going to shake out, including all the way at the tippy-top. There are no set-it-and-forget-it generational talents in this class, but some combination of Anthony Edwards, James Wiseman, and LeMelo Ball appear to be the most common names in the top-3. Each comes with warts of various sizes.
It is entirely possible that whoever Weaver targets at No. 7 will turn out to be a better player than any or all of the above players if the Pistons play their cards right. This possibility exists every year, but the odds are even greater in a weaker head-of-the-class.
The “eye for talent” is about to be tested
Troy Weaver was brought in as GM being billed as the draft analyst and scouting compliment to the bookkeeping skills of Senior Exec Ed Stefanski. His track record as Assistant GM for Oklahoma City in this regard is impressive, though he ultimately answered to GM Sam Presti and began his OKC tenure with the star power and aforementioned draft resources that have alluded the Pistons for years.
The eye for talent will be tested immediately, given that all teams will be operating with less information than ever due to the pandemic-shortened college and international seasons.
Emphasis on the word international, given that among the top-17 players in The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie’s latest mock, players from seven different nations are represented: USA, Australia, Israel, Germany, Greece, New Zealand, and Spain. That amounts to a cool 35% of the top-17 players coming from across the briny deep. I hope there are some international calling cards lying around the LCA offices.
If Weaver’s talent identification skills are as advertised, this might be the perfect draft to flex those talent identification eyeballs and snag a player the rest are sleeping on.
Stick with the plan
Perhaps this draft slip was a blessing in disguise.
It took a while for owner Tom Gores to come around on the whole rebuild concept. He even earned “meddling owner” status when he nixed multiple Andre Drummond trades during the Stan Van Gundy era. I could imagine a scenario where, in an alternate universe, the Pistons landed in the top-3 and Gores’ eyes got wide again. He would fail to realize that a top pick in this year’s class wouldn’t be nearly as valuable relative to other drafts and put undue pressure on the front office to compete in 2020-21 rather than build something sustainable.
Because a “sustainable” model is the goal, straight from the head coach’s mouth…
Keeping expectations realistic is a good way to keep a meddling owner and impatient fans off your back, allowing you to make methodical transactions with your brain rather than emotional ones with your heart.
Perhaps a probable player-personality pivot proves a priority
It might be wise, in a draft where the level of high-end talent is down, to instead pivot to a lower-ceiling, but higher-floor “character guy”. These Weaver quotes from well before the lottery shakedown leads you to believe there is little chance the Pistons chase talent at the expense of work ethic and personality…
Of course, the goal is to have both high-end talent and high character. For better or worse, there is a reason recent Pistons Boban Marjanovic and Anthony Tolliver end up on a new team every year, despite being two of the best locker room guys this side of the Mississippi. Although, if I had my druthers, I would sign culture guys in a heartbeat, even if their box scores don’t justify their salaries. Just limit the minutes and limit the damage, but keep the mental health benefits that a happy workplace provides to the collective.
A player’s attitude and basketball IQ is much less volatile than his 3PT% or turnover rate. Typically, a rebuilding franchise in a less-than-sexy free agent locale is best served throwing darts at high-talent players in the draft in hopes of landing a future star, much like Detroit did last year with Sekou Doumbouya. But for a franchise that hasn’t had much of an identity since Big Ben and dem boyz were throwing a wrench in the plans of the stars and scrubs business model, prioritizing personality over production might be a prudent pivot.
Yes, ‘Pac and the rest of Pistons fans have suffered through the years, and shed so many tears.
But do you remember what another line from that track is?
“My every move is a calculated step”.
That’s how I want my basketball team built. Don’t pay attention to the rest of the lyrics. Most of them have nothing to do with NBA player/personnel decisions.
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