First of all this is my first post on Motown String Susic. I'm living in Portland and have adopted the Blazers UNLESS they play the Stones. 

Moving on.....This should be an exciting time to be a Pistons fan.

Right now we have a fresh start and options to turn this around. The most important concern at hand is money. We have plenty of it. As much as it sucked trading Chauncey Billups, it was a hell of a move by Joe Dumars. In my opinion the season was over when we traded Chauncey for AI and Joe Dumars knew that the moment he made the trade. He also knew with Chauncey we would probably have lost again to Cleveland in the playoffs eventually, if it wasn’t the first round.
 
Dumars played on a dominate team that held it’s core together for too long and suffered the consequences of not making the playoffs for the years after. With that experience he learned that you have to bite the bullet, and make moves even if it means taking your team out of contention for a year. AI’s worth to the team will finally be valued now that his contract is expired and it’s 15 mil is off the books. 
 I love 'Sheed, he helped us get that 'Ship, but his time is up too. I wish he would have gone out with a little more dignity, but oh well; I wish him all the best and I’m going to thank him for that other 15 mil off the books.

Looking at how Chauncey is performing in the playoffs people are understandibly questioning Joey D's logic....well I think he was looking at the situation monetarily.

$$$$$ AI vs. Billups $$$$$$
 
AI
08-09: $20,840,625
09-10: $0….FREE AGENT
vs.
Chauncey
08-09: $11,050,000
09-10: $12,100,000
10-11: $13,150,000
11-12: $14,200,000
 
So when you are rebuilding and you can get 20 mil off the books this year and then save...drum roll....$39,450,000 over the next three years as well. Wow.

Add AI’S $20,840,625 + 'Sheed's $13,930,000 you have $34,770,625 of free cap space.
 
That’s great GM work, if you ask me.
 
Joey D has forsight or you could call it court vision, and he knew what he had can’t get it done. He understood his ship was slowly sinking, so instead of patching it over and over again, he traded Chauncey and went down with the ship so to say. Now he has some money and he’s about to build another ChampionSHIP….it’s a pun, I couldn’t help myself.

source: http://www.storytellerscontracts.info/resources/08-09salaries.htm

I invite you all to click on that link showing players salaries. It will really open your eyes to the other part of the league (look at Agent 0's contract, at least we aren't stuck with something like that).  We have flexibility.

Now is the fun part.  Lets research contracts, free agents, and all try to put some rosters together. We are starting over fresh, there will be that initial drop, and then we will start to get better and better, and the excitement will come back. Watching a team grow up before your eyes is awesome, we got to experience that, watching a team die sucks and we just experienced that too. The life cycle is complete on these boys, and now the rebirth cycle will begin and we will watch a new group grow up.

UPDATE: Dave Dial of MLIVE was nice enough to step in and do some number crunching that was initially overlooked. Many thanks to Mr. Dial for pointing this out:

The amount of money coming off doesn’t equal the cap space the Pistons have. So when you write:

Add AI’S $20,840,625 + ’Sheed’s $13,930,000 you have $34,770,625 of free cap space.

It’s not really the case. If you go to the link you gave, it will show how much the Pistons have in committed salary.

http://www.storytellerscontracts.info/resources/08-09salaries.htm

I have a slightly different number, because I have Maxiell making a little over 4.4 million his first season of his extension, with an increasing contract over the length. Storytellers has the contract at 5 million each season. That’s not the way players usually sign, but they could be right.

In any case, Storytellers has the Piston committed salary at 40.4 million, which is around 19 million under the current cap. I have it at around 39.5, around 20 million under the current cap. Most experts predict the cap will go down this season, and they may be right. I do doubt it goes down much, but let’s say it shrinks to 37.5 million, which still gives the Pistons around 17-18 million in cap space.