“We’re Excited to Help Them Move Forward”: New Detroit Pistons GM Assures Blake Griffin and Derrick Rose Are in His Plans
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With the appointment of Troy Weaver, the Detroit Pistons have finally got a general manager to lead the team. He worked for 12 years with the Oklahoma City Thunder before crossing conferences to join Detroit a few days back. The biggest question, for whoever was going to be appointed, was whether they would keep Blake Griffin and Derrick Rose.
While speaking to ESPN, Weaver confirmed that both are part of his plans. “I’m excited about having the chance to work with Blake. Obviously, being in Oklahoma City for the last 12 years, I remember Blake playing at OU and his family being around there. So, I’m very familiar with Blake. As long as Blake is in a Pistons uniform and under contract, I look forward to working with him in helping us restore the Pistons. He’s definitely in our plans going forward.”
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Big things ahead of Detroit Pistons?
Speaking about Rose, Weaver called him a “big-time player.” Both Griffin and Rose, former #1 overall picks, have been trying to revive their injury-ridden careers. Griffin had an All-NBA season last year while posting career-high numbers and also made an All-Star appearance after four years. But again this year he had injury troubles. After playing 18 games with the Pistons, Griffin had surgery on his left knee and missed the rest of the season.
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On the other hand, Rose was able to play 50 games for the second season in a row. Despite coming off the bench, he averaged 18.1 points, 5.6 assists, and 2.4 rebounds per game. Both Griffin and Rose are under contract till 2020-21 season while Blake has a player option for an additional year.
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“We’re excited to get them healthy and help them move forward,” Weaver said. “We feel like we have a good mixture of young guys with those two staples to be able to start there, but obviously we’ve got a lot of work to do with the draft and free agency.”
With many contracts coming off the books, the Pistons will have around $70million in confirmed salaries, which gives them some room to play around in the upcoming 2020 Free Agency. But since the 2020 Free Agency class looks thin, they could potentially look at offering one-year deals before making a big splash in the highly coveted 2021 Free Agency. The Pistons will be banking on Weaver’s resume as they look to attract the best talent to a ‘small-market’ like Detroit.