Detroit Pistons: Is it time to panic about Christian Wood’s free agency plans?

The Detroit Pistons likely intend to bring Christian Wood back via free agency in the offseason, but what if he doesn’t want to come back?

Being a fan of the Detroit Pistons means having a unique relationship with loss. Generally speaking, those losses come in the form of games, but in some rare cases, it can come in the form of players lost. In the 2020 offseason, the player that fans fear losing is Christian Wood.

After years of toiling for G League salaries and minimum contracts at the NBA level, Wood will finally hit free agency with the opportunity to recoup some of the money he failed to make earlier in his career. At the age of 25, his first real payday will occur this upcoming offseason and there’s likely to be a market for his services.

That’s especially true if ESPN’s Bobby Marks’s projections ring true. Marks expects Wood’s market to be around the $9.3 million mid-level exception, which means that even teams without cap space will be able to vie for his services. Of course, that likely means that his price will be driven up (it’s a market, after all), but this number is a starting point at the very least.

If contenders have a need for him, would he rather play for them for an amount similar to what the Pistons could pay him, or give the team that discovered him and gave him a chance the edge?

Considering the timeline of that opportunity and what was required for it to even present itself, the Pistons might not have much of an edge after all.

In spite of standing out in training camp and the preseason last year, Christian Wood needed an old man injury suffered by Joe Johnson to actually make the team. In spite of being the most electric athletic young player on the roster in years, he couldn’t climb the depth chart over Thon Maker, who may have an edge defensively but does everything else much worse.

As late as February 2nd, he played just 16:29 in a five-point win over the Western Conference Finalist Denver Nuggets (he scored 11 points, had four rebounds and two steals).

When Andre Drummond was traded and the Detroit Pistons roster had scarcely any NBA players, the shackles came off for Christian Wood, but that’s what it took for him to actually get his opportunity to break out, in spite of all the evidence of his play.

That’s not to say that he was necessarily wronged by head coach Dwane Casey for not unleashing him sooner. Wood has a reputation for being somewhat inattentive and not paying attention to details, and a veteran coach will generally default away from such a player.

However, even if his treatment is entirely fair, is he going to want to return to the Pistons where his role alongside (or behind) Blake Griffin is undetermined, where the team may not be competitive for a playoff spot, and where he averaged 17.3 minutes per game until early February when the Pistons shed themselves of all NBA players and had no choice but to play him?

Or would he be happier giving up some money for more reliable opportunities with a variety of possible contenders?

Whether you put any credence in the fact that he’s working out with other NBA players (something that most NBA players do in the offseason) or not, you don’t have to dig too deep to realize that the calculation probably doesn’t work out all that well for the Detroit Pistons in the case of Christian Wood.