As one of the architects of the most recent NBA collective bargaining agreement, Ken Catanella gave the Pistons a practically peerless authority on the intricacies of the league’s dense salary cap.
But they’d planned for the day when Catanella, someone they knew might be coveted by other franchises, or any other executive left to climb the career ladder. That day came in May when Sacramento brought Catanella on to be Vlade Divac’s top lieutenant. Stan Van Gundy admits he’s not a cap guru, but he knows enough to know he wasn’t about to put the Pistons at risk of being without in-house experts in the event Catanella or someone else departed.
“We’ve got three people that are well versed,” he said this week in discussing the front-office reorganization triggered by Catanella’s departure. “You never want your organization just dependent on one guy for the reason that Ken left. It can’t be on one guy. So we’ve got really three guys who are very well versed. I can get very quick answers on anything, because I’m not one of the ones who’s well versed.”
Many general manager have just a passing knowledge of the cap, but Jeff Bower knows it inside and out. Pat Garrity, elevated to assistant general manager from director of strategic planning, was asked by Van Gundy and Bower a year ago to familiarize himself with the cap’s nuances. And Andrew Loomis, whose title goes from director of basketball operations to chief of staff, gives the Pistons a third cap expert on staff.
Garrity, like Catanella, holds a master’s in business administration degree from Duke’s Fuqua business school. He went back to school after his 10-year NBA career ended – with the Van Gundy-coached Orlando Magic in 2008 – and then went to work for Bridgewater, a Connecticut hedge fund where he’d interned. It was that unique background that made it an easy call for Van Gundy to bring Garrity on board two years ago when he reached out to his ex-coach to ask about getting back into basketball.
Garrity’s first order of business was to bring efficiency to the way the Pistons conducted their processes, drawing on lessons learned from his time in the business world.
“I was surrounded by really smart people and really got to hone analytical skills, how to think about problems, how to think about approaching uncertainty in the world,” Garrity said. “Not a direct connection to basketball, but you can adopt a lot of the same ways of thinking and apply it here.”
Loomis has been the equivalent of an elite baseball utility player in Van Gundy and Bower’s front office and he’ll continue in that role as chief of staff. Loomis, who worked with Bower in New Orleans, essentially will act as his right hand in conducting much of the business-oriented detail of Bower’s job to allow the general manager to more efficiently spend time on personnel matters.
The roles of Bower’s two other assistant general managers, Brian Wright and Jeff Nix, remain unchanged. Wright heads up amateur scouting and Nix oversees a full-time staff of four dedicated NBA scouts, an idea pioneered by Van Gundy and unique among NBA franchises.
Garrity, like Catanella, will oversee the analytics department, which Van Gundy said might be fortified with an additional hire.
While Garrity valued his time in the world of finance, he also knew it wasn’t how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. He’s all in with his career switch to basketball and appreciative of the environment created by Van Gundy, where contrarian thinking is encouraged. Any reservations he might have had about joining a front office overseen by the head coach were drowned out by his admiration for Van Gundy dating to his playing days. He’s not in the least surprised how he and Bower have clicked.
“The two of them couldn’t be a more perfect match,” Garrity said. “I think Stan is great setting a vision how he wants things done. But when the season’s going on, coaches have to be 100 percent, almost, into coaching. So with Jeff being able to carry it out and being as detail oriented and patient and deliberate as he is, it’s just a really great balance. I know you’ve read things about when it works and when it doesn’t; I think it’s just a matter of the two people you have paired together.”
