Should we care about voiding the Bol Bol trade?
The Pistons have voided the trade for Bol Bol, which sent Rodney McGruder and a 2022 2nd round pick (via Brooklyn) to Denver. Bol apparently failed his physical.
Obviously, in the grand scheme of things this matters very little. Bol most likely would’ve washed out quickly and the Pistons gave up almost nothing to get him so voiding the trade will make very little difference as well. But I was writing a “Meet Bol Bol” piece when this got voided so I want to write something about it.
So the real thing to think is that we really shouldn’t think about it because it is meaningless?
Pretty much.
And yet, here you are, thinking about it.
I am a very sick individual. It is known.
On one hand this is really a bummer because this trade is exactly the sort of low-risk trade that a trash-fire of a tanking team like Detroit can afford to make. Bol has awesome talent, one of the top prospects in the country coming out of high-school, but had severe injuries and barely played in college and now in his third year he has played just 328 minutes across 53 games for Denver. Exactly the type of player who probably will wash out because he either isn’t good or healthy enough but due to his cheapness doesn’t matter. However he still had enough sliver of upside that he could become a real player.
At a basic level, the team should trust the doctors. If the physical said that there was basically no way Bol could play even short stretches of NBA basketball without getting hurt then that is that I suppose. The reason that this is some combination of baffling and disappointing is that you have to wonder what exactly the Pistons thought the physical was going to be. I have heard that it was his feet that scared them, but his feet have been a known issue since he first got hurt in college. Bol’s feet being terrible is a VERY known issue. So unless what I heard is wrong and they found some other issue, like a chronic back or knee issue or like they found out he has cancer and needs to start chemo immediately, it seems strange.
The reason this matters is because this is how players and other front offices will view it. Even if the physical revealed that his feet were even worse than they had prevoiusly believed, many people around the league will view this decision as an act of bad faith on the part of Detroit.
The NBA is not to the degree of modern college sports where narrative is everything, but with how much power players and agents today have it has grown in importance. Increasingly the NBA is almost like politics (this is also 100% true of college hoops and football), the truth does not matter, what people think is the truth (the narrative) is what matters. So regardless of what the Pistons may argue about his feet being worse than they believed, unless they have a smoking gun of Denver hiding information from them, many agents and players will be put off by the transaction. This is especially upsetting because the Pistons, with the influence of Arn Tellum, have made very obvious and concerted efforts to make good with agents and players around the league in the current regime.
Lot of words to say that the Pistons bought a 20 year old truck off of craigslist and are mad the Wipers stopped working.
I wasn’t mad about that it was just frustrating sometimes.
Also yes, I could’ve just said that.
How does this relate to the whole DMo thing that got voided under SVG?
Another narrative thing that makes it matter, despite being far apart and totally different situations, the fact that the Pistons voided two trades in a fairly close time period reflects poorly.
How is this situation totally different?
A few reasons
The Pistons made a real investment in that trade with a 1st round pick and were trading for him with intention of signing him to a significant contract extension. Motiejunas was meant to be a genuine core piece for Detroit. You are going to scrutinize more over that as opposed to Bol who is meerly a cheap flyer
More importantly, Dmo’s injury issues had been more recent, his career got off to a good start and played significant minutes as an NBA player. The back issue was not a known issue in the way that Bol’s feet were. Going purely off my own memory, him having a back issue more or less came out of the blue. With Bol, the Pistons knew full well when the agreed to the trade that Bol had issues with his feet, by all accounts the Pistons did not know that Dmo had a severe back issue.
It is also worth mentioning that the ruling on Dmo was probably correct because he flushed out of the league pretty quickly.
This really doesn’t matter, why did you write this?
Why did you read it?