State of the Cap: Detroit PistonsBy:

2010/11 Detroit Pistons Payroll: $51.4 million
2010/11 NBA Salary Cap: $56.1 million
Roughly: $4.7 million under cap

The Good: When the only high value contract on your team is Jonas Jerebko, you know your salary cap is in rough shape. Jerebko was a quality player for the Pistons this year, averaging 9.3 points, 6 rebounds, and 1 steal per game on decent shooting.  His salary was a paltry $457,000 while next season he is due just $762,000.  If you consider that Jerebko’s stats were better than Jason Maxiell’s for less than one-fifth of the price, then you can see what a great value he truly was. The Pistons could use a lot more contracts like his.

The Bad: Last season, Detroit won 39 games and wanted to make a splash during the summer to become something better than an 8th-seeded playoff team.  They extended Rip Hamilton’s deal and signed Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva to big free agent contracts.  This season, they won 27 games and missed the playoffs entirely. That alone should tell you how well their money was spent.

The four years and $48 million coming to Ben Gordon is probably the most wasteful contract on the roster. Everyone knew that Gordon wasn’t worth that much money, but Detroit threw common sense out the window and gave it to him anyway. Gordon responded by missing 20 games due to injury, averaged just 13.8 points per game (a career low), and shot an awful 41.6% from the field.  Normally an excellent three point shooter, he was uncharacteristically bad as a Piston, hitting only 32% of them. Gordon will need a major turnaround in order to earn his bloated contract and save the Pistons a little embarrassment.

As if adding one bad contract wasn’t enough, Detroit managed to add another when they signed Charlie Villanueva. While his deal isn’t quite as expensive as Gordon’s, at four years and $31.2 million remaining, it still isn’t worth it. 11.9 points and 4.7 rebounds a game doesn’t add up to that kind of dough. Those numbers are well short of what he put up in his final season in Milwaukee and most people were not surprised. Unfortunately, none of those people work in Detroit’s front office.

It is very difficult to see how extending Rip Hamilton’s contract was a wise choice.  They gave him three more years at a total of $38 million even though he was 31 years old at the time and the team was kind of in a rebuilding mode (or so they should have been).  Hamilton then went out and turned into a brick layer, hitting just 40.9% of his shots, well below his career average.  He also missed nearly half the season because of multiple injuries. I know Rip is a popular player in Detroit and wants to retire a Piston, but the team shouldn’t have hamstrung their salary cap in order to keep him.

The Future: The Pistons have slipped into the dreaded “mediocre zone” where teams are only good enough to possibly earn a low playoff seed but only bad enough to get a low lottery pick.  All of their key players will be back next year so unless some drastic changes are made, the results will likely be the same. Tayshaun Prince still has a lot of value and could bring in some nice assets.  He is certainly overpaid at $11.1 million next season, but it is the final year of his contract and a contending team might be willing to deal for the efficient forward.

Unfortunately, the players they most need to get rid of and start over (Hamilton, Villanueva, and Gordon) all have at least three years left on their contracts.  Detroit will be stuck with them a while whether they like it or not.  They don’t have a player they can build their future around and they don’t have the money to sign one.  Rodney Stuckey was supposed to be the heir to Chauncey Billups and he did score a career high 16.6 points per game.  However, he continued to be an awful shooter from the field and three point line and he doesn’t distribute the ball enough.

The Pistons didn’t get any lottery luck, but perhaps they can find a gem with the seventh pick.  DeMarcus Cousins,  Greg Monroe or Cole Aldrich could certainly help improve their front line.  Detroit has to hope their draft picks pan out in a big way because that might be the only way they can turn around their team for the foreseeable future.

Grade: D