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An example of the process he undertook is found in the way Van Gundy overhauled the medical and training staff.

He rapidly came to value and admire the contributions of longtime Pistons employees Arnie Kander and Mike Abdenour. Their titles – strength and conditioning coach for Kander, trainer for Abdenour – barely hinted at the breadth of their contributions. That now changes.

“We’ve restructured the medical area so that Arnie won’t be stretched as thin,” Van Gundy said. “He can concentrate on his a role as a therapist. We’ve moved Mike into an administrative role. We just hired a strength coach, Anthony Harvey (recently assistant strength coach with the Orlando Magic), a week ago – he’ll start Monday – and a director of sports medicine. Those are really the last things.”

Kander will focus on helping players recover from injuries and spend more time studying their movements to increase efficiency that can help in the prevention of injuries. He’s done a deep dive this summer into the running patterns of two groups – one Mexican, one Native American – of what he considers the world’s greatest runners, for instance, and how stride patterns change in going from jogging to sprinting and vice versa.

“Arnie takes on the physical therapist role,” Van Gundy said. “Not only in getting people back, but in making biomechanical assessments of guys and moving us forward preventively. I think it fits together well. It gives us two guys devoting all their time to the health care of our players. It gives us a strength coach devoting all of his time to getting our guys stronger and in better shape. And it gives Mike the time to devote all of his day to making all these things work better.”

Abdenour’s province as director of team operations is to make sure all of the organization’s logistical needs are met with as little disruption or inconvenience to players and staff as possible. It’s what he’s done remarkably well, in addition to his duties as trainer, for years – there’s not a hotel general manager or concierge in the NBA’s 28 cities whose name isn’t in his directory – and it’s not a role Van Gundy takes lightly. The last thing a coach wants is a bus not showing up on time after a 3 a.m. airport arrival or finding out there’s no practice gym available on an off-day on the road.

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Van Gundy described the newly created director of sports medicine position, to be filled by Jon Ishop who held the job with New Orleans most recently, like this: “It’ll be an athletic trainer, so they’ll have the diagnostic element, dealing with injuries, diagnosing injuries. It’s all the administration of the training room, dealing with the doctors, setting up physicals, the recordkeeping, reporting to the league, treating athletes one on one, the day-to-day treatment of injuries and preventive stuff.”

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“Coming in and evaluating it for a couple of months before we decided to restructure it, we had two really good people in Mike and Arnie who’d been here a long time, but the expectations on them were so high,” he said. “We had asked them to do too many things, so we were not taking advantage of their greatest strengths so they could really focus in an area and just do that and be great at it.”

ImHeisenberg wrote:I'm relieved to hear that Mike and Arnie are not only remaining with the Pistons, but have been given substantial support and will now be able to focus on their strengths.

Stan is going all-out, and really improving one of Detroit's long running competencies. Good deal.

qm22 wrote:Arnie Kander isn't who I'd hire. No other team would hire him.

The guy is a bit wacko. Like a legitimate homeopathic medicine type.

Maybe some of it works despite the shaky foundation. But Kander is a guy I will never forget but a machine to change the bond lengths of water (H2O bond lengths...) and was insisting the players drink it and swearing by it's health benefits. A middle school education would have been enough to warn of the obvious fraud behind the machine concept, which was involved in law suits on that matter by other clients.

That aside it is clear that letting Kander being the brains behind all of the physical aspects of our players leaves us behind all the advancements that have been showing up in other organizations (NBA, college sports, etc). The only reason why it may not have mattered is due to players gaining the expertise to train themselves adequately and/or having personal trainers.

kurtis48239 wrote:

qm22 wrote:Arnie Kander isn't who I'd hire. No other team would hire him.

The guy is a bit wacko. Like a legitimate homeopathic medicine type.

Maybe some of it works despite the shaky foundation. But Kander is a guy I will never forget but a machine to change the bond lengths of water (H2O bond lengths...) and was insisting the players drink it and swearing by it's health benefits. A middle school education would have been enough to warn of the obvious fraud behind the machine concept, which was involved in law suits on that matter by other clients.

That aside it is clear that letting Kander being the brains behind all of the physical aspects of our players leaves us behind all the advancements that have been showing up in other organizations (NBA, college sports, etc). The only reason why it may not have mattered is due to players gaining the expertise to train themselves adequately and/or having personal trainers.

Huh,arnie is one of the best trainers in the NBA.His skills really showed keeping our 04-08 squad healthy,especialy guys like dice,sheed,etc.Fans look at the suns,spurs and detroit as the teams with the best trainers in the NBA.

Steady as a spring rain.
Calm as an explosives expert.

Humble as a high priest.

Dependable as your best friend.

qm22 wrote:

kurtis48239 wrote:

qm22 wrote:Arnie Kander isn't who I'd hire. No other team would hire him.

The guy is a bit wacko. Like a legitimate homeopathic medicine type.

Maybe some of it works despite the shaky foundation. But Kander is a guy I will never forget but a machine to change the bond lengths of water (H2O bond lengths...) and was insisting the players drink it and swearing by it's health benefits. A middle school education would have been enough to warn of the obvious fraud behind the machine concept, which was involved in law suits on that matter by other clients.

That aside it is clear that letting Kander being the brains behind all of the physical aspects of our players leaves us behind all the advancements that have been showing up in other organizations (NBA, college sports, etc). The only reason why it may not have mattered is due to players gaining the expertise to train themselves adequately and/or having personal trainers.

Huh,arnie is one of the best trainers in the NBA.His skills really showed keeping our 04-08 squad healthy,especialy guys like dice,sheed,etc.Fans look at the suns,spurs and detroit as the teams with the best trainers in the NBA.

Can you justify the head of a physical maintenance of a NBA team buying into an obvious scam and taking it seriously? Kander is responsible for 04-08? Why? Kander was there in other years too, when we had a league average rate of injuries, I imagine. As far as I know, the main pieces of the squad you mentioned had games suited for it (i.e., Rip's personal conditioning, Sheed's incorporation of finesse to his game, Ben being a unique monster, etc.).

If you ask other NBA teams where the best trainers are on the general board, I doubt anyone says Detroit. It is a testable hypothesis. And I bet if you ask what are the real achievements measured by such departments in other NBA teams, many other teams will have longer lists than us. Other teams actually hire people who have come from established programs that incorporate cutting edge research. I'd take that over homeopathy.

Arnie Kander was in charge of Villanueva's regimen. That reminds me. Like Kander, Villanueva was (once) the subject of local puff pieces full of praise (for off season workouts in his case).

I just googled "best NBA physical trainers" and got,

Steady as a spring rain.
Calm as an explosives expert.

Humble as a high priest.

Dependable as your best friend.

Nope, not a Kander piece! Though you would be sure it was him. Surprisingly, it seems every NBA team is full of puff pieces about their staff. http://www.nba.com/nuggets/features/nug ... 00410.html

Pistons fans always seem to believe the George Blaha "best in the business" lines when it comes to Kander, but I haven't seen a statistical comparison of injury evidence or any serious analysis of physical benefits he has brought.

qm22 wrote:^Man I just happen to think it's a red flag if the one in charge of the physical conditioning of multi-million dollar per year contracted athletes is easily duped by what was a comical infomercial scam and was giving it to NBA players. He's heavy into homeopathy, red flag 2. Other teams have substantive comments to make about their trainers. I don't highly approve of puff-pieces being used as analytic tools. That is about all.