Draft Tales: With 3 top-15 picks, ’79 could have transformed Pistons. Turns out, it did
https://www.nba.com/pistons/features/draft-tales-3-top-15-picks-79-could-have-transformed-pistons-turns-out-it-did Keith Langlois●@keith_langlois Web Editor July 14, 20209:39 AM EDT The 1979 draft – in which the Pistons held three of the first 15 picks – had a chance to be transformational for a franchise that had spent 22 seasons in Detroit and had three playoff series wins to show for it. As it turned out, it kinda sorta was. But the payoff came thanks not to the general manager who exercised those three picks – Dick Vitale; yes, that Dick Vitale – but to the guy who succeeded him, Jack McCloskey . The Pistons went into the 1979 draft with the fifth, 10th and 15th picks, the first earned the hard way, a 30-52 record in Vitale’s first – and only – full season as coach. The 10th pick came from Buffalo via a 1977 trade that shipped Marvin “Bad News” Barnes to the Braves for Gus Gerard, John Shumate and the ’79 first-rounder. The 15th pick came when the Pistons returned hometown star Ra...