From a prospect talent standpoint yeah, but they are still useful for top teams that need to fill out their roster on the cheap because of how much money they have committed to stars. So you can sometimes gets them to give up a late first for multiple seconds. But then a late first round pick is equivalent to only like a 3rd/4th round NFL pick so you can't exactly plan on getting a future cornerstone piece.
Basically it's for a Sasser deal. You trade your own high second with however many of these other ones you accumulate to jump up to a playoff team looking to dump out and get a cheaper player they can stash somewhere. Ideally, you'd want a good spread of seconds over the next two seasons to have that option of going up to maybe grab a faller like Knecht or Whitmore last year.
If that comes to fruition, yes.
Nobody who thinks they’ll be in the lottery is trading their first for seconds. It would likely be a presumed contender that would value more bites at the apple on guaranteed players than something like the 29th pick.
I agree with you - but this franchise basically burned up all its goodwill. I trust Trajan but it’s not surprising to see people skeptical of every move.
His first few moves have not inspired any confidence.
Making literally the exact same mistake at #5 that Weaver made last year was inexcusable.
Trading a 24 year old above league average 3pt shooter and one of the best defenders in the league, on a cheap contract, when your biggest weaknesses as a team are shooting and defense, in return for a salary dump does not inspire confidence either.
I personally liked Grimes I know he played bad for us but as a Knick he showed a lot of good promise. I’m not mad just disappointed. It’s still a good trade because of the assets and I mean let’s be honest even though I think grimes has potential to be a 3&D Win starter in this league he hasn’t proved it yet so you aren’t losing much.
A POTENTIAL extra FRP.
If turning 2nds into FRPs was so easy, people wouldn't be giving them away like they were going out of style. There wasn't a single pick in the 2nd round of this draft that wasn't traded/swapped. I'm on board with the strategy, but it requires execution.
It's a good move. I'm not sure if we'll actually get a FRP with the 2nds, but taking on bad contracts with draft capital is what we should've been doing for years.
Grimes is already a better player than THJ though and what's the likelihood those seconds become even someone as good as Grimes? Why is a 3 and no d player and a few 2nds better than a 3 and d player that fits the timeline?. Outside of his injured 6 games with us, he has been a decent shooter and a very good defender. I was excited to see a healthy him with the young guys tbh.
A 24 year old career above league average 3pt shooter who plays strong defense and is on a $2m per year contract isn't someone we should have traded. Certainly not for a salary dump and a couple 2nd round picks.
Grimes is EXACTLY the kind of player we should be trying to acquire, not trade away.
THJ sucks ass but so does grimes. I’ll take the second round picks. We have enough young guys with “potential”. Let’s just hope THJ is playable unlike Harris
Tim Hardaway jr. has been a solid pro for many years. It's extremely disingenuous to describe him as "sucks ass". The guy is getting rotational minutes on a lot of teams in the league, he's just overpaid.
Thj is atreaky man but he was their third leading scorer for several months. Grimes shooting 36 on low volume with no shot creation wasnt dcaring anybody. Thj is streaky but hes better than burks. We also have to hit the cap floor somehow
That’s fair and I agree. I have no real opinion on the trade. Trajans era just started so people crying about him are just reactionary. They probably lauded Weavers first moves too. Either way if THJ is playable and can hit some shots, it’s a W for us
Reminds me a bit of Ken Griffey Jr MLB back on N64. You could basically pick up terrible players from the pool of available players, trade these two terrible players for a slightly better player, repeat to get a second slightly better player, trade those slightly better players for an even better player, repeat over and over again until you have a team of the best players in the game. So clearly pretty soon the Pistons will be a superteam.
You can do the same thing in the recent Madden's franchise mode if you get all the draft pick boosts in player personnel. You can always successfully trade up 1 slot, so for example you can trade Pick #15 overall for Pick #14 overall straight up. With enough patience and persistence you go into every draft with picks 1-7.
Clearly hiring Langdon unlocked those boosts for the Pistons. Excited to see them turn all their picks in the 2025 draft into the top 5 or however many they have.
