Even with no contract extension, Andre Drummond plans to stay in Detroit

The Detroit Pistons will have the NBA’s seventh-highest payroll this season at just over $83.3 million, and any trade or signing that adds another $1.4 million to that mark would knock them over the luxury tax. That’s an unfortunate place to be in for a team that is hardly the seventh-best squad in the league, one that few expect to beat the playoff drought that has kept them out of the postseason for six seasons and counting.

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Worse, this comes on the heels of the Pistons letting big time free agent scoring big Greg Monroe leave the team without any compensation or even cap space in return. The team would seem to be in prime position to turn it all around in the summer of 2016, Stan Van Gundy’s third offseason as Pistons prez, but a max contract extension for Andre Drummond would likely knock the Pistons right back into salary cap hell.

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But wait, there’s hope! News filtered out of Detroit on Tuesday regarding Drummond’s interest in holding off on that contract extension until next summer, allowing the team to use salary cap space to sign up helpers prior to giving Drummond the cash he was going to get all along. How very Spursian of them!

From Vince Ellis at the Detroit Free Press:

Drummond was just about penned in for an upcoming five-year, $120 million deal the moment Van Gundy came to the team following the 2013-14 season. As a result of this decision, the $21 million that Drummond would earn with the extension in 2016-17 would stay off the cap – freeing up potentially $30 million in space – allowing the Pistons to attempt to sign or trade for better teammates. Drummond’s $8.1 million cap hold will also count against Detroit’s cap, but the $13 million difference between that mark and his eventual starting salary means all the world when you’re attempting to build a team.

This is huge. Drummond is not giving up any money, he was going to be paid $3.27 million this season regardless of whether or not he agreed to the extension on Oct. 20 or July 20. What it does, for a team still paying off remnants of the previous administration (including over $6 million to Josh Smith and Aaron Gray, since waived), is give the Pistons a slight chance to get it right.

This is probably why Van Gundy was more than a little strident in announcing the decision. From David Mayo at Michigan Live:

The San Antonio Spurs, famously, ran the same scheme in 2014 in “declining” to come to terms with Kawhi Leonard on a contract extension, saving money for a 2015 offseason that would help bring the team LaMarcus Aldridge as a free agent signing.

The Spurs, however, didn’t go on record as much about the decision-making process, whereas the Pistons are rather blatantly disclosing the team’s attempts to circumvent salary cap rules, however. Still, for those assuming that this would be a fineable offense, understand that this is exactly what this $8.1 million “cap hold” is for.

Drummond wouldn’t make that salary in 2016-17 anyway (should he choose to accept the team’s qualifying offer, it would be for $4.4 million), and the NBA couldn’t buck this process by assigning arbitrary max-level cap hold numbers in the hopes of eliminating these sorts of moves. Austin Rivers was chosen directly after Drummond in the 2012 draft, should he have a whopping $21 million cap hold as well? Presuming he finished his rookie deal, of course.

So the Pistons are safe in the knowledge that there is probably nothing the NBA can do to throw themselves in front of this arrangement, Drummond is going to get his money no matter what (even if he suffered a scary season-ending injury this year, 30 NBA teams would happily step up to offer as much money as they could to him as a free agent), and Van Gundy should be happy that most of us will pretend to believe that this was Drummond’s idea first.

What about Pistons fans, though? Is there a possibility, however slight, that Drummond could turn heel? Could, more specifically, understandably turn heel?

Kawhi Leonard’s season ended in the first round the season prior to his signing, but the Spurs/Clippers opening series felt as talented and competitive as any Western Conference final or Finals showdown in recent years. When he decided to wait on his extension in 2014, he was working with a Spurs outfit coming off of a championship, with him as Finals MVP, working as the class of the NBA.

Drummond’s setting is different, despite Van Gundy’s inarguable intelligence.

The Pistons and Drummond would kill for a mere first round exit in the East this year, one that would break their Eastern Conference “leading” streak of postseason misses. Say the Pistons flail away this season, though, miss the playoffs, and fail to attract any boffo free agents in what is becoming a shrinking free agent class in 2016. Drummond, still working on that cap hold, could watch as the free agent pool dried up by the end of the first week of the offseason (as it did this summer), and reconsider his options.

Remember, he’s yet to put pen to paper – and putting pen to paper means eliminating any cap space moving forward, committing to a team that just whiffed in attempting to lure hotshot teammates. While internal development is nice and the East remains weak, Drummond might just be signing away on Detroit’s eighth straight postseason miss in 2016-17.

Wouldn’t Drummond by then at least want to consider the idea of taking the Greg Monroe route?

Monroe, you’ll recall, chose stay out of restricted free agency and work for Detroit’s qualifying offer in 2014-15. He then fled as an unrestricted free agent this summer, getting the max from Milwaukee. Drummond could choose to do the same (working at over $4 million in 2016-17; not attempting restricted free agency as Detroit would match any offer) and try his luck in 2017.

Now that’s a ton of money for Andre to give up – both for 2016-17, and the lessened max deal that he’d be able to sign with another team in 2017 – but consider the way both Drummond and Van Gundy talked Andre’s decision up on Tuesday:

As the ultimate team player. The guy that values winning above all. Ready to forego signed-off upon financial commitments in order to leave himself the chance to play with great teammates.

If this is the case, and the Pistons stink this year prior to stinking up the free agent turn next summer, wouldn’t Andre Drummond, Winner Above All want to take a swing at a better team in 2016 and eventually 2017?

Probably not, because that’s a lot of money to forego, and Drummond likes it in Detroit.

Still, the Pistons’ future is riding on some salary cap space and the brief rush of free agency, which is a dance Detroit fans have sadly seen before. It’s true that Joe Dumars won’t be around to pick the players this time, but there are absolutely no guarantees that Stan Van Gundy will be able to convince any significant sets of free agents to even allow the Pistons president to pick Andre Drummond’s new teammates.

And Andre Drummond, despite his convictions, will still have options.

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Kelly Dwyer

is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops