I want to bring up the topic of the Pistons rebuild. Watching this team in some ways makes me hopeful. Ausar is something we haven’t seen before in a rookie, and Sasser looks like a complete STEAL who can off nights sure but he is a scorer so it makes sense.
However, it seems like since we have began rebuilding after Blake Griffin left, to maybe this year, there was NO progress at all. It was a “wasted rebuild”. Our pieces we tried to rebuild around have already started leaving in Saddiq, Kennard, Jerami Grant, and now it’s very likely Cade will be gone soon. We effectively have a hole from 2019-2023. Weaver and Gores need to be GONE. I have never seen a more neglected and wasteful rebuild in my life. Acquiring talent is also a disaster because the only dude we added is Joe Harris and we seem to have a “we can fix him mentality” with busts like Wiseman, Bagley III, Knox, and now even our own Killian Hayes. It doesn’t help when people like Bojan, our first option, has absolutely no killer mentality and just straight up doesn’t play.
Currently, we are 2-16. There is no miracle run in store to make the playoffs or play-ins. Our season is over. The best course of action right now is to just brutally blow over the season. This team needs to be historically dogshit so changes are made. I’m tired of seeing this team I’ve had a love for years just have itself cannibalized further and further. The losing needs to end.
Some of those guys weren’t part of the rebuild, such as Kennard. Grant was a bet that paid off, but I think he was intended to be a stopgap that was never appropriately back filled.
I don’t know what pathway is the best course out of this mess. I don’t believe Weaver will blow up his own roster. That would be an admission of personal failure and that’s almost never seen in the NBA by a GM. They build the roster and either fly with its success or go down with the ship.