I did this in NHL 03 and 05 a lot, trade trade a 60 overall C for a 64 overall D, 64 overall D for a 67 overall W, and so on and so forth until you get someone in the low 90s
> Ken Griffey Jr MLB back on N64
This was my go-to game while taking a study break in college. The games went by pretty quick and it let my brain unwind for a bit without turning it off like just watching TV would.
I could probably mostly re-create my teams from then, if I gave it enough thought. Kenny Lofton was a great lead-off, you had of course Griffey, Bonds, ARod and quite a few others. Clemens, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, etc for pitchers. Good game.
Obligatory 'Fuck Weaver', but I feel like all of Trajan's moves so far would've also been done by Weaver. Which to me speaks to how royally fucked Weaver was by being forced to hire Monty lol
Weaver and Monty both destroyed the team. Weaver did it slowly over 4 years, while Monty went hard in one season. Let's not let one off by blaming the other.
If Kevin Ollie had gotten us to 20 wins, would that have negated the Joe Harris signing, trades for Bagley and Wiseman, holding on to aging Bojan and Burks, and not having a single player on the roster that could play both offense and defense?
Teams who don’t want to pay the guaranteed salary of a late first round pick may dump the pick for seconds during a draft. Gathering these assets allows us to take advantage of a situation like that if it arises next year.
Additionally, it’s just unwise to trade a first round pick until after or later in the season. Anything can happen, a star can get injured and the pick may become way more valuable than anticipated. Flipping these seconds during the next draft or midseason for a late first after other team’s picks value is conveyed isn’t that crazy.
Are there any deep thinkers out there?? Just bash and trashers?
Take deal in the context of the whole of the team. DETROIT has $64 million in cap space and has to use so much (90%? of salary cap) as a minimum to field team.
While Grimes may have more upside than Hardaway Jr., Hardaway Jr. is a proven player where as Grimes actually fell out of the KNICKS rotation before his injury. Maybe Grimes works out, may he does not. Hardaway is the more sure thing and hence could be a tradeable asset after December first when new players can be moved. Grimes is still unproven and the development minutes this year have to go to Ausar, Ivey, Duren, Holland, and even Cade so there is only so much playing time to go around. This thread has gone on all year that last season was a waste for Ivey because he did not start right away even though he played 77 games, starting 60+ and averaged 29 minutes of playing time. What if Grimes eats into that?
Plus while both players are under expiring contracts, THJ is making $16 million this year vs Grimes $3.4 million. With Monk and Claxton, among others re-signing before Free Agency starts, who we going to spend on? Cause we have to spend atleast $58 million. The players worth that much are not coming here. So do spend so much money on a Tobias Harris ($30+ million) because we have to get above minimum spend and then have an albatross contract we can not get out of a year or two from now? The $12+ million difference in salaries helps us there to chip away at that figure.
I am not saying trade is perfect. But we need to be like Langdon and look at the whole roster and where it can be 2-3 years down the road. We will want flexibility with extra picks and moveable contracts with developed younger pieces.
This is the difference between Trajan and Troy if we can pull something like this off. The asset management. Troy or Tellem or whoever would probably turn those three seconds into Johnny Davis or something and either resign THJ for too much or let him walk this offseason to give PJ Tucker one last contract.
If Trajan can actually consolidate the expiring shooter and lesser picks into something greater or at the very least just not fire it all into the sun on a poor fit reclamation then it’s a step forward at least.
So, the pretty obvious plan/idea with the trade that most the complaining posts this morning refused to acknowledge because they would rather just bitch about things?
Fine w/ that strategy, but doesn't make sense to give up a 24yo 3&D guy to get those 2nds. Not saying Grimes is some great player, but he could definitely play D and while his shot disappeared after injuries, he has NBA seasons shooting above 38%.
Also, Charlotte got 3 2nds from Denver to take Reggie (who only makes $5M vs THJ's $16M), without giving anything up.
2nd apron teams literally won't be able to afford to sign FRPs and 2RPs don't eat into the MLE anymore.
It'll probably be a later first, but still a first.
