Pistons trades should answer critical question: Can Cade Cunningham & Jaden Ivey co-exist?

Jaden Ivey scored 37 points Wednesday night in Sacramento, a career high. Maybe you didn’t see it. Maybe you don’t care.

The Kings aren’t a good defensive team, but this wasn’t stat padding in a blowout. Ivey got buckets when it mattered. He made the right basketball plays, too.

He’s been efficient for more than a month now. Not to the degree he was Wednesday, but his leap in play is largely related to opportunity and to Cade Cunningham’s absence, and that leaves the Detroit Pistons with a couple of massive questions to answer after Thursday’s trade deadline.

Actually, there are three questions:

Can Cunningham and Ivey play together? If Monty Williams can’t make it work, should he be the coach moving forward? And if they can’t play together, can Troy Weaver be trusted to trade the right one and decide what the Pistons get in return? 

The easiest answer is the last one: No, Weaver should not get the privilege — his track record doesn’t justify it, although it’d be an upset if he wasn’t the one calling the shots this offseason based on what Tom Gores has said so far.

Williams, meanwhile, has struggled to figure out his players, and if he can’t find a way to help Cunningham and Ivey play off each other, then he isn’t the coach for this team, because Cunningham has off-guard skill and shooting ability, and giving Ivey more touches should theoretically free up Cunningham for easier shots and help keep him fresher in fourth quarters, when he has a tendency to wear down.

As for whether they can play together, and whether it’s only a matter of finding the right coach if Williams isn’t the one?

Yes, there is a chance, but it won’t be easy.

They both want the ball. Heck, they need the ball.

The Pistons, though, need them to share the ball. Their individual talent and potential make it worth trying, and moving pieces to help maximize spacing and flow to give them a look the next couple of months is perhaps the smartest thing the organization did before the deadline.

Weaver finally traded Bojan Bogdanovic. He also traded Alec Burks — to the same team, as it happened, the New York Knicks.

And while the return is less than what Weaver could’ve gotten had he moved Bogdanovic last spring, Cunningham and Ivey won’t feel as much pressure to defer to Burks and Bogdanovic’s younger, less-established replacements, Quentin Grimes and Simone Fontecchio.

There are others who came via trades: Evan Fournier, Malachi Flynn, Shake Milton, Troy Brown Jr., to name the ones who appear to be staying — but for now, Grimes and Fontecchio should be the rotational mainstays, and the two most likely to be on the team next season; Brown should get a look, too.

Because Weaver brought in more players (10) than he shipped out (eight), he had to make cuts, and so he waived Killian Hayes, Joe Harris and Danilo Gallinari along with two of the players he acquired via trade, Danuel House Jr. and Ryan Arcidiacono.

Moving on from Hayes, Weaver’s first draft pick, and the player who will always be compared to Tyrese Haliburton around these parts, was ultimately necessary, if not a reminder of how poorly his first draft class worked out — only Isaiah Stewart remains.

Hayes never found the range or the confidence to play consistent basketball. He was also getting in the way of Ivey, who began the year on the bench. Now Williams can’t play Hayes, no matter how much he might want to.

After news of the moves broke, Ivey posted a photo of him and Cunningham on his Instagram account, along with video highlights of himself and photos. The caption "Galatians 6:9" is a Bible verse — "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" — and the message was clear: It’s Ivey's and Cunningham's show now, and it’s up to them to propel this franchise forward.

You can bet they’d like to do it together and figure it out together. Cunningham’s reaction to Ivey’s masterful performance Wednesday night in Sacramento is another reminder.

For all the losing, and for all the pieces that didn’t fit on the court, the young players owner Tom Gores and Weaver are gambling on have always shown good chemistry off the court. Weaver’s trades in the last two weeks should help the on-court chemistry, too. Shoot, it already has, and the proof is in the numbers.

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The problem is the teams’ recent offensive surge has come largely without Cunningham. Mike Muscala and even Gallinari, before he was released Thursday, surely helped — the pair came from Washington in the Marvin Bagley III deal. But the flow and pace change are noticeable without Cunningham.

Now that more moves have been made, it’s possible that Cunningham will find it easier to join the flow. He won’t be able to pound the ball incessantly, though, at least not on so many possessions.

The Pistons will miss Bogdanovic’s and Burks’ shooting, but their replacements, Fontecchio and Grimes, can shoot as well. And while they aren’t the same shooters, they’re much better defenders, and even a slight uptick in defense should create more fourth-quarter opportunities to compete.

This isn’t to say Cunningham and Ivey shouldn’t look for their new teammates. Of course they should. It is to say, though, that they should feel less pressure to defer, and to use the freedom to figure out each’s other’s needs and rhythms.

It’s rare that they’ve been able to do this. Each of their best performances often come when the other isn’t around, because of injury or a coach’s decision.

Ivey played like it was his team Wednesday night against the Kings. He looked liberated and confident, and the combination helped him take over the game.

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He has earned the chance to play this way every night, the ball in his hands, surveying the court, using his speed to cause the best kind of chaos. Obviously, he must learn to play like this and still find ways to be effective when it’s Cunningham’s turn to take the ball, but the current ratio when both are on the floor won’t unlock them as a pairing.

It has to change.

All the trades should help toward this end. And while Weaver should’ve moved Bogdanovic a year ago and while the Knicks got the better end of the deal and while Weaver ultimately did nothing more than what he should’ve done last summer, the Pistons have the chance to get a little better.

Most critically, they have the best chance to see what they really have.

[ MUST WATCH: Trade deadline reaction show, below. Make "The Pistons Pulse" your go-to Detroit Pistons podcast, listen available anywhere you listen to podcasts (Apple, Spotify). ]

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Pistons question: Can Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey co-exist?