Yesterday Pistons owner Tom Gores bit the bullet and sent dual role General Manager and Coach Stan Van Gundy out of Motown! Van Gundy had presided over the Pistons in the dual roles for the past 4 years, in that time he has only made the playoffs once but had left the franchise in a lot better position then when he found it.
From the reports coming out today it is believed that Stan Van was happy to relinquish his role as the GM in order to concentrate his energies fully in to the head coaching role, this opportunity was not granted by owner Gores. Gores and Van Gundy had been in discussions for the past three weeks, likely to try to figure out a configuration that would allow a shakeup in the front office but also keep Van Gundy on as head coach. When the two sides couldn’t reach an agreement on what that structure looked like, it was time to move in a different direction.
The Pistons seem locked into their current roster with not much wiggle room to make a big splash in free agency and they’re not likely to make a big trade in the offseason. Van Gundy was looking forward to returning for his final season of the deal, but he won’t get that opportunity to see a fully healthy roster with the players he assembled, including getting Blake Griffin before the trade deadline.
As a Pistons fan im not sure i am 100% sold on this move, i would have like to see Stan see out the final year of his deal and see what he could do with Blake Griffin and hopefully a health Reggie Jackson with Andre Drummond. Now that the move has been made i am very interested to see who they look at to fill both roles, they have left it fairly late in the piece and a lot of quality coaches are now off the board, time will tell if this is the right move or not for a franchise that has been battling for a decade now!
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