Detroit Pistons’ Trajan Langdon talks offseason plans at year-end news conference
Detroit Pistons’ Trajan Langdon talks offseason plans at year-end news conference on Wednesday, May 7, 2025.
Pistons president of basketball operations Trajan Langdon is prioritizing patience and internal development this offseason.Langdon is open to trades but is focused on building sustainable success through the development of young players like Ausar Thompson, Jalen Duren, and Jaden Ivey.Langdon is observing league trends, such as the increasing physicality of playoff games, to inform future decisions.
They don’t know what they have. Not yet. Not fully. And when you listen to the man charged with figuring it out, he sure sounds as if he isn’t in the biggest rush.
Nor should Trajan Langdon be. Not with the roster he’s got and helped build. Not with the youth of his Detroit Pistons. Not with the room to get better by staying more or less put.
“I think for us, I’ve always said: ‘Stay patient.’ I’m not going to change,” said the Pistons’ president of basketball operations May 7 for the news conference wrapping up his first season with the franchise.
If someone wants to give him a star on the cheap, then sure, he’ll take the call. The Los Angeles Lakers didn’t hang up when the Dallas Mavericks called, for example. And if someone offers the Pistons a similar deal — along the lines of Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis — then, yeah, Langdon isn’t a fool.
“We are going to listen to calls,” he said. “We’re going to seek opportunities. We’re always looking (for) avenues to get better that we think make sense for us to improve.”
But?
“Have to make the right decision for sustainable success,” he said. “I think we have a group of guys that we can do that with. At what level, we don’t know right now. But we know a big thing for us this summer is going to be developing guys.”
Hear that?
That’s what you should want to hear. Langdon doesn’t sound like he’s ready to take a big swing this summer.
That’s a good thing.
He doesn’t have enough info. At best, he can guess as to what Ausar Thompson will look like in two years. Or Jalen Duren or Ron Holland or Jaden Ivey.
Yeah, he has an idea about each of them, and yeah, part of his job is to speculate, to gather as much intel as possible and make the best possible guess.
But what’s the rush?
Teams in the NBA generally don’t skip steps. Look at the champs most years — they’ve gone through it.
Again and again, until they figure out what the final piece might be, or at least the final tweaks. (The most recent example? The Boston Celtics taking their drafted core and eventually adding Jrue Holiday.)
The Pistons are just starting to go through that process, to reveal what they’ll need, to show Langdon whether they need a true No. 2 scorer (or whether he is already on the roster), to show him if Duren is the center of the future, to see where the league is headed, because the NBA is beginning to tilt.
Slowly, yes. But the physicality in the Pistons-Knicks series wasn’t an accident. These playoffs are starting to look like a throwback. Officials are letting players bump and check in ways they haven’t before.
How far will it go?
That’s more intel for Langdon to gather, to consider as he guides this young team. Also, the big swing guarantees nothing.
The Lakers, featuring Doncic and a still-thriving LeBron James, lost to Minnesota in five first-round games and still look a few moves from true contention. Besides, Los Angeles is a different market, a bigger market, and that franchise has gone star-hunting for the better part of 50 years.
The Pistons have the makings of something more organic. That doesn’t mean it’s better. Just more suited to this market, in the way franchises that aren’t NBA free-agent meccas must operate.
This doesn’t rule out trades. See the Indiana Pacers, who flipped a one-time draft gem — Paul George — for Domantis Sabonis and Victor Oladipo, then later flipped Sabonis for star guard Tyrese Haliburton (with a few other players exchanged in the deal).
And thus, Indiana heads into Game 3 of the East semifinals just two wins away from the conference finals. The Pacers lead another smaller-market team — Cleveland — that also made a big trade in search of relevancy, when the Cavs acquired guard Donovan Mitchell.
Remember though, the Pacers made consecutive East finals runs — and got to the second round before those two runs — on the strength of a homegrown core, of which George was the centerpiece.
And when they kept losing to the James-led Miami Heat, and George was ready for a change, the Pacers traded him to Oklahoma City to start anew. One day, the Pistons will use similar leverage to take a swing.
Maybe that day is at next season’s trade deadline, or next summer.
But it shouldn’t be this summer. It’s too soon, short of Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo. Or maybe Phoenix’s Devin Booker.
But even then, it makes little sense to give the farm away when you don’t know how valuable the farm is just yet.
Yes, the jump from 14 wins to 44 complicates expectations, as Langdon admitted, following a rebuild — and a season — he called “surprising” and “gratifying.”
“I guess it creates different expectations for us going into next year,” he said. “You can see that both ways, positively and negatively, right?”
Right.
Looking inward is the best strategy this summer. In the gym. In the weight room. In the film room. This is where the Pistons can improve the most. These guys are young. Some very young — Holland is still a teenager until early July. There is space to develop and surprise some more.
“(If) those guys take steps,” he said, “we get better.”
Yes, they do.
Not giving them that chance isn’t worth a big swing. At least not yet.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.