Former Duke star Trajan Langdon is now running the Detroit Pistons, and since he took over a mess, he’s busy guy. Detroit went from 14-68 in 2023-24 to 44-38 last season, which is hugely impressive.
Langdon met the media last week to discuss where the Pistons are. He is committed to Cade Cunningham, but now Cunningham takes about 1/3 of Detroit’s salary cap.
After that? He’s got to make some decisions on some people and the word he’s using is “optionality.” Second contracts are coming up for Jaden Ivey, Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson and all of them are promising. But do you keep them? Or try to put the pieces together in a different way?
He’s taking a very interesting approach. Every GM has to do this to some extent of course. You’re not allowed to just spend freely without penalty.
Langdon’s degree in math may help him somewhat there, but realistically, other people are probably going to crunch the numbers on computers and give him the results.
What’s cool here is that, as much as possible, he’s building flexibility into his payroll. Check out what this story says about Duncan Robinson for instance. While on hand, it might indicate less of a demand for Robinson’s services, on the other, it’s a very clever thing to do. As the writer says, it’s a great example of “optionality.”
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