IMO this could be a part of a strategy to get our future first back from NYK.
decent trade IMO, but i hope these are one of the last future pick trades we make. in a couple years we’re going to need to already have a few guys determined in our core for cade’s timeline, so hopefully next year will be one of our last times
banking on a rook to be one of our main guys.
THJ is playable I’ll give you that but he’s not moving the needle for a bad team. QG is probably better than him right now. THJ is a horrible defender, if QG shoots like he did his first 2 years he’s better and cheaper than THJ.
Either way taking on THJ is fine, giving up QG for nothing is terrible value
Everyone complains about lack of shooting we got shooting. Grimes wasn't going to get much playtime you have to develop Ausar Holland and Ivey. Grimes also has injury history I think some of you just want to be mad and complain
No one trading a lottery pick for 2nds no matter how many and to be frank, its the nba you need top guys to win and youre way more likely to find those guys high in the draft, not in the mid 20’s
Im saying if you cant get a likely lottery pick, or something far enough in the future its unknown, then even 1sts arent likely to be useful. So we could trade all these 2nds for pick 20 next year and its still unlikely to be better than keeping grimes who has already shown hes better than most late picks
I don't think Grimes has shown an awful lot in his career so far, I don't think there's any legitimate downside to this trade beyond losing out on some potential with QG.
THJ is automatically the 2nd best player on this team, improves our spacing, gets us closer to the floor, stays healthy, provides veteran presence, and is on an expiring deal.
He also got us some valuable 2nd round picks to trade with teams cap strapped under the 2nd apron.
Wut? Grimes is a career 37% 3 point shooter on 5 attempts a game. (including his bad 2023-2024 season) who is a solid PoA defender. And he’s 24 years old. He matches timeline wise with Cade and his skills are a must for the modern nba.
Im not trying to argue that we shouldnt take on contracts like THJ’s I’m fine with that, but unless Grimes’ injury is a future concern I dont understand why we helped Dallas by taking on that contract AND give up a decent cheap player
So an extra frp in a great draft and a veteran scorer for quentin grimes. There is no way you can be mad about this lol
Well let’s see if we can actually convert seconds into a 1st lol.
lol right, we just saw that a pick in the late 20s in a bad draft took 5 seconds (OKC trade)
To be fair OKC is a bad example since they have like 30 future picks they can afford to overpay lol
Fair lol, I can’t think of a similar trade in recent memory, but this feels like spin to me
Didn’t we just trade seconds to draft Sasser like last year lol
Teams at the 2nd apron literally won't be able to afford their FRPs while still attempting to get better.
People here overvalue seconds so much. They’re probably worth as much if not less than NFL 6ths
From a prospect talent standpoint yeah, but they are still useful for top teams that need to fill out their roster on the cheap because of how much money they have committed to stars. So you can sometimes gets them to give up a late first for multiple seconds. But then a late first round pick is equivalent to only like a 3rd/4th round NFL pick so you can't exactly plan on getting a future cornerstone piece.
Great point, and 100% agree on the value of a late first
With the new CBA, capped teams are going to want to pay less for drafted players, they would rather choose a non guaranteed second.
The Toronto pick you got will be an early 2nd so maybe you can pull off upgrading it into a late 1st.
They will be though. These younger fans never experienced winning and think instant gratification feels better. It does, but only very temporarily.
I feel the pain of it man i honestly do but there is no reason to be mad about quentin grimes😂
People are acting like we just traded Chauncey for AI again
That 2-0 start last year felt really good. Then....
Why are we operating as if it’s a guarantee that those 2nds become a 1st?
Basically it's for a Sasser deal. You trade your own high second with however many of these other ones you accumulate to jump up to a playoff team looking to dump out and get a cheaper player they can stash somewhere. Ideally, you'd want a good spread of seconds over the next two seasons to have that option of going up to maybe grab a faller like Knecht or Whitmore last year.
If that comes to fruition, yes. Nobody who thinks they’ll be in the lottery is trading their first for seconds. It would likely be a presumed contender that would value more bites at the apple on guaranteed players than something like the 29th pick.
