Blake Griffin, after an eye-opening 2018-19 season, seems right in the thick of his prime at 30 years old. Andre Drummond, 25, quietly enjoyed a standout season, too, averaging a career-high 17.3 points per game and proving his improvement wasn't a one-year aberration. As a result, it made sense going into Thursday night's NBA Draft that the Detroit Pistons would prioritize adding a player who could help their star frontcourt rise up the Eastern Conference ranks next season.

Sekou Doumbouya, the youngest player in this year's draft class, doesn't profile as that type of player as a rookie. He's a gifted athlete at 6-foot-9 with long arms and a strong body, but must continue refining his skills and developing his understanding of the game before making a major impact in the NBA. As Dwane Casey tells it, though, the Pistons' hand was basically forced into drafting a relative project like Doumbouya when he unexpectedly fell to the middle of the first round.

“He kept dropping and we had Plan A in place and we didn’t expect him to be there. Then Plan B came into place and it was the best plan of all — because we had him ranked very high on the board,” he said of Doumbouya, per Rod Beard of The Detroit News. “[Most of the team scouts] were there at the workout in Dallas and we thought we were wasting our time because we saw all the teams in front of us.

“We didn’t know he was going to drop — and that drop is our gain. We’re happy to get him.”

The draft never plays out as anticipated.

In terms of their chances to win a playoff series in 2019-20, the Pistons surely would have been better off taking a more established player at No. 15. But sometimes talent trumps fit, and Detroit clearly believes enough in Doumbouya's rare gifts to sacrifice what likely would have been a marginal short-term payoff for the long-term promise of his immense potential.