In nearly 300 games under Troy Weaver, the Pistons have the worst record in the NBA. Their winning percentage (.230) over his four seasons as general manager is worse than the season before he arrived, and by far the worst four-season stretch in franchise history. It's more than enough to question whether Weaver remains the right guy to bring the Pistons back to glory.
"Absolutely. I wouldn’t have signed up for it if I didn’t (think I was)," Weaver told 97.1 The Ticket's Restore The Floor podcast. "My confidence is stronger than it ever has been. I’ve been in these situations. I’ve been a part of a lot of winning, I’ve been a part of a lot of rebuilding, I know what it looks like, smells like and tastes like. That’s why I’m here. Excited about this challenge and we absolutely will restore the Pistons."
Weaver met the media Friday in the wake of a trade deadline in which he traded veterans Bojan Bogdanovic, Alec Burks, Monte Morris and Kevin Knox to acquire two players he believes can be long-term pieces for the Pistons in Simone Fontecchio and Quentin Grimes, plus a few second-round picks. He also released Killian Hayes, the former seventh overall pick who was the first pillar of his rebuild.
Fontecchio and Grimes join a franchise whose future is headlined by first overall pick Cade Cunningham, fifth overall picks Jaden Ivey and Ausar Thomson and fellow lottery pick Jalen Duren, all of whom are under the age of 23. Asked what he'd tell his critics who say this team is no better than the one he took over -- by the standard of the Pistons' 8-43 record, they're actually much worse -- Weaver said, "Yeah, but we didn’t have this young talent when I took over." Indeed, the roster he inherited was headlined by Blake Griffin and Derrick Rose and weighed down by cumbersome contracts.
"And through the drafts, trades and free agency, we’ve been able to fortify our young core. Now we have that in place and Coach (Monty) Williams is at the helm, and the vision is to have a selfless team that defends, that can shoot, that's tough-minded, big, strong and athletic," Weaver said.
Despite an NBA-record 28-game losing streak earlier this season, Weaver draws optimism from the Pistons' recent stretch in which they've banked back-to-back road wins over the Kings and the Trailblazers. He said that "we absolutely feel like we got the right guys in here, and we’ve seen evidence of that here in the last four or five games." He's also encouraged by the Pistons' financial flexibility entering the offseason.
The goal over the rest of this season, Weaver said, "is to continue to grow this young core, continue to build our habits and continue to build a great brand of Pistons basketball."
"We’re excited about that challenge that’s ahead of us. We’re excited about the new guys that we’ve added to the group, so that hasn’t changed. Free agency is just free agency. That’s just another way to improve the team. We absolutely have great books and a lot of space and we’re confident that we’ll make the most of that situation when it arrives that summer. I’m confident in us being able to fortify the group at that next marker being free agency," said Weaver.
As for the frustrations of the fanbase amid another lost season, Weaver gets it. He said he "can relate to the fans’ disappointment, but that’s because they have high expectations."
"And we don’t want that to change," he said. "We want them to continue to support us and have those expectations, and it’s our jobs to come out and perform and put a product out there that they can be proud of."