Trade & FA 2024-25:

[DanSchwartzgan]

Respectfully, I disagree. 

I agree Detroit would probably agree that Luka is a better player than Cunningham, but I'm not so sure they'd have been into that deal. For one thing, they're busy building around Cunningham the way we thought Dallas was busy building around Luka, and are probably starting to feel optimistic that the endeavor has some potential. But the real reason I buy Chicago's premise is that once the super max is off the table for Luka (which it would've been, regardless of where he was traded), he's basically unburdened by any type of criteria for choosing where to play other than where he wants to live. Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine there's a 0% chance he stays in Detroit very long at all, and I assume the Pistons' brass would very quickly reach a similar conclusion. 

This will be another in a long line of unpopular sentiments from me, but once you wrap your head around trading Luka at all, it's kind of easy to understand how they arrived at the deal they got. The reality is that you weren't going to get the kind of value for him we'd have expected without shedding any sort of "win-now" aspirations. There are so many players out there we'd have wanted who I just don't think we can assume were gettable in this particular situation, despite not being as good as Luka.

Correct.  Zero percent chance he stays in Detroit.  Therefore zero percent chance they give that package for him.  People seem to forget that Luka’s value is diminished in certain cities because there was no path to him staying there.