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Names that have been mentioned as possible candidates to be the new head coach of the Detroit Pistons include Jeff Van Gundy, former coach of the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets.

Based on Van Gundy's comments this week to host Chris Russo on SiriusXM's "Mad Dog Radio" program, that's probably not going to happen.

Without mentioning Joe Dumars by name, Van Gundy blamed Detroit's president of basketball operations – and not Lawrence Frank, who was fired Thursday after two seasons – for the Pistons' failure in the past few years.

Here's what Van Gundy had to say when asked about the recent NBA coaching changes that included Doug Collins resigning in Philadelphia and Byron Scott getting fired in Cleveland.


"Detroit Pistons basketball slogan: When the going gets tough, we fire the coach," Van Gundy said. "It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. You know what surprises me, Chris? These new owners in Detroit have to be exceedingly bright to have made as much money as they have. And to be duped again that your G.M. tells you that the roster is good and the coach is bad ... what was the problem with Michael Curry? What was John Kuester? Now Lawrence. They run through coaches and they haven't even begun to address their problem. They have very little talent and very little basketball character. You combine that, you're going to be in a long rebuild.

"I'm just surprised that when everybody acknowledges it's a player's league – everybody would agree with that – then the most important player or person in any organization is the person that picks the players. But we don't, as organizations, examine them. We just take the easy way out time and time again. You lose, the G.M. convinces the owner 'We got good players. It's the coach's fault.' We fire the coach; we bring a new coach in; we continue to lose. We fire that coach, saying that 'We have better players.' It just goes on and on. It's typical and I can't believe that the Detroit owners fell for it. I just can't believe it."

http://www.mlive.com/pistons/index.ssf/ ... _duma.html

No matter if you think JVG is right or not, i think Dumars is a mayor disadvantage right now when you want to hire the best coaches available. I now can understand why some coaches dont even want to interview for this job. Every smart coach knows he will get blamed rather sooner than later for the GMs failures. Why would a good coach come here? Only because we have 2 good big man going forward? Gores will have to pay a lot of money to lure a good established coach to the Pistons.

What was wrong with Curry, Kuester and Frank? They all sucked that is what was wrong with them. However, I think Frank was the best of out all of those guys.

Thank you JVG...

Finally someone is pointing in Joe's direction and saying "Maybe the problem starts there"

People will whine and make up all kinds of excuses for why JVG shouldn't say this...

but sometimes people need to be told in no uncertain manner

JVG needs to STFU

Every single one of these coaches has done a horrible job with the talent available especially Curry / Kuester. These coaches had the players but weren't able to control the egos and therefore suffered (that's half the battle in NBA coaching, getting the players to mesh well together - look at the Lakers as a key example, if Phil Jackson was in town we would be talking about a Lakers vs Heat finals not watching them fight for the 8th seed)

Frank wasnt even able to improve the team record even after a full summer and training camp WITH Drummond.

The best part of all of the firings is each of the coaches were able to make their money despite being fired

I would sure like to make 2-4 million dollars if I failed at my job.

The only firing I dislike is Collins since he lost Iggy and Bynum in the same season. However, why would he leave 4M on the table and resign when he could have waited for a firing and still made the money anyways? I think he got a smaller payment and agreed to resign bc there is no one in his right mind that would forfeit that kind of cash

This is a young team, yes, but it is a team that can easily make the playoffs next year with a key FA acquisition and/or trade. The Monroe and Drummond tandem should be enough for any coach to give it a shot.

Frank demanded to be fired basically so no reason to add his name in with the other 2 coaches we canned.

sfballa13 wrote:JVG needs to STFU

Every single one of these coaches has done a horrible job with the talent available especially Curry / Kuester. These coaches had the players but weren't able to control the egos and therefore suffered (that's half the battle in NBA coaching, getting the players to mesh well together - look at the Lakers as a key example, if Phil Jackson was in town we would be talking about a Lakers vs Heat finals not watching them fight for the 8th seed)

Frank wasnt even able to improve the team record even after a full summer and training camp WITH Drummond.

The best part of all of the firings is each of the coaches were able to make their money despite being fired

I would sure like to make 2-4 million dollars if I failed at my job.

The only firing I dislike is Collins since he lost Iggy and Bynum in the same season. However, why would he leave 4M on the table and resign when he could have waited for a firing and still made the money anyways? I think he got a smaller payment and agreed to resign bc there is no one in his right mind that would forfeit that kind of cash

This is a young team, yes, but it is a team that can easily make the playoffs next year with a key FA acquisition and/or trade. The Monroe and Drummond tandem should be enough for any coach to give it a shot.

Agreed. This team does have talent but it's up to the coach to use it the right way. Joe might be partly to blame but everyone makes mistakes, he's human. Sometimes I think JVG just likes to hear himself talk.

LMAO... 3 responses after mine and all blame the Coach!

Hard to win many games with a **** of a roster!

Joe Dumars hired Curry who went through training camp with Chauncey Billups as his PG... 4 games into the season Billups was traded for Iverson... a rookie head coach with Iverson? Recipe for a disaster since Larry Brown often struggled when dealing with AI...

And who else was on that roster? Rip and Stuckey... combine them with Iverson and no training camp... no defined roles... no preperation... who starts and who comes off the bench? Stuckey was the "sacred cow" back then... Rip was our leading scorer... there was no way Iverson was going to come off the bench...

