The Detroit Pistons are starting a new era under new team president Trajan Langdon, but they are not starting over. This isn’t a rebuild of a rebuild. Instead, it will require Langdon to do something ousted GM Troy Weaver never bothered to do — build something in the first place.
In reflecting on the remarks from Langdon and owner Tom Gores at the former’s introductory presser, the two trod familiar ground. Langdon talked a lot about “not skipping steps,” a popular phrase during the Weaver era. He also mentioned building a solid foundation and instilling winning habits. Both Langon and Gores stressed the importance of development — development of the players and the importance of hiring a coach who could get the most out of those players.
One thing you never heard during Friday’s presser was about the franchise’s “restoration.” That was the mantra of the Weaver era. His overhaul of a roster was not a rebuild, no sir, he was charged with restoring a proud franchise that had lost its way.
While that is a simple linguistic flourish, with a bit of distance, we can recognize it as the canary in the coal mine of the entire Weaver era. It’s fitting that Troy Weaver never used the term “rebuild” because he never tried to build something in the first place.
He just collected young players and expected it all to work out. He never supported their development with the right kind of coach, the right kind of development, or maybe even if the pieces fit together in the first place.
When I think about restoration, I think about restoring an old car—an analogy Weaver used more than once.
In his mind, he was bringing something beautiful back to its former glory. But in reality, all he did was amass a collection of parts. He forgot to build anything in his four years in Detroit.
That is why I say this is not a rebuild of a rebuild. Because Weaver never took the time to build something in the first place. His tenure was full of grabbing the shiniest parts with the best specs you could ask for.
Retain a former Coach of the Year in Dwane Casey, and when he steps down, grab a coach who has just been in the NBA Finals in Monty Williams. There is nothing shinier than those credentials. Take fliers on players with amazing draft pedigree because the costs are so low and the benefits could be enormous. Does it matter that Jahlil Okafor, Josh Jackson, and James Wiseman were consistently horrible in the pros? Nah, they were top-3 picks.
Just grab the asset. Dont’ worry if they play only one side of the floor (Bojan Bogdanovic, Alec Burks, Ausar Thompson) and when you have a promising young center (Jalen Duren) with huge question marks at defense, you definitely want to make sure his only backup is an even worse defender (Wiseman).
He also was adamant about collecting parts by dipping into his credit. Weaver wanted to rebuild fast and sacrificed a number of assets (including promising players he inherited, a plethora of second-round picks, and even a future first-round pick that hasn’t conveyed) in order to take “his” guys — Isaiah Stewart, Saddiq Bey, and Marcus Sasser were all taken courtesy of picks gained in trades
The Hayes pick was a disaster, but those happen to every GM. The others were just fine, but even at the time weren’t thought to have home run upside. Bey, it should be noted, was shipped out for Wiseman, turning a marginal win into a definitive loss.
Weaver added more parts that might or might not fit together — Cade Cunningham at No. 1 overall was a no-brainer and, to strain the car analogy further, at least appears to be the engine of a good team. Does Jaden Ivey complement Cunningham in the back court? Maybe not but he was the best, err, player, on the draft board at the time.
During the Troy Weaver era, the team was so focused on creating future flexibility, it completed neglected its roster and any sense of team building. Weaver was banking on internal development from his chosen rookies and waiting on a big move that, sadly for him, never came because he was fired on the even of an opportunity to (mis)manage $65 million in salary cap spending.
Oddly, Weaver’s utter failure to even attempt to build a team is why I’m more bullish on the Pistons’ roster and its future than others. The parts are, in fact, intriguing. It’s just that nobody bothered to see if it can be in service of an actual NBA team.
All Trajan Langdon has to do is look at all these parts and start figuring out which pieces of the puzzle fit together and, crucially, what pieces they don’t even have yet.
The first piece is hiring a head coach that is actually aligned with developing a young team and helping them reach its potential. It also means hiring a true development staff that builds on strengths and eliminates weaknesses. That never felt like a priority during the Weaver era.
What we have heard from Langdon at his presser is that he at least gets the critical and fundamental shortcomings of where this franchise finds itself in year 5 of its rebuild.
A head coach that has the skills and mindset to develop a young roster, add a true development staff — and Detroit is already ahead of the game here by hiring renowned shot doctor Fred Vinson — and add shooting and spacing to allow Detroit to play 21st century basketball for the first time in many years. Langon has also hired a No. 2 (Michael Blackstone) in the front office with a history as an expert on the cap and trade and salary negotiations so that the Pistons can aggressively pursue additional assets instead of losing every single trade on the margins.
With the right coach, the right staff, and the right priorities, the Pistons could take their deep collection of parts whose fit is unclear — not just Cunningham and Ivey but Ausar Thompson, Jalen Duren, Marcus Sasser and Thursday’s first-round draft pick — and start figuring out how it can all be built into a legitimate NBA basketball team.
That doesn’t mean all those young players will work out, or that some won’t be dealt away in service of what the team needs going forward. But a franchise that seemed like it was doing absolutely nothing for two-plus years finally has a chance to do what’s always been needed. Not restore. Not rebuild. Just build.
Langdon calls it building the foundation. I’ll end this piece by handing it over to Langdon for his entire response about a potential timeline toward playoff contention, because this where he indicated what a foundation truly was, and is most instructive on what the team is likely to do this offseason:
“I don’t think there’s a timeframe of when we get to the playoffs. I think for us, it’s creating a foundation for young players, a foundation of winning, which means creating an environment of winning, you have to do that, before you can actually win between the lines.
You have to practice and compete at a certain level with a certain fiber of human beings in this facility every day. And that means not only the players, that means the coaching staff, and means front office. It means performance staff. We all have to help out in the development of our young players.
So I think creating that foundation, it’s paramount that we do that first. We can’t skip steps in terms of the development of this team in terms of creating an environment, again, a winning environment, which means holding these guys accountable every day, to winning plays to the smallest things of being on time.
And not only being on time on the court but being on time on a rotation, being on time on a lockout, texting somebody back in time, returning the call on time, all those things impact what a winning environment, which impacts a winning team.
So for us, it’s again, it’s that foundation that has to be said that it’s bringing in the right people. At the end of the day, we have to have enough talent to win at a high enough level. And we do have young talent, right? So it’s creating an atmosphere of how do we have that young talent reach their potential? I think that if the young talent that we have here reaches their potential, we have a chance to be pretty special. But again, we’re not going to skip steps, I can’t give you a timeline (on the playoffs). When we get there, we’ll get there.”