Amidst a flurry of trade-deadline deals Thursday, one high-profile former top pick changed area codes: Golden State reportedly dealt James Wiseman, the No. 2 pick in the 2020 draft, to Detroit in a four-team deal that also sent Pistons forwards Saddiq Bey to Atlanta and Kevin Knox to the Blazers. The deal also reportedly sent five second-round picks from Atlanta to Golden State, which were rerouted to Portland to bring former Warriors guard Gary Payton II back to the Bay Area. That was fun to explain!
It’s always tricky to guess at how younger guys will develop in new homes, but for now, let’s grade the deal.
Pistons: B
If there is upside to be found in this deal, it’s going to Detroit, where the 21-year-old Wiseman will hope for a fresh start and, presumably, receive the consistent playing time he needs. He probably wasn’t ever going to get on the floor when it mattered on a Warriors team that annually works to contend for championships. It’s not really revisionist history to say that he was probably not the right pick at No. 2 in that 2020 draft. It’s also very much on Wiseman now to get his career on track. All those things can be true at once.
During the 2020 draft cycle, it was pretty well known around the league that Wiseman was a favorite of Pistons GM Troy Weaver, who repeatedly tried to move up to various places in the draft from No. 7, but had no luck doing so, instead selecting Killian Hayes at that spot. Wiseman has always been known for his size, strength, ability to run the floor, and flashes of potential as a ballhandler and shooter, but he’s missed significant time with injuries and has never quite actualized any of that on a regular basis. Since the start of his career, I’ve never really heard much excitement about him in league circles, and he’s played in just 60 games, known more for his selective motor than anything else.
Some of the narrative around his career has probably been unfair to Wiseman, who was at one point seen as the top prospect in his high school class and never really backed that up with production at any point, including a lost year in college when he played just three games due to the NCAA penalizing him and Memphis. Then COVID-19 hit. But while Wiseman has lost a ton of development time to circumstance, at some point, it still falls on him to understand the things he can bring to a team and start to deliver on his promise. That’s in the past, and I think the expectations are much different now: Simply becoming a solid starter in Detroit, where he’ll get a chance to play with talented young guards in a rebuilding environment, would be a nice outcome for Wiseman’s career.
Based on Wiseman’s track record, is that type of career rebirth actually a great bet? Maybe not. But it was well known around the league that the Pistons were ready to move on from Bey, and at this point, it’s a relatively low-risk move. Here’s hoping Wiseman shows signs of life in Detroit.
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Warriors: B
The fact the Warriors drafted the wrong player three years ago is a sunk cost, and can’t really be fairly shoehorned into this analysis, but basically, Golden State traded a little-used, widely devalued prospect in Wiseman and got back a useful bench player who they developed and are strongly familiar with in Gary Payton II. This deal also helps them save significant money on their massive luxury tax bill over the next two years, due to Payton’s lower base salary. Payton will likely step into crucial backcourt minutes, with Steph Curry out injured, and he gives them an affordable, cost-controlled perimeter option for the next few seasons.
It’s fair to say that Wiseman certainly wasn’t justifying his rookie-scale contract, and he wasn’t going to get the minutes he needed to eventually deliver on it with the Warriors, who should be aggressively contending for the rest of Steph Curry’s prime years. There also presumably weren’t that many interested parties willing to pay a premium for him. I think this is a fairly pragmatic solution to the problem for Golden State, which can perhaps pursue another bench big via the buyout market.
Hawks: B-
This ended up being another quiet deadline for Atlanta, which seems to constantly find itself involved in trade rumors and left the deadline still employing John Collins. They essentially bring in Bey here at the expense of five second-round picks, and if the tenor of today’s market tells you anything, it’s that nobody cares about second-round picks anymore. Bey has struggled massively to score efficiently, but had a decent start to his career in Detroit before falling out of favor with the Pistons and fits well in theory as the type of versatile forward the Hawks like to put around Trae Young. I’m not sure what type of minutes he’ll see, but he’s a short-term upgrade on 19-year-old rookie AJ Griffin. Maybe those picks end up being something, but this is a decent buy-low for Atlanta, which will get Bey for the next two years on a cheap rookie deal before he hits restricted free agency.
Blazers: B
So, Portland basically traded Payton for a buy-low prospect in Knox and a ton of second-round picks that may or may not be worth much. In recent years, the second round has become increasingly dominated by two-way deals and pre-agreed situations between teams and agents, so there’s a pretty strong argument that everything after pick No. 35 or so in a given draft is kind of the same to some extent. The Blazers also brought in Matisse Thybulle today in a separate trade, who will likely step into Payton’s defensive-minded wing role. For a team that’s kind of straddling competing and developing young players, this is good (if potentially inconsequential) work along the fringes of the trade market. I don’t expect Knox to do much at this point, but there’s value gained here.
