| The Detroit News
After days of playing coy about Derrick Rose’s status — he went from an “upset stomach” to “personal reasons” to packing his bags — the Pistons made it official Monday morning, completing a trade with the Knicks that signals their intentions just a bit louder.
It’s not really that they’re giving in, or giving up on this season. It’s that they really are going all-in on giving themselves a chance to get this rebuild right, even buying up used lottery tickets while they wait for their own numbers to hit.
That’s what general manager Troy Weaver did again here with this Rose trade, adding another reclamation project in point guard Dennis Smith Jr.. from the Knicks. He’ll join a fellow top-10 pick from the 2017 draft in Josh Jackson here in Detroit, where the course correction is now largely complete.
“It’s a direction long-needed for this organization,” Pistons coach Dwane Casey said Monday, repeating something he’d first acknowledged last winter, shortly before the pandemic halted a season in which the Pistons already had waved a white flag of sorts.
That was only the part of the demolition job, though, trading away Andre Drummond and buying out Reggie Jackson’s contract. And now that the teardown is nearly complete — only three players remain from the roster Weaver inherited last summer — Casey was asked again how he felt about it.
After all, this was a coach who was talking about a mandate to “win right now” when he was hired by owner Tom Gores back in June 2018. Now 2½ years later, Casey finds himself coaching a roster that includes 10 players age 23 or younger, but also one that has won just five of 23 games this season — the worst record in the league.
“It’s not easy, believe me,” said Casey, whose team took the defending champion Lakers to double-overtime in Los Angeles on Saturday night. “To be honest, I didn’t envision this when I signed up to come here, to rebuild or retool.”
Challenge accepted
But it’s the clear-eyed vision now, from Gores on down, after years of pretending otherwise. And Casey insists he’s embracing the challenge.
“I enjoy it,” he said. “It’s part of the job description now and I’m having fun doing it. Don’t enjoy the losses, but it’s part of where we are right now as an organization. It was a long time coming, and Troy’s doing an excellent job of putting things in the right place, identifying the needs of the team going forward and I totally trust his vision.”
Pistons fans don’t really have a choice in that regard. But it’s hard to argue much with this latest move, other than to point out it’s one the team probably should’ve made last winter when Rose’s trade value was a bit higher.
Weaver was working in Oklahoma City then, so you can’t blame him for that. And as for the decision to pull the trigger now, rather than waiting another month to see if a better offer shook loose, Casey said, “I think anytime you have an opportunity while the skillet is hot, as my grandmother used to say, you gotta take advantage of it. I think that’s what it was: The opportunity was there.”
So they took what they could get and Rose got what he wanted, which probably was a factor in how this all played out, too. The Pistons found a willing — and rather obvious — trade partner in New York, where new Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeaux has a long history with Rose and where the front office is eager to turn a decent start to this season into something more. The Knicks haven’t made the playoffs in eight years, and they’ve taken a back seat to the Brooklyn Nets and their trio of stars: Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden.
If Rose was playing this season like he did last year, Weaver might’ve had an easier time prying away the Knicks’ other second-round pick, which just so happens to be the Pistons’ original second-rounder. But he’s not, and Weaver had to settle for a lesser pick from Charlotte via New York.
The Knicks will inherit Rose’s Early Bird Rights if they want to re-sign him this summer. The Pistons, meanwhile, have a similar option with Smith, though it’ll probably take more than some occasional flashes of his rookie promise over the next few months to convince the Pistons he’s worth a qualifying offer that would guarantee him a $7.7 million salary in 2021-22 — same as what Rose was making this season.
Rough go
The 23-year-old Smith has been through the wringer already in his brief NBA career. Casey will be his fifth head coach in three-plus seasons, and Detroit’s the third city he has called home as a pro. After Dallas made Smith the ninth overall pick in 2017, he earned second-team All-Rookie team honors for the Mavericks. But partway through his second NBA season, they sent him to the Knicks as part of the blockbuster Kristaps Porzingis deal. And his struggles in New York have been compounded by injuries, including a quad contusion that knocked him completely out of the rotation this season.
In Detroit, the explosive, 6-foot-2 guard will get a chance to play, with Rose gone and rookie Killian Hayes still sidelined indefinitely with a hip injury. Delon Wright has settled in as the starter, but after that, it’s Smith, rookie Saben Lee and another player on a two-way contract in Frank Jackson.
“Great competitor, tough guy, athletic as you-know-what,” Casey said, when asked for a scouting report of his newest player. “It’s a great opportunity to come in and show us what he can do as a point guard, and we’ll see what happens. Like I told him, it’s a clean slate.”
For Weaver, it’s more than just a shot in the dark, as he aggressively remakes this roster. It’s the additional draft capital that probably matters more than anything to him. The Pistons now own three picks in this summer’s draft, adding the pick the Knicks conveyed to their own first-rounder — a likely top-five pick — and Toronto’s second-rounder they’d previously acquired. As it stands, that’s three picks in the top 43, which isn’t bad.
Weaver’s may not be done selling off assets, either. Finding a way out of the final year of Blake Griffin’s contract seems like a pipe dream at this point. But finding a taker for Wayne Ellington at the deadline shouldn’t be a problem the way he’s playing, shooting nearly 50 percent from three-point range as a starter this season. There might be a market as well for Svi Mykhailiuk, who’ll be a restricted free agent this summer and was acquired prior to Weaver’s arrival. Neither player will fetch anything more than Rose, but something is better than nothing.
And just like Casey was saying about Smith, the team’s newest acquisition, “that’s what this league is about: Opportunity.” That’s what the Pistons are selling here, no doubt, because that’s the bargain they’ve finally made with themselves.
jniyo@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @JohnNiyo