It’s the end of an era for Blake Griffin and the Detroit Pistons. In a season where the franchise’s trajectory and his goals for the twilight of his career simply don’t align, both parties have agreed that he will sit out until either a trade or buyout of the remainder of his contract becomes possible.
Make no mistake, this isn’t a matter of petulance on Griffin’s part. He’s not sitting out to show his dismay in the organization, but instead it reflects his awareness of where the Pistons are headed and his understanding that in order for them to step forward, he needs to step aside.
What’s next for Blake Griffin and the Detroit Pistons
The Pistons are in the beginning stages of a youth movement, but they came into the season with Blake Griffin and Derrick Rose being the most proven vets on the roster. Rose was traded barely more than a week ago, and Griffin’s relegation to the bench clears the way with finality for guys like Saddiq Bey and Sekou Doumbouya to fill out the rotation.
Until the Rose trade, the Pistons had a few too many veteran players taking up rotation spots to truly consider themselves a young team, but Griffin’s graceful move to the shadows fully allows youth to take over.
As for the next step that Griffin and the Pistons will take together on this new road, it’s likely that general manager Troy Weaver has a list of contending teams that Griffin would like to go to. If one of those teams is interested in making a deal for his services and not leaving it up to chance on the waiver wire after he’s bought out, they’ll have the opportunity to do so.
Of course, it’s likely that contending teams aren’t going to give up much for Griffin when he probably won’t be a significant difference-maker on the floor, and they can simply put in a claim for him once the Pistons do buy him out.
We’ll take a look at three major components of this situation, starting with why a trade is unlikely.
Why Blake Griffin (probably) won’t be traded
At this stage of Blake Griffin’s NBA career, he struggles to be an impactful player. His athleticism has departed, his jumper that he worked so hard on comes and goes but isn’t reliable, and in spite of his strength advantage in the post, he doesn’t have the athleticism to be effective.
That’s not to say that he doesn’t have his uses, however. He remains a high-level passer, he’s an excellent leader and outstanding in the locker room. The problem is that while teams might love to have a guy like Griffin on their team, nobody is going to love it so much that they’re going to scratch together components on their roster that match his $36.6 million 2020-21 salary ($39.0 million next season).
Furthermore, the Pistons have no incentive to sweeten any deal for Griffin in an effort to persuade a trade partner to do a deal. The Pistons want to pick up young players, draft capital and distressed assets like Josh Jackson and Dennis Smith Jr. who can be rebuilt, not attach one of these youngsters to Griffin in an effort to get rid of him.
Griffin’s absence from the lineup will be a form of addition by subtraction simply because it opens up the door for Saddiq Bey (this week’s Eastern Conference Player of the Week) to play more and flourish, as well as Sekou Doumbouya to get more run. The Pistons have no reason to try to force the issue with any team. If they kept Griffin on the sidelines until his contract ran out, it would harm them in no way.
Of course, they also want to do right by him, which is why that won’t be the outcome. Still, there’s no reason for them to sweeten a deal, so they won’t. And nobody is going to pay up for Blake Griffin’s services, so they won’t. Which leaves a trade being the least likely outcome by far.
Let’s take a look at what a buyout could mean for Griffin and the Pistons.
Why a buyout makes sense for Blake Griffin and the Detroit Pistons
With a trade being unlikely, we move to the most reasonable outcome from this saga. A buyout makes the most sense for all parties involved at this point. Nobody will want to trade for Blake Griffin, and Pistons don’t need to induce anybody to do so, which means that a buyout is the easiest way for him to end up where he’d like to go in his pursuit of a championship.
The amount the Pistons buy him out for isn’t especially meaningful. They don’t have major free agency plans next summer, so trying to claw back gobs of money isn’t necessary. In essence, that’s going to be a conversation between Griffin and Pistons ownership, we can only guess what numbers will be discussed.
It’s worth noting that unless Griffin does give back some salary, the Pistons won’t be able to stretch* his 2021-22 salary. A team can only have 15 percent of their cap devoted to dead space due to stretches, and Griffin’s full salary would bring their dead cap space amount to $16,920,543, including the stretched salaries of Dewayne Dedmon and Zhaire Smith.
*Stretching is a procedure that allows for short-term salary cap relief in exchange for future dead salary cap hits. A stretched contract takes the remaining years of that deal and divides the remaining number of years by two, plus one. So a $15 million contract with one year remaining would instead be paid in $5 million installments over the next three years, rather than the entirety in that one season.
Griffin wouldn’t have to give back much to get them under that number, and stretching him would save them about $27 million next season against the cap. As they’re currently slated to be about $6 million over next year’s cap, that’s not insignificant.
It’s also not necessary. If they don’t have major designs in next year’s free agent market, there is no reason they can’t just eat whatever Griffin’s final year salary ends up being and going into the summer of 2022 with massive cap space, unencumbered by the nearly $13 million per year they would owe in dead space for a three-year span.
So the decision is to pay Griffin’s $39 million (or whatever it ends up being) all at once next season, or divide it by three over the next three seasons. It probably makes more sense to just get it over with.
As for the here and now, who does Griffin’s sidelining help most on this Piston roster?
Biggest winners for the Detroit Pistons
This situation allows a number of Pistons to slide into their best spots. Jerami Grant can best play the four, and Saddiq Bey can immediately become the starting three. Sekou Doumbouya can spread his wings at the four off the bench, stepping into his own best role with more regularity.
Pistons head coach Dwane Casey will benefit as well. He’s had to shoehorn Griffin into the lineup this season, trying to counter his inability to defend on a roster ill-equipped to make up for his shortcomings. This will give Casey plenty of opportunities to try out rotations and combinations that perhaps he wasn’t able to attempt with regularity until now.
It’s going to allow him to better empower his younger players as they look to build the next era of Detroit Pistons basketball.
This is a win for everybody involved, really. Working out an arrangement with Griffin is a coup for Troy Weaver in his first season as general manager, and the chance to win an NBA championship this season has to be thrilling for Griffin himself.
And as Blake Griffin is one of the most self-aware stars this league has seen in some time, he’s no fool. He knows opponents target him defensively as games go on, and being his team’s biggest weakness on that end in the clutch is nobody’s idea of fun.
It’s a good thing, and it had to happen.