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With the 2023 NBA Draft only five days away, trade rumors have heated up around the league as of late. And maybe the most notable recent trade rumor pertains to the New Orleans Pelicans. The Pelicans are reportedly interested in trading up in the draft for a top-3 pick in order to select guard prospect Scoot Henderson, per The Athletic's Shams Charania. The Charlotte Hornets own the second pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, while the Portland Trail Blazers own the third pick.
On Friday, ESPN published an article detailing five hypothetical Zion Williamson trades, and one of them has Williamson heading to the Detroit Pistons in a three-team trade, with the second overall pick, Bojan Bogdanovic, and Isaiah Stewart heading to the New Orleans Pelicans and the fifth and 14th overall picks going to the Charlotte Hornets. In order to better understand this trade from both the Pelicans' and Pistons' perspectives, let's grade the hypothetical blockbuster trade for both teams. With all that said, here are some grades for ESPN's wild hypothetical Pelicans-Pistons-Hornets trade involving Zion Williamson:
Grading ESPN's wild hypothetical Pelicans-Pistons-Hornets trade involving Zion Williamson
Pistons: A-
The Detroit Pistons give up quite a lot of assets in this hypothetical trade — two starters in Bogdanovic and Stewart, along with the fifth overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. But for a player of Williamson's caliber, who would be one of the best players in Pistons franchise history, it's well worth it.
It wouldn't be an understatement to say that Williamson would be the best player the Pistons have had in over a decade. Sure, Blake Griffin was terrific during the four seasons he was in Detroit, but he wasn't more talented than Williamson.
A core of Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Jalen Duren, and Zion Williamson should have Pistons fans drooling just thinking about it. The Pistons, with Williamson, would arguably have the top young core in the entire NBA. Detroit would still probably be at least a year away from legitimate playoff contention — the team finished the 2022-23 season with a poor 17-65 record — but the sky would be the limit for that group.
Pelicans: A
It's hard to imagine the Pelicans getting a better trade package for Williamson than they would in this hypothetical ESPN trade. Not only would the Pelicans get the second pick in the NBA Draft and thus their guy in Scoot Henderson, but they'd also get two rock-solid players in Bogdanovic and Stewart.
Bogdanovic thrived as Detroit's top scoring option in the 2022-23 season, as he averaged a career-high 21.6 points per game on 48.8% shooting from the field and 41.1% from behind the three-point arc. Stewart, meanwhile, is as tough of a player as there is in the NBA and averaged a near double-double of 11.3 points and 8.1 rebounds per game this year.
Only time will tell if the New Orleans Pelicans will end up trading Williamson to the Detroit Pistons sometime over the next week or not. But what's already clear is that this ESPN hypothetical trade could benefit both the Pelicans and the Pistons.
