On Tuesday afternoon, two days before the NBA Draft, Pistons GM Troy Weaver sat at a table inside the team's practice facility and told reporters that he wanted to take a "big swing" with the fifth overall pick. Sitting at that same table Thursday night, Weaver was asked if Ausar Thompson was the big swing he was talking about.
"Absolutely," he said with a smile.
So when the Pistons started getting offers for the No. 5 pick -- for Thompson -- Weaver said they looked at them out of diligence, "but no, we were pretty committed to drafting at 5 if he was there." And now he's here, on his way to Detroit, where Weaver believes the Pistons are on their way to becoming "the third iteration of a team" that resonates with this city. Thompson, he said, is a "symbol of what we want to continue to be about."
And the Pistons, said Thompson, were his preferred destination after he visited with the team, including new head coach Monty Williams, ahead of the draft. His landing spot is his launching pad.
"That was the team that I wanted to go to," he said. "After meeting with them, I felt like their team is going in a great direction."
The Pistons lacked direction for most of last season, playing without their rudder Cade Cunningham. They also lost the defensive identity that their first two championship teams had worked so hard to form. With the team slogging its way to the second worst season in franchise history while getting slugged in the mouth, Weaver vowed to fix Detroit's defense, because "defense has to be our ethos," he said.
In Thompson, the Pistons landed the best perimeter defender -- maybe the best defender, period -- in the draft. He's 6'7 with a 7'0 wingspan and bursting with athleticism. He has a ways to go offensively, particularly as a shooter, but Thompson could take the NBA floor tomorrow and wreak havoc on the other end. He'll immediately make life easier for Cunningham and Jaden Ivey, said Weaver, by "defending the best perimeter player on the other team."
"But he's more than a defender," Weaver added.
To explain, Weaver pointed to the best team of the past decade and to a player with four NBA titles to his name. When the Warriors used to deploy their famous small-ball Death Lineup, one of the reasons it worked is because Andre Iguodala "was playing up front and you couldn't really match up with it," said Weaver.
"I see Ausar similar to Iguodala in his early years in Philly. He was all over the floor, played pretty much everywhere on the perimeter, defended at a high level, but he was also probably an 18 to 20 point scorer, and I see Ausar the same way," said Weaver.
Iguodala, the ninth overall pick in 2004, faced the same questions about his offense and shooting when he entered the NBA. He started 82 games as a rookie -- on a 76ers team that was bounced in the first round of the playoffs by the Pistons -- because his defense and athleticism were already elite. He grew into himself as a scorer and two years later he was a full-court weapon averaging close to 20 points a game.
Thompson has the tools to make a similar jump. His scoring numbers in the Overtime Elite league last season were nothing special, but he did finish second in the league in assists -- one spot ahead of his twin brother Amen, who went one spot ahead of him in the draft to the Rockets. In Detroit, Thompson sees himself as a third facilitator next to Cunningham and Ivey. Weaver sees him as a rare athlete whose "offense is really underrated."
"He’s a monster in the open court, and in the half court he can get downhill. His shooting numbers will be better than we’ve seen, for sure, and he can definitely make a play with the ball. I think he has a budding offensive skillset. Plays the right way. He’s going to be a real offensive player," Weaver said.
The immediate challenge for Thompson, who turned 20 in January, will be proving that he wasn't just a product of his environment in Overtime Elite, a fledgling developmental league where he faced lesser competition than he would have at a Power Five college program. He played just 21 games last season including the playoffs and was one of the oldest players in a league for players ages 16 to 20.
(Weaver, for his part, had no issue separating Thompson's talent from his surroundings: "When you see something different, something unique, you know it. I think Halle Berry is pretty in church or in the grocery store, so I think you can figure it out when you see something special.")
Times have been tough in Detroit. Thompson is joining a team that has the most losses in the NBA over the last four (five, six, seven) seasons and hasn't won a playoff game since 2008. So it was telling that when asked about the opportunity in Detroit shortly after he was drafted, Thompson told ESPN on the floor of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, "Trying to contend, you know?" Under Weaver and Williams, he believes the Pistons are "going to the modern way of the NBA."
That is, versatility at every position -- or no positions at all -- with a roster full of "bigger bodies" who "can facilitate, run the floor and cut" to create offense and strap in on defense. In some ways, Thompson is the Pistons' perimeter version of Jalen Duren, the freakish athlete they drafted 13th overall last year. His floor is that of a difference-maker. If his offense comes along, he has the ceiling of a game-changer.
"We said we wanted to get our defense in order, and this guy’s athleticism, especially defensively, really adds to our talent base," Weaver said. "When you get big-time athletes, they give you a bigger margin for error."
As he rattled off all the ways that Thompson can impact the game, Weaver eventually said, "We needed this player." At the very least, Thompson will make the Pistons harder to play against. He will return them to their roots. And maybe Thompson needed the Pistons, a franchise that still believes the dirty work shines.
"With my size and my quickness, defense has always been a part of me," he said. "Teams that win championships play defense, so just trying to bring that to Detroit."
Bring that back to Detroit.