The Deal
Pistons get: Center Donatas Motiejunas, guard Marcus Thornton
Rockets get: Center Joel Anthony, 2016 Detroit first-round pick (top-8 protected in 2016, top-10 protected in 2017 and 2018)
Detroit Pistons: C-minus
In an unexpected turn of events, the Pistons look like the most aggressive buyers at the trade deadline. Days after adding Tobias Harris from the Orlando Magic, Detroit has now added Motiejunas to its young core.
While the Harris trade was a slam dunk, there's a lot more risk here for the Pistons. Unlike Harris, Motiejunas isn't under contract for next season. He'll be a restricted free agent, and it's difficult to forecast the market for a player coming off serious back surgery, which he had last spring and kept him out of Houston's playoff run. Motiejunas missed this season's first 20 games, returned in early December, was ineffective, and has sat out since New Year's Eve due to lingering back pain.
3:30 PM ET Kevin Pelton ESPN Staff Writer The Deal
Pistons get: Center Donatas Motiejunas, guard Marcus Thornton
Rockets get: Center Joel Anthony, 2016 Detroit first-round pick (top-8 protected in 2016, top-10 protected in 2017 and 2018)
Detroit Pistons: C-minus
In an unexpected turn of events, the Pistons look like the most aggressive buyers at the trade deadline. Days after adding Tobias Harris from the Orlando Magic, Detroit has now added Motiejunas to its young core.
While the Harris trade was a slam dunk, there's a lot more risk here for the Pistons. Unlike Harris, Motiejunas isn't under contract for next season. He'll be a restricted free agent, and it's difficult to forecast the market for a player coming off serious back surgery, which he had last spring and kept him out of Houston's playoff run. Motiejunas missed this season's first 20 games, returned in early December, was ineffective, and has sat out since New Year's Eve due to lingering back pain.
EDITOR'S PICKS
Trade Tracker 2016: Deal-by-deal breakdown Here's a look at the trade deadline deals going down in the NBA. Presumably, Detroit wouldn't make this trade without confidence that Motiejunas will be healthy for the stretch run. The long-term implications are more difficult to predict. If this is a temporary setback, the Pistons might be able to re-sign Motiejunas at a good price because of his lost season. If the back continues to bother him, they might have paid a high price for damaged goods.
Even when healthy, it's not clear how effective Motiejunas really is. Most of his value is based on 2014-15, when he started 62 games and showed ability inside (his 53.4 percent shooting on post-ups led all players with at least 100 attempts, per Synergy Sports tracking) and out (he made 36.8 percent of his 3-point attempts after shooting worse than 30 percent beyond the arc his first two seasons). However, Motiejunas still struggled to protect the rim as a center and wasn't especially efficient overall.
The good news is the Pistons don't need Motiejunas to be a star, merely a solid reserve. Presumably he'll replace Aron Baynes as Detroit's backup to (and hacking insurance for) center Andre Drummond, with the ability to occasionally play alongside Drummond depending on matchups. Motiejunas' ability to stretch the floor enables him to play with Drummond offensively so long as there's a bigger power forward he can defend at the other end. Thornton also has some short-term value to Detroit, which was in the market for a veteran wing stopgap with starting shooting guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and backup Jodie Meeks both sidelined by injuries.
Still, a first-round pick that could be in the lottery is a lot to give up for the right to match any offer to Motiejunas. If he's healthy and plays well down the stretch, the Pistons could find themselves having to choose between letting Motiejunas walk and overpaying a player who doesn't appear to have a starting role at any point down the road.
Houston Rockets: A
A few hours before the deadline, the Rockets' big-picture strategy remains unclear. Whatever direction they go, however, dealing Motiejunas for this kind of value makes sense. As important a piece as he was to Houston's 2014-15 regular season, Motiejunas got usurped in the frontcourt pecking order this season by the younger Clint Capela, who has also shown the ability to play alongside starting center Dwight Howard in addition to backing him up.
Given how much Rockets general manager Daryl Morey prizes flexibility, re-signing Motiejunas to a big contract this summer seemed unlikely. So Houston has to be elated at getting a pick likely to land in the middle of the first round in return.
The protections on the pick Detroit is sending the Rockets are worth noting. According to ESPN's Brian Windhorst, the selection is top-8 protected this season and protected in the top 10 each of the next two years.
Realistically, barring unprecedented injuries, the 2016 protection basically amounts to the Pistons keeping the pick if they land one of the top three spots in the lottery. Otherwise, even if Detroit misses the playoffs -- a reasonable possibility given that the Pistons are currently a half-game out of eighth and weakened themselves in the short term by trading backup point guard Brandon Jennings to get Harris -- Houston is almost certainly getting this pick.
Swapping 30 games of an injury-limited Motiejunas plus his matching rights for a four-year rookie contract of a player drafted around 15th is terrific from a value standpoint.
There's another small, ancillary benefit to this trade for the Rockets, who shed about $700,000 in salary taking back Anthony's $2.5 million deal. That either translates into luxury-tax savings for Houston, which is currently over the tax line, or makes it easier for the Rockets to add salary in subsequent trades. By virtue of using the full mid-level exception this summer, Houston is hard-capped at $88.7 million in payroll. The Rockets now stand about $1.2 million below that total.