WHY CHICAGO

I like the idea of Simmons, Colby White, Derozan, Finney-Smith, and Vucevic. I think it's VERY dynamic, a lot more defensive than what they have, and them adding Isaiah Stewart on the bench helps their depth as well. Finney-Smith is a blossoming young player. Having Simmons is a risk but his contract is much more manageable than Lavine's. Zach Lavine has over 100 million dollars more left on his contract than Ben Simmons does (40 million in 2024 and that's it). No one seemingly wants Lavine's contract. Here they get rid of it, take a 1 year gamble on Simmons, grab themselves two pretty good young role-player forwards, and move on.

WHY BROOKLYN

I always notate the team I think would be on the fence if there is one. In this case, just look at the history of the Brooklyn Nets. They take gambles! They trade for players with talent that want to be traded. In this case, Zach Lavine fully fits into the Brooklyn Nets roster. Though he is known for injury woes, He is more available than Ben Simmons so that's a huge plus. At a minimum, when in the game, Zach Lavine is a player on the same tier if not a tier higher than Mikal Bridges as a scorer. He and Bridges would be a great 1-2 punch. Bogdanovich is also a great veteran scorer. Looking at this trade, one thing the Nets will be able to do is SCORE. Losing Finney-Smith has an impact on the defense for sure. That's something that they can fix in the off-season as they have a lot of flexibility in their future financially and more tradeable pieces. I could see them moving Dinwiddie in a separate trade. The 2 future picks are 2027 and 2029 and are also not their own picks. It won't hurt them at all to move those picks.

WHY DETROIT

While Isaiah Stewart is very loved by the Pistons front office, he's a tweener and too much of what they already have in their bigs. Williams was highly coveted by the Pistons in the 2020 draft. In this trade, they move on from Stewart for him in hopes that he can reach his full potential as a two-way player. Williams shoots 41% from deep for his career. Monty Williams would hope to pull his potential out of him as he did with Mikal Bridges and Cameron Johnson. Andre Drummond is a former Pistons who still loves the city of Detroit and has talked about his desire to come back. He's a real need as a true big man and rebounder. To have him coming in behind Jalen Duren would be superb. The Pistons could easily resign him and even if they didn't trade for him, now that he has settled with his role in the NBA, the Pistons would probably have pursued him anyway. Jevon Carter is a back-of-the-bench role player but he has a history of playing for Monty Williams. The real key is grabbing two unprotected 1st round picks. They would hope that the Suns would be bad by the time the 2027 and 2029 drafts come around. They may luck up on the 2029 draft as Devin Booker's contract would be up in the 2028-2029 season and that's IF he's still there and their main star.