The NBA Draft lottery is next month. To the winner goes the Victor --Wembanyama, that is, the 7'5 French phenom dubbed an "alien" by LeBron James. The Pistons have the highest odds possible to win the No. 1 pick, and much higher odds of losing out. That's just how the these things work. As Pistons GM Troy Weaver said Tuesday, "It’s exactly what it is, it’s a lottery."
Detroit has just a 14 percent chance of landing at the top of the board. But it can't fall further than No. 5 -- which is exactly where Weaver happened to draft a rising star last year in Jaden Ivey, eight picks before he drafted another in Jalen Duren. He wouldn't swap those picks for anyone. So wherever the Pistons land in the lottery, "we feel like we'll get a good player," Weaver said Wednesday on 97.1 The Ticket.
"There’s a lot of good players in this draft we like, so we’re excited about wherever the ball lands. I would take Duren and Ivey over anyone that was drafted last year, so I feel good about that. Where we land, we land. I said it from the beginning, doesn’t matter where you bat in the lineup, you have to hit the ball, so we need to make sure we’re ready to hit the ball wherever it lands."
Ivey will surely be named to the NBA's All-Rookie team. Duren has a strong case, too. The former was first among rookies in assists and third in scoring this season, the latter was first in rebounding. You can debate Weaver's claim in the present, and a handful of rookies would flat-out reject it, but you can understand it looking ahead: alongside Cade Cunningham, Ivey and Duren are pillars of the Pistons' future.
Duren, who turned 19 in November, arrived in Detroit as the youngest player in the NBA, a one-and-done out of Memphis. Before the season even began, Weaver said Dwane Casey told him, "This guy won't be with the (Motor City) Cruise. He'll be with us." Duren wound up leading the Pistons in rebounding while elbowing his way into the record books, like when he became just the third teenager in NBA/ABA history with 200 offensive rebounds in a season. The other two? Dwight Howard and Moses Malone.
The Pistons nabbed Duren with the No. 13 pick, but it's safe to say Weaver had him much higher than that.
"That’s one guy I won’t ever put a ceiling on," Weaver said. "You keep watching him, you just see different things. Very smart young man, he’s got tremendous gifts. He may be surprising some, but I had him pretty high on my board and he’s got a chance to be a big-time player."
Ivey could be even better. He got stronger over his first NBA season, while
shouldering a much heavier load than expected after Cunningham went down in November. At one point, he scored in double-digits for 39 straight games, a streak bested by just three rookies this century, all of them No. 1 picks: Blake Griffin, Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards. No. 1 pick Paolo Banchero will likely win Rookie of the Year, but Ivey will certainly receive votes.
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"You can pull your hair out every fifth game, every third game, but the kid continued to grow and got better in all aspects," Weaver said. "He's got big-time upside. What makes that so attractive is that he works. That's what sold us during the (draft) process. Whatever his weaknesses are he'll work through them and whatever he’s supposed to be as a player, he’ll become, because he's going to put the work in."
Wembanyama is the prize of this year's draft, the unicorn that everyone is chasing. But the lottery is more like pin the tail on the donkey. Weaver isn't blindly banking on winning it. However it shakes out, he expects to improve his team in the draft, in free agency, where "we have some money to spend," Weaver said, and with a new head coach. And "we expect to really take a step forward next season."
"I’m an optimistic person," Weaver said. "Ivey and Duren have elevated our talent, and it’s definitely going to pay dividends for us going forward. I like our collection of young players we have and excited about what we can add and a coach that can galvanize this group."
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