https://youtu.be/VI4mha3PZic
It’s unavoidable at this point. Some playoff team is going to covet Wayne Ellington at the trade deadline and give up at least one draft pick and one cruddy young player with “upside” in order to have Ellington on their team. Whether or not this transaction will also involve somehow getting Blake Griffin and his mega-size contract and his mega-size injuries off the Pistons is up in the air. Ellington might be so coveted that his inclusion in a trade makes the bitter Blake Griffin pill easier to swallow for whatever team is taking him on.
I’m not a betting man, but if I was, I would put a lot of money on this. Do sports books even let you do these types of bets? You can bet on a lot of random stuff so if you told them you wanted to bet on Ellington being gone by the trade deadline, they’d probably be happy to take your money. And if I was going to bet money on this, it would be a lot of money. That’s how sure I am that Ellington is gone. Lucky for you all that I don’t gamble, otherwise, I’d be taking everybody’s money and then everybody is destitute and begging on the street for pennies while I sit in my penthouse suite and make a top hat out of stapled-together hundred dollar bills.
Sure, Ellington is a nice veteran presence for the Pistons, and, as we see here, he helps them win games sometimes. But his 43% three-point shooting on significant volume is too attractive to other teams. Literally every team in the NBA wants that and most would be willing to give up significant assets to get it. Lots of teams are looking at their “pure shooters” and their “shooting specialists” who are shooting like 37.5% from three and they’re thinking, “Wayne Ellington is way more reliable than [insert lesser shooter’s name here], and we don’t even want this late first round pick anymore.”
Maybe the Knicks will want him back since now they’re gunning for a playoff spot, I think? That would be funny. They would have to pay him twice, once for his current contract, and once for his old contract that he was bought out of.