Detroit Pistons: What if Brandon Jennings never went down?

Brandon Jennings is back in the NBA and came back balling. So let’s think about what the Detroit Pistons might look like had he not gone down.

It’s 2015. The Detroit Pistons are hot after waiving (but forever paying) Josh Smith. Brandon Jennings is playing his best ball since his 50-burger as a rookie for the Milwaukee Bucks. It’s the third quarter of a game against those same Bucks, and Jennings goes down.

It’s the moment that changed the current state of the Pistons. They were a young hot team, on the cusp of making the playoffs again. But now they were without one of their top players. So what did they do? Did they wait? No. Not this team. They traded for Reggie Jackson, thus pushing Jennings aside, giving the team to Jackson instead.

Today, Jennings is back and doing well for the Bucks yet again but only on 10-day contracts. So sure his career has changed a lot, but what how different would the Pistons look right now if the team did stick with him?

Jennings going down started the firestorm of trades and changes made by Stan Van Gundy. For context, the only players remaining from that team are Andre Drummond and Anthony Tolliver (who is in his second stint with the Pistons.) Van Gundy has been wheeling and dealing since nothing seems to be working the way he wants.

This injury was the first time that the Van Gundy was in a position where his Pistons had a chance at the playoffs but needed to do something to stay that way. It’s funny to look at today, considering it seems like the Pistons have been in this purgatory since then. It feels like a million trades have happened yet somehow this team is still in the same place.

What this injury really kicked off though, was the Pistons maxing out their cap room. Reggie Jackson was coming in on a contract year, and the Pistons were not going to trade for a player just to let him walk. Jennings at the time was signed to a 3-year deal for $24 million. Back when it was signed that was a decently sized contract, but compared to the $16 million a year Jackson was making just the next year, it was nothing.

The free agent market wasn’t amazing that offseason. But had the Pistons not needed to sign their guard to big money, they could have made a play to go after LaMarcus Aldridge or Paul Millsap. Adding one of those players in their prime could have easily pushed the Pistons to the level they wanted to reach when they made the trade for Blake Griffin this season.

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I realize that Jennings isn’t the reason that this Pistons team looks like it does today. But his injury was the first piece that shifted in the puzzle. Since then so many moves have been made. It’s just unfortunate that the results aren’t great. It’s almost hard to look back at that team and realize how little things have changed in the past four years.