Blake Murphy Sports Writing

 With the introduction of Avery Bradley on Thursday, the Detroit Pistons’ offseason is, for most intents and purposes, over. While trades always remain a possibility and the team will take a few fliers on training camp deals and likely use their two-way contracts, the heavy lifting has been done. At least, as heavy of lifts as the shaky and oft-curious management of their cap sheetin previous years allowed for.“I’m gonna leave everything out on the floor. We want to bring a championship back to Detroit,” Bradley said, adding his personal favorite line, “the sky is the limit.”

The sky, unfortunately, is not the limit. It’s no fault of Bradley, a good player acquired in a decent trade who, as he himself pointed out in his press conference, should be a really nice fit for what Stan Van Gundy and company want to accomplish. Bradley is the prize of Detroit’s offseason, and were it not for the complicated risk associated with the team’s sequence of moves, there would be more cause for excitement.

Instead, the clock has already begun ticking on Bradley’s unrestricted free agency in a year’s time. The Pistons dealt two affordable years of Marcus Morris for Bradley and a second-round pick, in the process closing the book on Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. It’s a reasonable gambit, but Bradley is two years Caldwell-Pope’s senior, will command a similar salary next summer, and will have a great deal of leverage with the Pistons once again set to be fiscally inflexible.