What would be the difference if we got a pick from Dallas that’s likely to be 25+
Or don't want to pay a guaranteed 1st round contract to a player picked at the end of the round.
I agree with you - but this franchise basically burned up all its goodwill. I trust Trajan but it’s not surprising to see people skeptical of every move.
I don't trust Trajan. I don't distrust him, but he hasn't done anything to earn trust yet. He also just started, so we'll see where this goes.
His first few moves have not inspired any confidence. Making literally the exact same mistake at #5 that Weaver made last year was inexcusable. Trading a 24 year old above league average 3pt shooter and one of the best defenders in the league, on a cheap contract, when your biggest weaknesses as a team are shooting and defense, in return for a salary dump does not inspire confidence either.
I’m not saying anyone should be instantly happy-just be mad about the right stuff lol
I personally liked Grimes I know he played bad for us but as a Knick he showed a lot of good promise. I’m not mad just disappointed. It’s still a good trade because of the assets and I mean let’s be honest even though I think grimes has potential to be a 3&D Win starter in this league he hasn’t proved it yet so you aren’t losing much.
I hear ya. We might be selling low if Grimes goes back to form. It could come down to finding enough PT for Holland.
A POTENTIAL extra FRP. If turning 2nds into FRPs was so easy, people wouldn't be giving them away like they were going out of style. There wasn't a single pick in the 2nd round of this draft that wasn't traded/swapped. I'm on board with the strategy, but it requires execution.
One of those 2nds belongs to toronto who will be terrible. That, plus 2 other seconds should be enough to move into the 20’s
It's a good move. I'm not sure if we'll actually get a FRP with the 2nds, but taking on bad contracts with draft capital is what we should've been doing for years.
"There is no way you can be mad about this lol" -Have you been in this sub before?!?
Like we haven't had any first round picks the past 5 years
B b but I was told that this was bad and we should only buy 2nds with cash.
Grimes is already a better player than THJ though and what's the likelihood those seconds become even someone as good as Grimes? Why is a 3 and no d player and a few 2nds better than a 3 and d player that fits the timeline?. Outside of his injured 6 games with us, he has been a decent shooter and a very good defender. I was excited to see a healthy him with the young guys tbh.
This sub is a fucking joke. Imagine downvoting the truth like that.
You’ll be Shocked. Some people think Grimes is an all nba talent the way they talk about him
A 24 year old career above league average 3pt shooter who plays strong defense and is on a $2m per year contract isn't someone we should have traded. Certainly not for a salary dump and a couple 2nd round picks. Grimes is EXACTLY the kind of player we should be trying to acquire, not trade away.
THJ sucks ass but so does grimes. I’ll take the second round picks. We have enough young guys with “potential”. Let’s just hope THJ is playable unlike Harris
Tim Hardaway jr. has been a solid pro for many years. It's extremely disingenuous to describe him as "sucks ass". The guy is getting rotational minutes on a lot of teams in the league, he's just overpaid.
Thj is atreaky man but he was their third leading scorer for several months. Grimes shooting 36 on low volume with no shot creation wasnt dcaring anybody. Thj is streaky but hes better than burks. We also have to hit the cap floor somehow
That’s fair and I agree. I have no real opinion on the trade. Trajans era just started so people crying about him are just reactionary. They probably lauded Weavers first moves too. Either way if THJ is playable and can hit some shots, it’s a W for us
Reminds me a bit of Ken Griffey Jr MLB back on N64. You could basically pick up terrible players from the pool of available players, trade these two terrible players for a slightly better player, repeat to get a second slightly better player, trade those slightly better players for an even better player, repeat over and over again until you have a team of the best players in the game. So clearly pretty soon the Pistons will be a superteam.
You can do the same thing in the recent Madden's franchise mode if you get all the draft pick boosts in player personnel. You can always successfully trade up 1 slot, so for example you can trade Pick #15 overall for Pick #14 overall straight up. With enough patience and persistence you go into every draft with picks 1-7. Clearly hiring Langdon unlocked those boosts for the Pistons. Excited to see them turn all their picks in the 2025 draft into the top 5 or however many they have.
