The Detroit Pistons know all too well how former general manager Troy Weaver and former president of basketball operations Joe Dumars can take big swings.
The pair each spent time as a top executive for the Pistons, but now hold high roles with the New Orleans Pelicans, Weaver as senior vice president of basketball operations reporting to Dumars.
But after a bit of a reckless NBA draft night that is betting big on the upcoming season, the pair are receiving quite a bit of criticism from around the league going into Year 1.
The Pelicans chose to trade an unprotected 2026 first-round pick (the best of New Orleans or Milwaukee) to move up from No. 23 to No. 13 in last week’s draft, after selecting Oklahoma’s Jeremiah Fears with the seventh pick.
For a team that just went 21-61, that’s a bold gamble.
”That is the worst draft trade I have seen in over a decade,” one Eastern Conference executive anonymously told reporter Shamit Dua.
“They should all be fired next year when that becomes a top 5 pick,” another executive told Dua.
The Pelicans used the pick to select center Derik Queen out of Maryland, who could very well become a great NBA player. But the consensus was that the trade was risky, to say the least.
Even the Atlanta Hawks — the trade partner on draft night — didn’t think the offer was real.
According to reporting from Dua, when Weaver called Atlanta’s senior vice president of basketball operations Bryson Graham, he was skeptical of the trade and “asked for clarification multiple times” the pick was in fact unprotected.
It reached a point where the Hawks’ general manager called Dumars — a two-time NBA champion as a player and one-time champion as an executive with the Pistons — directly to be sure the trade was real before accepting.
The reputation of Weaver being a bit cavalier on trades seems to stem from the end of his days in Detroit, where an executive told Dua “everyone was looking at Detroit saying ‘Detroit can help us out right?’, then calling them and seeing if they can trick em into some BS*.”*
Weaver’s tenure with the Pistons ended in 2024 after a 14-68 finish that led to the organization hiring current president of basketball operations Trajan Langdon and head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, now coming off a 30-win improvement and an appearance in the playoffs.
Pistons fans will probably be happy with a bit of a quieter offseason and avoiding the possibility of a top draft pick slipping away in a high-risk trade.
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