NBA Offseason 2020: 5 potential landing spots for Russell Westbrook

2. Detroit Pistons

LET HAVOC REIGN!

In all honesty, Duncan Smith and our buddies over at Hoops Habit have been writing about this for awhile, but a potential Russell Westbrook-Blake Griffin swap would make some sense for both sides.

For the Detroit Pistons, they’d get an actual, honest-to-God starting point guard to help inject some incitement into the veins of a franchise that needs to wake up from its coma. They’d keep their seventh overall pick in this year’s draft, get rid of the ailing Griffin and add a player who wouldn’t impede a fledgling rebuild, if only because it’s in such an early stage there’s not really a single keeper on the roster.

For the Rockets, they’d be trading three years of inflated salary for two years with Griffin, who’s owed $36.8 million next year before a $39 million player option in 2021-22. Harden and Russ didn’t really work as a duo, but a healthy Griffin? They may complement each other better, and even if they didn’t, they’d only have to swallow two years of salary instead of three. This is about as good as it gets for last-ditch efforts to keep Harden’s championship window open via Westbrook trade.

Don’t forget, new Pistons GM Troy Weaver spent his early days as an assistant GM with the Thunder, so he’s quite familiar with what Russ brings to the table.

If the Rockets aren’t interested in the version of Griffin who only played 18 games last season due to injury (and was extremely rusty at that), the Pistons still have $20 million in cap space. Between that and shipping off Tony Snell’s $12.2 million player option, that’d be enough to take on Westbrook’s salary in a trade.

Houston would get another 3-and-D wing (albeit a subpar one), Snell’s salary would expire at the end of the year and the Rockets would snag an extra first-rounder. Meanwhile, the Pistons would suddenly rely on an aging core of Westbrook and Griffin. It’s not much, but it’s decidedly more attractive than what happens if they’re outbid for Christian Wood’s services this summer and fail to dump Griffin’s contract.