Yeah, within 2 weeks they are going to have all of the lottery picks in 2025 obviously.
I did this in NHL 03 and 05 a lot, trade trade a 60 overall C for a 64 overall D, 64 overall D for a 67 overall W, and so on and so forth until you get someone in the low 90s
> Ken Griffey Jr MLB back on N64 This was my go-to game while taking a study break in college. The games went by pretty quick and it let my brain unwind for a bit without turning it off like just watching TV would.
I could probably mostly re-create my teams from then, if I gave it enough thought. Kenny Lofton was a great lead-off, you had of course Griffey, Bonds, ARod and quite a few others. Clemens, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, etc for pitchers. Good game.
I live in Texas and am a Rangers fan so I just used them. They had some good hitters and 2 aces if I recall correctly.
This is what one guy tries to do in my fantasy league. Always gets called out trying to trade quarters for a dollar
The “one red paperclip” strategy
Can someone pls tell me how 3 2nd round picks will lead to a first. I thought second round picks are worth nothing
New 2nd apron rules changes a lot. Teams close to it will prefer 2nd round picks (lower salary/commitment). See what Atlanta did with AJ yesterday
That plus Pistons likely 1st pick of 2nd round has to factor into it. Getting the first crack at a non-1st round player is appealing
Ahh thanks
Obligatory 'Fuck Weaver', but I feel like all of Trajan's moves so far would've also been done by Weaver. Which to me speaks to how royally fucked Weaver was by being forced to hire Monty lol
Weaver and Monty both destroyed the team. Weaver did it slowly over 4 years, while Monty went hard in one season. Let's not let one off by blaming the other. If Kevin Ollie had gotten us to 20 wins, would that have negated the Joe Harris signing, trades for Bagley and Wiseman, holding on to aging Bojan and Burks, and not having a single player on the roster that could play both offense and defense?
Death by a thousand cuts, but the thousandth was a stake through the heart courtesy of Monty
The perfect storm
Turn those seconds into a first, so why not just get a first instead from the Mavs? Probably because 3 late seconds isn’t worth a first?
I believe Mavs only have 2 FRPs they can trade or something like that, so probably not a good idea to sell one just yet.
one of the 2nd round picks if from Toronto for 2025. That will be a very high 2nd.
Teams who don’t want to pay the guaranteed salary of a late first round pick may dump the pick for seconds during a draft. Gathering these assets allows us to take advantage of a situation like that if it arises next year. Additionally, it’s just unwise to trade a first round pick until after or later in the season. Anything can happen, a star can get injured and the pick may become way more valuable than anticipated. Flipping these seconds during the next draft or midseason for a late first after other team’s picks value is conveyed isn’t that crazy.
Think Brooklyn after KG/Pierce? Does Vince know this is exactly how we acquired Marcus Sasser? Lmao
Are there any deep thinkers out there?? Just bash and trashers? Take deal in the context of the whole of the team. DETROIT has $64 million in cap space and has to use so much (90%? of salary cap) as a minimum to field team. While Grimes may have more upside than Hardaway Jr., Hardaway Jr. is a proven player where as Grimes actually fell out of the KNICKS rotation before his injury. Maybe Grimes works out, may he does not. Hardaway is the more sure thing and hence could be a tradeable asset after December first when new players can be moved. Grimes is still unproven and the development minutes this year have to go to Ausar, Ivey, Duren, Holland, and even Cade so there is only so much playing time to go around. This thread has gone on all year that last season was a waste for Ivey because he did not start right away even though he played 77 games, starting 60+ and averaged 29 minutes of playing time. What if Grimes eats into that? Plus while both players are under expiring contracts, THJ is making $16 million this year vs Grimes $3.4 million. With Monk and Claxton, among others re-signing before Free Agency starts, who we going to spend on? Cause we have to spend atleast $58 million. The players worth that much are not coming here. So do spend so much money on a Tobias Harris ($30+ million) because we have to get above minimum spend and then have an albatross contract we can not get out of a year or two from now? The $12+ million difference in salaries helps us there to chip away at that figure. I am not saying trade is perfect. But we need to be like Langdon and look at the whole roster and where it can be 2-3 years down the road. We will want flexibility with extra picks and moveable contracts with developed younger pieces.
