Pistons Looking At Draft With Future In Mind
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
CBS DETROIT - Detroit Pistons head coach and president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy has no problem with the team's 2015 first-round pick earning a starting job right out of the gate.
For planning purposes, however, Van Gundy is assuming that will not happen. The Pistons have the eighth overall pick in the draft, which is Thursday.
"I've looked at it all the way as, we're going to fill the starting positions for next year via trades and free agency," Van Gundy said in a pre-draft press conference Monday. "We weren't looking at the draft. Now you get a bonus if you pick the guy at eight and he comes in and wins a job - more power to him - but we're not putting that kind of pressure on that guy or on ourselves that you've got to have the eighth pick in the draft come in and start.
"If you were one or two it might be a little bit different, but at eight, again, we're looking future," Van Gundy continued. "The more they can play next year, the better, but that will all be determined as we go along."
Van Gundy will not rule out the idea of including a first-year player in the starting lineup, but the coach made clear he wants to explore all the options.
"I have no problem starting a rookie if that's our best thing, but we're not going to go into July and just say, 'Okay, he's our starter, we're all set,'" Van Gundy said. "We're going to try to get the highest-level guy that we can get."
"You go into training camp, literally anybody's got a right to show you that our best fit as a team is with them in the starting lineup, but we will try to go into free agency or the trade market or whatever and get a guy who's a starting-caliber player," Van Gundy added. "Now there's not a ton of them available, so you may not end up there, but that will be our prime focus as we head into July."
Van Gundy has said the team's focus in free agency and trade will be acquiring a starting small forward and a backup center. If the Pistons could get a veteran player at one of those spots by trading down in the draft, they might do so, but neither general manager Jeff Bower nor Van Gundy considered it probable.
"It's probably unlikely that we trade back, but it's not impossible," Van Gundy said. "You'd have to have some level of confidence in who you'll be able to pick as you trade back - obviously it won't be the same level of confidence you would have at eight, but you'd have to have some level of confidence - and then you'd have to like the player you're getting in return.
"If you could get a player in return that could fill a need for us that we're going to have to fill in free agency, then that would be a possibility," Van Gundy said. "As of this point, we don't have that available or even really in discussions, but that would be the criteria for it."
Bower made it sound even more unlikely that Detroit would attempt to move up in the draft.
"Prices are high," Bower said, "and you have to always measure what you're going to have to give up in order to get a spot and the value that you may be able to get at your eighth pick.
"Moving down is an option as well, but all these discussions now, this week especially with other GMs, really start to get more crystallized, and all of the rumors and that will eventually cease, and everybody will probably stay right where they're at," Bower added.
The one certainty Van Gundy had to offer was that the Pistons will be making a pick.
"The one thing we are firm on is - minus a superstar being available - we won't trade out of the draft," Van Gundy said. "For your salary structure and everything else, it's too important."
