The Detroit Pistons should have a decent shot at the No. 1 pick in next month’s NBA draft lottery. If they don’t get it, history tells us that’s just fine.
Not that Cade Cunningham wouldn’t fit snugly onto the team’s roster. Not that Cunningham wouldn’t give the Pistons one of the best young cores in the league.
It’s just that when we talk about lottery luck — and Detroit’s lack of it — we shouldn’t be talking solely about the No. 1 pick.
And, yes, Cunningham has the potential to be the best player on a championship-contending team; he would instantly become the most promising young star to grace this region in eons.
But you have to go back five years to find an NBA champ led by its own No. 1 overallpick — when LeBron James carried the Cleveland Cavaliers to the 2016 title. Though, if you want to get picky, James helped win that title after returning to Cleveland as a free agent.
As it happened, the Cavaliers also had Kyrie Irving, their No. 1 overall pick in 2011. A player as skilled and breathtaking as anyone who’s ever played. Yet as gifted as he is, he isn’t the centerpiece of a title team.
That’s the point with No. 1 picks: Not that many are. Or, even if they do become that player, they are wearing another team’s uniform.
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Like, say… James.
And yet, before James led Cleveland to its 2016 title, you have to go back even further to find another franchise with its own No. 1 overall raising a banner.
Want to guess?
Not the Los Angeles Lakers. Nor the Miami Heat. Nor the Boston Celtics.
It was the Spurs. Yes, the team that swept James in the 2007 Finals when Tim Duncan — No. 1 overall in 1998 — was still their best player. But by the time San Antonio its fifth title with Duncan, in 2014, he was no longer its best player.
Tony Parker was. Or maybe Manu Ginobli was. Or maybe Kawhi Leonard was. Leonard, after all, won the Finals MVP as the Spurs beat James’ Heat in five games.
Do you know where San Antonio found Leonard? With the 15th pick in 2011, after it had traded with Indiana to move up.
Not that title teams are best built drafting midway through the first round. But players can be found there, as Pistons general manager Troy Weaver is proving with this year’s roster.
And that’s the point: Lottery luck is helpful and, at times, important, especially in years where a generational talent comes along. Yet draft luck counts infinitely more.
The last time the Pistons had a top-five pick — 2003, when James went No. 1 — they took Darko Milicic at No. 2, after the Grizzlies had moved up in the lottery, only to have to surrender the pick to the Pistons. (Sorry to remind you.) The Denver Nuggets took Carmelo Anthony with the next pick. The Heat took Dwyane Wade right after.
Wade ended up as the second-best player in that draft, behind James, and later helped recruit James to Miami (OK, the temperature and sand helped recruit him, too.) And while Pat Riley deserves credit for drafting Wade, who is to say he wouldn’t have drafted Milicic or Anthony if he’d had the chance?
It’s not unreasonable to say the Heat caught a break.
Every year, there are franchises that get lucky. You can argue that perennially successful franchises create their own luck, and that some general managers are better at predicting future success more than others. That is true.
The Nuggets, for example, are set up to contend for the next several years, with the likely league MVP this season in center Nikola Jokic. He was drafted in the second round, at No. 41 overall.
Obviously, Jokic is an outlier. Finding MVPs that high in the draft almost never happens. In fact, it never has — Steve Nash and Giannis Antetokounmpo, each selected at No. 15, are the lowest drafted MVPs.
But the Nuggets aren’t contenders only because of Jokic. They grabbed Jamal Murray at No. 7 in 2016 and Michael Porter Jr. at No. 14 in 2018. Murray broke out in last year’s playoff bubble in Orlando. Porter is on the verge of stardom as I type.
It’s too soon to say what the ceiling is for Weaver’s first draft class, but not too soon to say he found three starters: Killian Hayes, Isaiah Stewart and Saddiq Bey — by their 2020 draft order — all have the potential to become very good players, and maybe even better than that.
Adding a player like Cunningham — a 6-8 wing who shows flashes of Luka Doncic — is beyond tantalizing. Wishing for some luck in next month’s lottery makes sense. The Pistons’ fanbase deserves it.
Getting the No. 1 pick, though, isn’t the best predictor of future parades. In the last 38 years, only three No. 1 picks have been the best players on title-winning teams that drafted them: Duncan, James and Akeem Olajuwon.
History says teams are generally better off with picks in the next four or five. That’s the luck the Pistons need.
Weaver looks like he can take it from there.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.