Detroit Pistons say Reggie Jackson and Brandon Jennings can co-exist

Stan Van Gundy says that Brandon Jennings is still in the Detroit Pistons future plans despite trading for Reggie Jackson in one of the biggest NBA trade deadline deals Thursday.

The Detroit Pistons completed a huge deal Thursday in the midst of the craziest trade deadline in history where 8 percent of the NBA was traded. Detroit connected with Oklahoma City and Utah in a three team deal that sent Thunder guard Reggie Jackson to Detroit and sent Detroit guard D.J. Augustin and forward Kyle Singler to OKC.

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Detroit has had quite the year so far, after getting off to a 3-19 start, they worked their way back to being in the Eastern Conference playoff hunt and just trail Miami by two games for the eighth seed. Things went rocky for Detroit when star point guard Brandon Jennings tore his ACL in late January. Detroit finished the last 11 games before the All-Star break 4-7 because of this.

With Jennings out, Detroit’s back-up point guard D.J. Augustin stepped up in a big way averaging 20.3 points and 8.2 assists per game in his last 10. But, Pistons president and coach Stan Van Gundy made the move on Thursday to get rid of Augustin in order to bring in the more talented and younger Reggie Jackson.

It was met with un-ease for the fans who knew that Jackson wasn’t good for the locker room in Oklahoma City and D.J. was getting out of his shell in Detroit with Jennings out. But, Jackson and Detroit are the perfect match. Jackson will pick up where Brandon Jennings left off, as a guard who can take over a game by scoring as well as finding the big men in the post. With the Thunder, Jackson was trapped in a shadow role with Russell Westbrook ahead of him in the rotation as well as NBA MVP Kevin Durant in the lineup.

Now, with Augustin gone and Jackson in, Van Gundy is still going to need to find out what to do with Brandon Jennings, who will remain out the rest of the year. Jennings was averaging 19.2 points and eight assists in his last ten games before tearing his ACL.

While both Jackson and Jennings play point guard, Jackson can and has played the two guard as a 6’3 guard. Van Gundy reportedly tried to already trade Jennings to the Nets for Joe Johnson in a deal that fell through, so you can expect that Jennings feels like he’s being pushed out by the Pistons at this point. But, Van Gundy says both the young guards are in their future plans.

“The league in general tends – not everybody, but the league in general tends to be playing smaller, and we’re anxious to get Brandon back and see where he’s at and then we’ve got, he’s got next year and then we can evaluate it going forward on where we want to go, but I don’t think at all that it means Brandon won’t be here long-term. That’s not the way we’re looking at it,” Van Gundy said accoring to CBS Detroit.

But, the future is murky for Jennings who is only signed through next year, and may take his talents somewhere where he can shine on his own.

“I’ve said all along, there’s a lot of uncertainty around Brandon, and so we needed to make sure we were protected, plus Brandon’s only signed through next year, so we wanted to get a long-term option, and there’s still plenty of room for Brandon,” Van Gundy said.

Hopefully Jennings isn’t too offended by the moves Detroit made and tried to make and can return to run the floor with Reggie Jackson. Whether the egos of Jennings and Jackson can actually work side-by-side will be the biggest question for Detroit.

Stan Van Gundy says that Brandon Jennings is still in the Detroit Pistons future plans despite trading for Reggie Jackson in one of the biggest NBA trade deadline deals Thursday.

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