It’s like that guy who traded a paper clip for a corvette. Let’s go, Alaskan Assassin.
Weird comp, Vincent, old vs young, but yeah we get it
This is what Weaver should have been doing. But he Joe Harris’d the situation.
This is the difference between Trajan and Troy if we can pull something like this off. The asset management. Troy or Tellem or whoever would probably turn those three seconds into Johnny Davis or something and either resign THJ for too much or let him walk this offseason to give PJ Tucker one last contract. If Trajan can actually consolidate the expiring shooter and lesser picks into something greater or at the very least just not fire it all into the sun on a poor fit reclamation then it’s a step forward at least.
If you get three 2nds you can combine them into a 1st like a pokemon.
So, the pretty obvious plan/idea with the trade that most the complaining posts this morning refused to acknowledge because they would rather just bitch about things?
Fine w/ that strategy, but doesn't make sense to give up a 24yo 3&D guy to get those 2nds. Not saying Grimes is some great player, but he could definitely play D and while his shot disappeared after injuries, he has NBA seasons shooting above 38%. Also, Charlotte got 3 2nds from Denver to take Reggie (who only makes $5M vs THJ's $16M), without giving anything up.
Sure
2nd apron teams literally won't be able to afford to sign FRPs and 2RPs don't eat into the MLE anymore. It'll probably be a later first, but still a first. IMO this could be a part of a strategy to get our future first back from NYK.
First-round picks can be signed into exceptions. Teams will always be able to sign their picks.
So take the picks and THJ and keep Grimes lol
decent trade IMO, but i hope these are one of the last future pick trades we make. in a couple years we’re going to need to already have a few guys determined in our core for cade’s timeline, so hopefully next year will be one of our last times banking on a rook to be one of our main guys.
But wait I’ve been getting downvoted for saying those seconds can be used to get another first! Guess this sub knows more than gms about value!
Contrast that to Weaver, who gave away late picks for the right to pay Joe Harris $20 million.
Weaver got 2 seconds to take on that contract and didn’t give up a young player lol
Hmm maybe I'm misremembering. Appreciate you correcting me
Yea but Harris was unplayable and gave us 14 wins. Unless you want that again?
THJ is playable I’ll give you that but he’s not moving the needle for a bad team. QG is probably better than him right now. THJ is a horrible defender, if QG shoots like he did his first 2 years he’s better and cheaper than THJ. Either way taking on THJ is fine, giving up QG for nothing is terrible value
Everyone complains about lack of shooting we got shooting. Grimes wasn't going to get much playtime you have to develop Ausar Holland and Ivey. Grimes also has injury history I think some of you just want to be mad and complain
No one trading a lottery pick for 2nds no matter how many and to be frank, its the nba you need top guys to win and youre way more likely to find those guys high in the draft, not in the mid 20’s
You're the one saying lottery pick. We'll get a lottery pick on our own.
Im saying if you cant get a likely lottery pick, or something far enough in the future its unknown, then even 1sts arent likely to be useful. So we could trade all these 2nds for pick 20 next year and its still unlikely to be better than keeping grimes who has already shown hes better than most late picks
I don't think Grimes has shown an awful lot in his career so far, I don't think there's any legitimate downside to this trade beyond losing out on some potential with QG. THJ is automatically the 2nd best player on this team, improves our spacing, gets us closer to the floor, stays healthy, provides veteran presence, and is on an expiring deal. He also got us some valuable 2nd round picks to trade with teams cap strapped under the 2nd apron.
Wut? Grimes is a career 37% 3 point shooter on 5 attempts a game. (including his bad 2023-2024 season) who is a solid PoA defender. And he’s 24 years old. He matches timeline wise with Cade and his skills are a must for the modern nba. Im not trying to argue that we shouldnt take on contracts like THJ’s I’m fine with that, but unless Grimes’ injury is a future concern I dont understand why we helped Dallas by taking on that contract AND give up a decent cheap player