The lottery was a coin flip. The NBA draft probably will be, too, after the ping-pong balls did the Pistons no favors last week in Chicago.
But the coaching search? Ideally, that’s not supposed to be a toss-up.
Yet here we are, 44 days after Dwane Casey announced he was stepping aside as Detroit’s head coach following the team’s regular-season finale, and the Pistons’ first chair still sits vacant.
That’s not necessarily a surprise. The team’s general manager, Troy Weaver, gave us all fair warning this position probably wouldn’t be filled in a hurry.
"No urgency," Weaver said, when asked about a possible timeline back in mid-April. "The right coach at the right time is the right time for the right coach. Whenever that is — six weeks from now, one week from now — it doesn't matter. We just want to land on the right person."
But, as time has passed and the landscape has changed around the league, now seems like as good a time as any to wonder how this will shake out ultimately, and in whose favor.
Because that’s always a lingering question with the Pistons, where front-office synergy hasn’t exactly been a strong suit throughout Tom Gores’ tenure as owner. It’s his call, after all, as the billionaire signing the checks here.
Yet, the longer this lingers, the more questions it raises about influence and interference. About autonomy and alacrity, too, amid speculation there’s no consensus choice among the three top candidates who flew out to California for interviews earlier this month.
Just a hunch here, but I bet Weaver knows who he wants to hire.
“I know what this team needs,” Weaver said back when this whole process started. “It’s simple: discipline, development and defense. That’s going to be the call for the next coach. That’s our marching orders.”
But as the band plays on, there’s also this question underlying all the others: How attractive is this Pistons job, anyway?
Especially when you put it in context with the rest of the marketplace, as the NBA coaching carousel spins wildly this spring. The Pistons are just one of a half-dozen teams making a change this offseason, and there’s no guarantee that list won’t grow with the Celtics on the verge of an embarrassing flameout in the Eastern Conference finals.
Houston quickly filled its opening last month by hiring Ime Udoka to replace Stephen Sills. But that leaves Detroit in the company of Milwaukee, Phoenix, Philadelphia and Toronto, a group that includes three bonafide championship contenders and a team in the Raptors that’s not all that far removed from winning a title in 2019.
So, while Weaver essentially scoffed at the idea of needing to sell this job to potential candidates last month, I wouldn’t now. And for what it's worth, when I asked ESPN analyst Bobby Marks, a former front-office executive with the Brooklyn Nets, about it last week, he didn’t, either.
“Well, I think it's probably attractive because you know you're going to be there three or four years, unlike some of these other spots, where you're almost in a win-now mode,” Marks said of the Pistons, who are coming off a 17-win season and four straight years of essentially tanking. “And what's your lifeline as a coach (with the other teams), three years? What's the lifeline in Phoenix or Philly or Milwaukee, where you have MVP-type players that you're expecting to get into a conference finals or an NBA Finals?”
It’s a fair point, and one that I’m sure some would find appealing. Particularly first-time NBA head-coaching candidates, like the trio the Pistons initially zeroed in on: Bucks assistant Charles Lee, Pelicans assistant Jarron Collins and former UConn coach Kevin Ollie, who spent the last two seasons as the head of coaching and director of player development at Overtime Elite.
But for those pining for a higher-profile hire — someone like Monty Williams, the two-time NBA Coach of the Year who was fired by the Suns after their latest playoff flop — it’s not necessarily a point in your favor. Not after the Pistons missed out on the chance to draft a generational talent in Victor Wembanyama, when the lottery odds tilted toward San Antonio.
Williams, for one thing, is in no rush to jump at just any opportunity. He’s been through a rebuild in Phoenix already, and he’s still owed $21 million over the next three years by the Suns. So, he can afford to wait for the right opportunity, and it’s hard to argue that’d be in Detroit. Maybe even impossible, really.
Same goes for the other accomplished head coaches like Mike Budenholzer and Nick Nurse, both of whom got pink slips this spring, despite winning NBA championships in the last five years. (Nurse is one of three finalists for the Bucks' job, along with Warriors assistant Kenny Atkinson and Raptors assistant Adrian Griffin, ESPN reported Monday.)
Weaver certainly has the Pistons in a better spot now than when he arrived three years ago and began dismantling a roster bereft of any real assets. He has built a young core through the draft (Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren all have All-Star potential), owns another top-five pick in this year’s draft, has some veterans with value (Bojan Bogdanovich and Alec Burks), and enters the summer with nearly $30 million in cap space.
That’s not nothing. Nor is the goal of making a big leap in the standings a pipe dream, provided Cunningham is healthy.
“Yeah, I think it's appealing because certainly with Cade and Jaden, you've got a young backcourt here that you can kind of mold, and have your imprint on,” Marks added. “It's an extremely young team. Certainly, the fifth pick in the draft is appealing. And I know they took a little bit of a step back from a win total here, but if you build it similar to what Orlando has done … I think the goal for them is to be in a spot where Orlando is right now: to go from 17 (wins) to in the 30s and show some type of development. … And then they do have a ton of flexibility to continue this build.”
They do, and they should. But, before the Pistons continue and try to take the next step, they’ll have to make up their mind — or their minds — about who'll lead the way.
