The Detroit Pistons were the league’s most active team before the 2024 NBA Trade Deadline, executing a bevy of trades to move on from some veterans and shake up what has been the worst team in the league this season.
Their two biggest moves, however, clearly revealed their goals. Throughout the season, Detroit has been missing players who could be effective on offense and defense. They have a lot of players who thrive on one side of the court, but not many who could hang in on both. In acquiring Simone Fontecchio from the Utah Jazz and Quentin Grimes as the headliner in a trade with the New York Knicks involving veterans Bojan Bogdanović and Alec Burks, Detroit began the process of changing that.
Ideally, every five-man unit a team uses should be well stocked with a collection of several key skills: Perimeter point-of-attack defenders, playmakers, ballhandlers, shot creators, rim protectors, shooters, floor spacers for ballhandlers, drivers who can pressure the rim, stout individual stoppers, smart team defenders who make timely early rotations and scramble to cover for others’ mistakes, unselfish ball movers, detail-oriented court readers who can adopt on the fly and more. You’ll notice that’s a lot more than five skills, so the only way to be a successful NBA team is to have a lot of players who can check as many of those boxes as possible, both offensively and defensively.
While I have not been impressed with how new Pistons coach Monty Williams has doled out playing time and constructed his team’s lineups, he’s also been constricted by the roster at his disposal. General manager Troy Weaver and the Pistons’ front office have done reasonably well with their draft picks, but have managed those players and assets spectacularly poorly thereafter. For example: Detroit traded a total of eight second-round picks to acquire and remove Marvin Bagley III and James Wiseman from the roster — two to acquire Bagley from the Kings, four to acquire Wiseman from the Warriors, and two to trade Bagley’s negatively-valued contract away to the Wizards. The result is a roster full of one-way players who do not fit together, making it difficult to evaluate the talent on hand.
For the sake of Pistons fans, hopefully the trades for Fontecchio and Grimes are the start of a much-needed philosophical change. Fontecchio, a 28-year-old forward from Italy, is more of a proven commodity who averaged nine points and 3.5 rebounds per game while shooting better than 39 percent from 3-point range and holding his own on defense. He should help Detroit, and the Pistons will have the inside track on re-signing him as a restricted free agent.
But it’s Grimes who represents the best chance for the Pistons’ midseason makeover to bear fruit. I thought the 23-year-old was the best asset traded by any team on deadline day, and while he’s struggled this season, he’s still a good investment for the Pistons as is, with the potential to be far more if he can recapture his form from last season.
I understand the circumstances behind Grimes’ Knicks tenure not working out by the end. The Knicks signed Donte DiVincenzo this past summer, and coach Tom Thibodeau had been averse to playing him and Grimes together. They only shared the court for a total of 89 minutes this season; Grimes, by comparison, played 820 minutes without DiVincenzo, while DiVincenzo played 1,178 minutes without Grimes.
Unfortunately for Grimes, DiVincenzo is playing the best ball of his career. The former Villanova teammate of Jalen Brunson has been on fire from 3, hitting 42.2 percent of his seven attempts per game, and is a better on-ball player than Grimes. DiVincenzo’s combination of shooting and ballhandling, mixed with his defense, makes him more functional offensively for the Knicks than Grimes in both starting and bench alignments. With Thibodeau refusing to use the two together, Grimes lost most of his high-leverage court time.
Grimes’ own offensive…
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