When NBA fans think of a rebuilding franchise, two things typically come to mind: tanking and playing young players as many minutes as possible. Those ideas often go hand-in-hand. The Detroit Pistons have seemingly taken that plan to the extreme; the Portland Trail Blazers have not. Not completely, at least.
The Pistons' now 28-game losing streak (as of Dec. 29) is tied for the longest in league history. The only other streak to reach this level of futility came over two seasons when The Process Philadelphia 76ers lost 28 in a row across the 2014-15 and 2015-16 campaigns.
There are a handful of reasons why Detroit has reached this point, all of which are well laid out by James L. Edwards of The Athletic (subscription required). Perhaps the most significant issue facing the Pistons right now is something the Blazers' front office and coaching staff have gone out of their way to avoid.
Three then-questionable roster choices have kept the Trail Blazers from approaching Pistons losing streak territory
A pair of well-debated offseason decisions and another made in late November have become crucial to keeping Portland out of historical ignominiousness.
The Pistons are the fifth-youngest team in the NBA and the third-youngest in terms of minutes played and usage. Six of their top seven players are 22 or younger and those same six players are six of the team's seven leading scorers. The 34-year-old Bojan Bogdanovic is the only thing keeping Detroit from skewing even younger, and he arguably should have been traded for more assets last season.
The Blazers don't have the same issues. Yes, Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe are key building blocks, but they're not responsible for carrying the team night after night. Toumani Camara is a rookie second-round pick who's earned his spot in the starting lineup; it wasn't handed to him because of his rookie status.
Portland's roster has veterans on it that the Pistons simply don't, and that's made the difference between a "regular bad" NBA team and a historically bad NBA team. These are the three choices the Blazers made during the offseason that have kept them from approaching Pistons-level awfulness.
1. Re-signing Jerami Grant
Whether it was in the hopes that Damian Lillard would stay or simply because it was too difficult to let him walk for nothing, general manager Joe Cronin inked Jerami Grant to a massive five-year, $160 million deal last summer.
It was an overpay by all accounts. Once Lillard was gone, it looked even worse. How does a 29-year-old fit a rebuilding timeline and what are you supposed to do with a contract that large? Grant has never been an all-star and is making too much money for any other team to send fair value back to Portland in a trade.
On the surface, it seemed like a simple poor decision.
All-star or not, though, the former Syracuse standout has been the Trail Blazers' best player this season. He's not the scorer Anfernee Simons is, the rebounder Deandre Ayton is or the defender Matisse Thybulle is, but he's been a constant in the starting lineup.
He's tied for the team lead in minutes played, leads the team in total scoring, is averaging 22.2 points a night and is shooting a career-high 40.6 percent from three on 6 attempts per game.
More importantly, Grant is a proven scorer and a veteran in his eighth NBA season. The Pistons don't have one of those. Send Jerami to Detroit and it's hard to imagine this losing streak becoming an all-time embarrassing one.
2. Keeping Malcolm Brogdon
The Blazers acquired Malcolm Brogdon in part two of the Lillard trade when they rerouted Jrue Holiday to the Boston Celtics. If a 29-year-old Grant was too old for Portland's rebuilding project, surely the 31-year-old Brogdon would be.
The initial reaction around the league was that there would be a part three to the Lillard move, which would happen when Cronin dealt Brogdon to a contender just as he did Holiday, but that trade never materialized.
It was a wise move by the Blazers, too. The former Rookie of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year has been the buffer between Henderson and the pressure he would be under as he goes from a 19-year-old learning the most difficult position in the NBA to the all-star most people think he'll be.
Brogdon has missed time with muscle injuries, which Portland should have expected given his history, but he's also the team's fourth-leading scorer at 16.0 points per game and its leader in assists. He's started 14 times and is behind only Grant in 3-point shooting percentage.
Cade Cunningham, despite his relative level of success, has never had someone like Brogdon to help slow things down for him. Killian Hayes, another point guard drafted in the top 10, never had that either, nor did 2022's No. 5 overall pick Jaden Ivey, or this year's No. 5 pick, Ausar Thompson.
Had Brogdon been around to siphon minutes and pressure away from those young, raw guards, there's a good chance this Detroit losing streak would have been cut off before it reached epic levels.
3. Bringing Scoot Henderson off the bench
This could be part 2.5 because, without Brogdon on the roster, it wouldn't be possible. Billups has been able to pick and choose the best spots for Henderson to succeed specifically because he has Brogdon as another option.
After struggling through his first handful of games and then an ankle injury that followed, Scoot has been the leader of the Blazers bench unit. He's still learning how to be an NBA floor general, but he's doing it against other reserves and without the level of pressure that would come along with fighting for Rookie of the Year positioning and the inevitable comparisons to Victor Wembanyama.
When the rest of Portland's guards aren't injured, which has been a rarity this year, Henderson can also play alongside Brogdon or Anfernee Simons, who's in his sixth NBA season. He can play with Grant on the floor, or a 26-year-old Matisse Thybulle.
On the flip side, take Thompson, for example, who was drafted two spots behind Henderson in last June's draft. He's had Bogdanovic to play off of for 12 games this season and the 32-year-old Alec Burks, who's playing 18 minutes per night.
Otherwise, he's surrounded by Cunningham (22 years old), Ivey (20), Isaiah Stewart (22), Jalen Duren (20), Hayes (22) or the ancient-by-Pistons-standards Marvin Bagley (24).
There's been no buffer in Detroit to allow the franchise's young core to develop at a pace that suits them. They've been tossed into the lake and told to sink or swim without any real guidance. That's a good way to end up with a bunch of young players who haven't learned or, in some cases, even had the chance to learn the NBA game.
It's also a good way to lose 28 times in a row. And despite the debates surrounding Cronin's roster building, keeping players like Grant and Brogdon around to give Sharpe - and especially Henderson - the freedom to make mistakes without having to worry about losing a 29th consecutive game was the smart choice.