Detroit Pistons want to harness potential of G League team, just like Pelicans did

Posted by Admin November 10, 2024 NBA

The New Orleans Pelicans are among the NBA teams that have made liberal use of the G League — and have reaped the rewards.

Naji Marshall and Jose Alvarado are former undrafted free agents who signed two-way contracts with the Pelicans. Both were standouts on their G League affiliate, the Birmingham Squadron, and eventually developed into bona fide NBA rotation players.

The majority of their recent draft selections — including former 17th overall pick Trey Murphy III and lottery picks Jaxson Hayes, Kira Lewis, Jr., Dyson Daniels and Jordan Hawkins — have started games for the Squadron.

It offers a template for what the Detroit Pistons, who are now run by several former Pelicans front office members, are planning for the Motor City Cruise.

Pistons president of basketball operations Trajan Langdon and executive vice president Michael Blackstone spent the previous five seasons in New Orleans. And prior to his first season with the Pelicans, Langdon was named 2018-19 NBA G League Basketball Executive of the Year as an assistant general manager with the Brooklyn Nets.

The Cruise, who play a mile north of Little Caesars Arena at Wayne State Fieldhouse and share a practice facility with the Pistons, enjoy amenities and advantages other G League teams lack. It allows a deeper level of integration between the two teams that the front office hopes will create a seamless player development program.

“The beauty of here, is it’s right here,” Blackstone told the Free Press last week. “(The Cruise) literally are practicing and working out in our same building, so the beauty of here is it’s so close that we can take advantage of even more than we did in New Orleans, depending on what the situations are and what’s going on at the time, injuries, all that kind of stuff.

“The intention is to utilize it to its fullest. … Our hope is to make it a big part of what we do.”

Since its inaugural season in 2021-22, the Cruise has served numerous roles for the Pistons. It lent players and coaches to the Pistons as the team navigated a COVID-19 outbreak that December. Former Pistons second-round picks Saben Lee and Luka Garza were Cruise standouts. Cade Cunningham, Isaiah Stewart and ex-Piston Isaiah Livers all rehabbed injuries with the Cruise.

Birmingham is a five-hour drive north of New Orleans, making it more difficult to send players back-and-forth from the Pelicans and Squadron on short notice. It also made it more difficult for Pelicans coaches to scout G League games in-person. They made it work, but having both teams in the same practice facility in Detroit simplifies things.

“An NBA head coach can walk and watch our practice every single day,” Cruise GM Max Unger said. “For our players, they have the built-in resources and the accountability of being in an NBA building where people have eyes on you. When I’m going through the draft process, whether a G League draft, an NBA draft, we’re talking to potential Exhibit 10 projects. The fact that we are under one roof is an incredible, incredible thing.”

The Cruise will continue to serve the same needs under new leadership, but there are also areas that can be expanded. A Pistons first-round pick has yet to play a game for the Cruise. Cunningham and Stewart are the only two to receive a Cruise assignment, but only practiced and worked out with them.

Other teams haven’t been shy about using the G League as a developmental resource for all rookies, regardless of draft position. In the future, the Pistons may become one of them.

“We are very conscious of not saying ‘send them down’ because the language that we use when using our G League team, in our minds it’s not a bad thing,” Blackstone said. “It’s a developmental thing. It’s a recovery thing. It’s a growth thing to use the Cruise or use the G League team. We want them and our players, as well as our coaches and our staff, to not think about it as anything other than that, that it’s just an extension of what we do with the Pistons. That will be a big part of how we make it work here, is making sure everybody understands how we feel about it.”

The Pistons have failed to develop a two-way player into a full-time rotation player, similar to a Marshall or Alvarado, and Blackstone wants that to change. He gave a vote of confidence toward the Cruise’s leadership, which has continuity despite the Pistons bringing in an entirely new front office and coaching staff this offseason.

Unger, a metro Detroit native and Berkley High alumnus, is entering his first season as GM. He previously served as Cruise assistant GM last season and joined the Pistons as a college scouting coordinator in 2021. Also returning is Cruise head coach Jamelle McMillan, the son of current Los Angeles Lakers assistant and former NBA point guard and head coach Nate McMillan. Jamelle overlapped with Blackstone and Langdon in New Orleans, where he was an assistant coach from 2019-21.

Blackstone is proud of what they accomplished with the Pelicans, but the hope is the group can have greater success in Detroit. The Cruise tips off the regular season at home on Tuesday against the Windy City Bulls.

“You don’t know until you get into it but we had some tremendous success,” Blackstone said. “And it’s because we cared about it.

“I’m seeing the same things here with how we’re operating. So I’m very positive about how this is going to work.”

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Contact Omari Sankofa II at osankofa@freepress.com. Follow him on X @omarisankofa.