Dumars put that roster together... he put Curry in that position...

Johnny Q had BG and CV... Dumars signed those guys... obviously Joe didn't learn from the Iverson situation because he brought in another high priced guard to team with Stuckey and Rip! Everyone will say BG was a former 6th Man of the Year... but he left that team to start somewhere and get paid and get shots... not to come off the bench somewhere else. And CV? Dude has been injured quite a bit since he's been here and when healthy he's been useless most of the time...

Joe Dumars signed CV and BG, hired Johnny Q, traded Afflalo for more cap space so we could sign Chris Wilcox after we had $20+ mil to sign players...

And Joe hired Lawrence Frank...

The ONLY good things Joe has done recently:

Traded a future first round pick + BG to Charlotte for Maggette to clean up his mistake of signing BG
Trading Prince/Daye to Memphis for Calderon

Can't give Joe much credit for drafting Monroe and Drummond since 99.9% of this board would have drafted the same guys in that situation... Joe is paid millions... we're not!

But go on, defend the "Icon" of the Franchise... he's destroyed what we once were and you can only blame the ownership situation for some of it, the rest he has to take on the chin because every single player is on this team because of him and every single head coach is here because of him!

Even if Karen Davidson told Joe that he couldn;t hire a coach above "x" salary... Joe still chose the wrong guys in his price range! Austin Daye was a dud pick... that's on Joe! They were better players available when we drafted Knight... that's on Joe!

Pharaoh wrote:LMAO... 3 responses after mine and all blame the Coach!

I didn't assign any blame anywhere in my response. Too early in the morning for me to be writing out a full on post on my thoughts on our whole situation. Besides... my thoughts on Joe D's moves are well documented on here. I have not been happy with his moves for longer than most.

Frank wasn't Joe D's hire...I thought that was common knowledge by now..That was all Gores

I have said it before, and I'll say it again.

The problem is NOT firing coaches. The problem is failing to hire better coaches. Even IF the coaches deserved to be fired the problem still starts with the front office.

Thus, the debate over the merit of JVG's remarks is pointless.

Let me know when any of these three is a good coach somewhere else.

ComboGuardCity wrote:Let me know when any of these three is a good coach somewhere else.

I remember Kuester was an assistant for Mike Brown in LA, but then they demoted him to a scout. I don't know if he is still working for LA after Brown's firing. I really didn't care.

Curry was the lead assistant to Philly's amazing melt down of a season. He might be their next head coach, have fun with that! If they resign Bynum, I'm sure he and Curry will have a great time fighting each other.

Can't believe anyone is mad at JVG for these comments. Its good that someone of his stature is speaking up and calling out Gores. Maybe he will take notice now, because he sure hasn't been listening to the fans.

I've supported Dumars his entire tenure, but now was the time to start fresh. It was just time. Like JVG said, I can't believe Gores couldn't see that.

Frank didn't demand to be fired - he demanded support/backing from the front office. Coaches coaching in the last year of their deal are seen as lame ducks to the players and a very easy scapegoat to their GM, easily firable during any point the next season.

I don't care whose fault it is. I just care to know if Dumars will be here or not this summer. I'm not sure who would replace him. I think that deserves a thread.

Who cares what JVG has to say...He's never won anything in his life...

^Yep, never a thing.

Errr....yeah.

Cross another Van Gundy off the list...

The Detroit Pistons, Cleveland Cavs and Philadelphia 76ers are looking for coaches -- three more possibilities for former Magic coach Stan Van Gundy. I'm told that Van Gundy has no interest in those openings at this time.

Is the another Van Gundy out there we could get?

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/o ... umn?page=2

He has a point, but at the same time...Curry and Kuester were awful, truly awful coaches...

At least Frank was decent. He was able to command the respect of the team for the most part and I felt like he did a good job bringing Andre along, although he should have played him with Moose more early on and I didn't like the fact that too often Dre was not in to close games.

What coach will want to come here wen we continually fire coach after coach? Hire one and STICK WITH THEM. Like Snakebites said, if we make a GOOD HIRE, then this wont be an issue.

Dumars may fire coaches but unlike other GMs, he is a hands-off GM and lets the coaches run things their way (sometimes people think this leniency is a negative, too).

JVG is a coaching advocate. It's possible to dissect how everyone of his points about Detroit/Dumars is crappy analysis, but the hilarious thing is that he says the GM is to blame and he's deceiving the owner, and that GMs never get blame. -___- It's a funny thing to say when Gores likely made the firing and hiring decision largely independently of Dumars and Frank made a (Please Use More Appropriate Word) ultimatum about wanting to be fired without an extra year on his deal.

He says it is a players league, which is mostly true. Then why can't we part ways with coaches like we do with players? Everyone trade players for the betterment of the franchise despite the good work a player may have done or the player's history with the team and says "it's a business". But apparently it is not fair for to fire coaches who make comparable money to players and are not as important as players according to JVG.

Just because we had a bad roster doesn't mean the coach is excluded from all responsibility. I have great trouble thinking of anything Frank did well this season. It is pretty clear that coaching does matter. The examples of teams who kept the same roster but who made coaching switches and drastically altered their record are numerous.

Lost respect for JVG after these careless and stupid comments. He's still a funny commentator though.