Atlanta Hawks free agent Josh Smith has five to six suitors when free agency begins at 12:01 a.m. Monday, and that the Detroit Pistons are expected to be one of the teams, according to ESPN.
Yikes.
Smith is looking for a max deal but will also have to wait for Dwight Howard to clear up his destination before teams will be open to pursuing him, either as a complement to Howard or as an alternative. The Pistons, though, are not on Howard's short list and so this is their idea of a major move. And that's kind of baffling.
Pistons GM Joe Dumars found out the hard way what happens when you unnecessarily spend money in a down year in free agency when he gave away millions to Charlie Villanueva and Ben Gordon in 2009, and it set the franchise's rebuilding efforts back five years. Now with a good core of Brandon Knight, Gregg Monroe and Andre Drummond, he's in position to go young and build something.
So he's going to bring in a guy he has to overpay to take a spot on a losing team in a bad market?
Has he not seen Back to the Future Part II and how if you don't correct your mistakes, bad things happen in the future?
Meanwile, the other five teams will be interesting to track. You have to think Atlanta is one, but only if Howard decides to go there. (Surprise! He won't.) Dallas has tons of cap space, Houston has long been rumored to consider Smith the alternative to Howard to pair with James Harden.
The other teams will be interesting to see revealed as this free agency period gets going. Smith is ranked as the third-best available power forward in our free agency big board.
