Pistons: 3 takeaways from a huge NBA draft lottery win

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Takeaway No. 2 from the Pistons NBA draft lottery win: This was the lottery to win

If there’s some blessing for the Pistons winning this NBA draft lottery, it’s that they didn’t squander their one chance at luck in a weak draft. Last season’s draft produced LaMelo Ball and Anthony Edwards at the top of the class, but neither of them appears to be anywhere near as complete a prospect as Cade Cunningham or his 2021 classmates.

From a timing perspective, things couldn’t have worked out better. The Pistons ended up with two sure-fire hits in last year’s draft in the forms of Isaiah Stewart and Saddiq Bey, and a couple of promising question marks in Killian Hayes and Saben Lee.

They also have Jerami Grant going into just the second year of his three-year deal, at the ripe young age of 27 years old. Whomever the Pistons select, be it Cade Cunningham, Jalen Green, Evan Mobley or somebody else, will plug into a young core that is perhaps suddenly more equipped to compete at a high level than had been expected not that long ago.

LaMelo Ball is supremely talented, but if the Pistons had to choose, this is the outcome they would have preferred.

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