With the worst season in franchise history concluding on Sunday, the Detroit Pistons are quickly moving toward potential changes.
As The Athletic reported this past weekend, owner Tom Gores is strongly considering hiring a president of basketball operations to have the final say on all roster decisions. Per team and league sources, Gores and Co. are looking to move swiftly as it pertains to deciding if the organization, in fact, wants to hire someone to fill this position, which has been vacant since 2018.
The futures of both general manager Troy Weaver and head coach Monty Williams could depend on not only on if Gores elects to hire a new top decision-maker in the front office, but who that person is. It can be assumed that that person would want full authority to hire his own general manager and coach in order to take on the job.
Detroit is currently in a fragile state, as it finished with the league’s worst record (14-68) for the second consecutive year. However, the Pistons do have talented young players, highlighted by 2021 No. 1 overall pick Cade Cunningham, roughly $60 million in cap space this summer and a top-five pick in the 2024 NBA Draft.
The pieces are in place to potentially turn this thing back in the right direction sooner rather than later.
As the organization figures out its next steps, let’s take a look at some names Detroit could potentially look at to lead its basketball operations.
Jon Horst
If I were the Pistons, I would be closely monitoring the situation in Milwaukee, where Horst has been the general manager since June 2017. He won the NBA Executive of the Year award in 2019 and constructed the Bucks team that won the NBA championship in 2021.
He also has ties to the franchise. Horst is from Sandusky, Mich., a little under two hours north of Detroit, and was the manager of basketball operations for the Pistons from 2007 to 2008.
This year, the Bucks have had a weird season, to say the least. The team grabbed the third seed in the Eastern Conference on Sunday with a 49-33 record but hasn’t played inspiring basketball for much of the year. Milwaukee fired head coach Adrian Griffin in January, even though the Bucks were 30-13 at the time. They replaced him with Doc Rivers and have gone 19-20 since.
Given how NBA finger-pointing tends to go, it’s possible that if the team disappoints in the postseason, Bucks ownership would look at the front office.
John Hammond
Hammond is the man Horst replaced in Milwaukee, but not before he made two of the most significant moves in the franchise’s history. It was Hammond who drafted Giannis Antetokounmpo and made a trade with Detroit to land Khris Middleton, both in the summer of 2013. Like Horst, he also has been named the NBA’s Executive of the Year, winning the award in 2010.
In 2017, Hammond, who was the Pistons’ assistant general manager in the late 1990s to 2000, left Milwaukee to go to Orlando, where he was pivotal in helping build a Magic team that finished the regular season with a 47-35 record after winning 34 games just a season ago. Hammond became general manager of Orlando in 2017, drafting players like Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, Jonathan Isaac and Jalen Suggs, as well as trading Nikola Vučević to Chicago for draft picks (one of which became Wagner) and Wendell Carter Jr.
Under Hammond’s watch, the Magic has accumulated a lot of long, rangy forwards between 6-foot-6 and 6-foot-10, a coveted archetype of player in today’s NBA. Orlando had one of the NBA’s top defenses during the regular season.
Last summer, Hammond transitioned from senior advisor to the president of basketball operations in Orlando.
Neil Olshey
Despite never winning the big one in Portland and before an investigation into allegations of the Trail Blazers organization having a toxic environment saw Olshey fired in 2021, the longtime NBA executive had nothing but sustainable success during his time with the organization. Olshey took over as general manager of the Trail Blazers in 2012, after two seasons of holding the same role with the LA Clippers, and built a roster that won 50-plus games three times and 40-plus four times. Portland went to the Western Conference finals in 2019.
Olshey drafted the likes of Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum and Anfernee Simons.
Bryson Graham
Graham, probably the most unknown name on this list, has been one of the NBA’s rising executives for several years. He began as an intern for the New Orleans Hornets 14 years ago and has worked his way up to become the Pelicans’ (formerly Hornets) assistant general manager.
New Orleans has been one of the better teams at drafting in recent years, stocking up on young, productive wings such as Herb Jones and Trey Murphy III to complement Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson.
Dwane Casey
Casey is likely the most familiar name on this list. He coached the Pistons from 2018 until stepping down in 2023, making way for Williams to take over, and has decades of NBA experience that would make him a good candidate for the position. Casey’s well connected around the NBA and overseas. And while he’s most known for his coaching, Casey was very involved in scouting and talent evaluation while coaching both the Toronto Raptors and Pistons.
Casey is still in Detroit working with the organization in a front-office role, making it an easy transition for Gores if he were to ever entertain such an idea.
(Top photo of Jon Horst: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
