They don’t know what they have. Not yet. Not fully. And when you listen to the man charged with figuring it out, he sure sounds as if he isn’t in the biggest rush.
Nor should Trajan Langdon be. Not with the roster he’s got and helped build. Not with the youth of his Detroit Pistons. Not with the room to get better by staying more or less put.
“I think for us, I’ve always said: ‘Stay patient.’ I’m not going to change,” said the Pistons’ president of basketball operations May 7 for the news conference wrapping up his first season with the franchise.
“Have to make the right decision for sustainable success,” he said. “I think we have a group of guys that we can do that with. At what level, we don’t know right now. But we know a big thing for us this summer is going to be developing guys.”
Hear that?
That’s what you should want to hear. Langdon doesn’t sound like he’s ready to take a big swing this summer.
That’s a good thing.
He doesn’t have enough info. At best, he can guess as to what Ausar Thompson will look like in two years. Or Jalen Duren or Ron Holland or Jaden Ivey.
Yeah, he has an idea about each of them, and yeah, part of his job is to speculate, to gather as much intel as possible and make the best possible guess.
“After a couple days reflect, hell of a season for us,” said the Detroit Pistons president of basketball operations, days after his first season in charge concluded with a loss to the New York Knicks in Game 6 of the first round of the NBA playoffs. “I don’t know another way to put it. Surprising, gratifying. Guess it creates different expectations going into next year for us. We can see that both ways, positively and negatively. But I think there’s way more positives.”
It’ll be a quieter offseason than last year, when the Pistons hired Langdon, a new head coach, filled out the front office and added Ron Holland with the No. 5 overall pick. The focus now is on finding the right balance between patience and playoff gains.
There’s an understanding that, despite adding 30 wins to their 2023-24 total, there’s more maturing ahead. The health of Jaden Ivey and Isaiah Stewart, as well as improvement from players such as Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson, may be the primary drivers of the team’s growth next season.
“All these guys will come back and that continuity with this, not only the roster but the coaching staff and his philosophy that this group has never had before,” Langdon said. “That will be a positive through the summer and through next season as well. The questions will be there, about what we do. Do we add another person or do we just build from within? Like I said before, we’ll look at all avenues and decide what the best avenue is for us.”
Nba drafts are most likely bust picks. Just like the wings trade the pick. If you want to get the next step rookie and a dude not ready till after 2030 puts in the same spot
Yes, I am not going to pretend that it is easy to find players in the second round, but it has been done. But you expect teams to trade a superstar for a bunch of picks that have no value (your words)?
And thats when players stayed on 1 college team and actually developed. Now they are changing teams every 4 months they never develop.
And no not just this years picks. All of em.
This year, next years, and a few players. Theres absolutely no point to keeping the mid level players they have and the draft picks
