The Detroit Pistons have agreed to a two-year contract with veteran center Aaron Gray. Gray, who’s been in the league for eight years split the season last year with the Raptors and the Kings.
Gray averages 3.4 points and 3.7 rebounds.
Gray played 37 games last season and will likely take the roster spot of Josh Harrellson, who has a non-guaranteed contract.
On one hand, I look at the signings of minor players like Cartier Martin and Aaron Gray as kind of a bummer, since they don’t appear to have very much upside and roster space is drying up quickly. At first glance, it doesn’t look like we should be signing these marginal players before doing anything to give this roster the makeover it desperately needs (swapping Meeks for Stuckey won’t cut it, in case I needed to spell that out).
However, the more I think about it, the more I realize that signing Gray (or at least something like it) was a move that needed to be done. Think about it. How the HECK did this team scrimmage last season? With Monroe and Drummond going at each other at center on separate units?? That’s the only way I can even imagine it, and assuming that’s the case, it’s no wonder at all that the team performed so poorly. Plus, Smith likely played power forward in scrimmages. And while that’s his best position by a mile, practicing at a different position than the one you start at is yet another completely unnecessary hurdle to put in a guy’s place when he’s destined to struggle playing out of position in the first place. The very least you could possibly do when creating such an unconventional, ill-fitting lineup is to give these guys as much practice as possible at positions they’re not adept at.
I have been a vocal detractor of how consistently awful this organization has been run for the past five years, and one unsung problem (likely a symptom of organizational incompetence) last season was this idea that your big man pairing that’s a bad fit to begin with can’t even practice together on the same unit. Personally I don’t think Monroe and Drummond ever had any chance of success together, but if the Pistons were determined to try to make a difficult situation work, it was lunacy to give this problematic pairing the unnecessary hurdle of keeping them from practicing together on the same unit.
I pray this team finds an adequate sign-and-trade for Monroe, but if they don’t, at the very least Gray provides a big body for Drummond to bang against in practice (with Monroe and Smith going against each other, which might provide some concrete answers as to who the better power forward is). One small step towards organizational sanity.