Stan Van Gundy Is Officially Out In Detroit
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Big news out of Detroit, but I can’t say it’s all that much of a surprise given the year the Pistons just had. What’s a little unusual is normally in these cases when things aren’t going well, when a guy like SVG has both front office and coaching duties, they usually just move the front office stuff off their plate. Sort of like what Doc Rivers did with the Clippers. Clearly having one guy responsible for both jobs wasn’t successful, and that should be news either, it is very very hard to do.
Now that the SVG era is over, he went 152-176 and had just 1 first round exit to show for his four years in Detroit. You can’t win under 40 games in 3 of your 4 years and still expect to have a job. Now granted, the Pistons were never really considered a playoff team at any point during his tenure, but they did get off to a great start this season only to fizzle out. You also have to wonder what this means in terms of the Blake trade. That was a move that clearly changed the direction of the Pistons future, and one would assume it was SVG that was the architect behind the move. The Pistons can change the coach and bring in new front office people all they want, but they are still responsible for that Blake deal that I can’t imagine a ton of teams want to take off their hands.
The Pistons are an interesting team in that they DO have talent. With Reggie Jackson healthy, they can absolutely be a playoff team in the pathetic East. Any time you underachieve like DET did a coaching change isn’t all that uncommon. Who knows if players started to tune out SVG given his coaching style and when that happens a change is necessary,
Now that he’s free, I think we all can agree we need the Van Gundy’s to call a game together. That’s about as no brainer as it gets. In terms of who could replace him, I would imagine many of the candidates we’re hearing interview in MIL will also get a look here. If it were me I would try and bring in an offensive minded coach, as the Pistons ranked 19th in Ortg this past season. You have your foundation in Drummond/Blake, you have some young talent like Stanley Johnson and Luke Kennard, and you’ll late a lottery pick this year. It wouldn’t shock me if we saw the Pistons finally crack the top 8 next year now that they’ll have a new voice leading the charge.
P.S.
Never forget the best Stan Van Gundy moment ever