ATLANTA – Our proclivity to categorize people into camps extends to coaches. And Stan Van Gundy found himself in the “authoritarian” camp earlier in his career, a crowded group of coaches who can't bring themselves to delegate responsibility to their assistants beyond preparing scouting reports and serving as rebounders for shooting practice.
It was one of the arguments presented against the idea of Pistons owner Tom Gores naming Van Gundy not only Pistons coach but president of basketball operations in May 2014 with the Pistons amid a five-year playoff drought.
Whatever the truth was about Van Gundy then, it's a wildly inaccurate characterization of him now.
He's put together a front office that is at once comprehensively staffed yet light on its feet, its operatives fully empowered to do their jobs and given both wide latitude and public credit by Van Gundy for its teamwork and personnel triumphs.
And, based on the results of this week, it's clear he listens to his assistant coaches and gives them their due for input, as well.
The road wins on consecutive nights over Charlotte and Boston revealed a Pistons team with a different carriage than the one that went 1-8 in its first eight road games. Up and down the locker room, players cited a different focus and mindset – Andre Drummond, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Tobias Harris, Ish Smith, et al. They're first in line for credit for the turnaround, of course, but several also steered responsibility to the coaching staff for its approach of staying positive and not lashing out at players for the mistakes that undermined their ability to win on the road.
“Our focus has changed,” Tobias Harris said after the win at Boston. “In the Charlotte game, we came out with a better focus on the game plan and executed. We're playing more together out there.”
It started with the morning shootaround and input from two of Van Gundy's assistants, associate head coach Bob Beyer and Otis Smith.
As with most young teams, defensive communication is a quality that ebbs and flows. The center quarterbacks the defense as surely as a point guard runs the offense, his perspective allowing him to see plays coming that perimeter players cannot. It doesn't come instinctively to many. It requires constant vigilance before it becomes second nature.
“That's something that Bob Beyer has been really on hard,” Van Gundy said before Wednesday's win at Boston. “That we need to keep emphasizing and emphasizing and emphasizing. And even in our walk throughs, we've been different.”
And that's where Smith – Van Gundy's general manager in Orlando, now his first-year assistant – comes in. In addition to his duties as assistant coach, Smith is also Van Gundy's director of player development. It's a role Smith pioneered in the NBA – the assigning of a staff member to help players cope with NBA life off the court as well as absorbing the flood of information related to their craft.
Coming from that perspective, perhaps, Smith suggested Van Gundy change his approach to the game-day morning walk through.
“At Otis' suggestion – because usually I'll walk 'em through the (opposing team's) action and talk 'em through the whole thing and they're not having to do a lot – the last couple of shootarounds what we've done is we tell them what we want, how we want to cover things, but then when we walk through it they've got to talk through it. So we're doing whatever we can to try to emphasize their communication with each other.”
Ish Smith had experience with Van Gundy during his Orlando stint. He knew what he was getting when he signed with the Pistons in free agency last summer: tough love.
“Coach does a great job. Even though he gets on us a lot, he does a great job pulling the best out of us,” he said after the win at Boston. “That's why you love him so much.”
Van Gundy is one of the NBA's most demonstrative sideline practitioners. When he's upset – at the officials or his players – it's on full display. But he moves past those moments deftly and that makes it easy for his players to do so, as well. Take the 11-0 run by Boston early in Wednesday's fourth quarter after the Pistons opened the quarter with a Marcus Morris basket for a 10-point lead. Van Gundy called timeout to stop the bleeding.
“The timeout, whole message was, just stay positive,” Harris said. “Weather the storm and battle back, battle through it, get back to what we were doing.”
That better focus Harris cited? It was the product of clear, upbeat messaging from Van Gundy – shaped by input from his staff – in the hours leading to the wins at Charlotte and Boston. Talk on defense. Be active. Sprint back after missed shots. Share the ball on offense. Stay positive.
“It's coming from the coaches,” Harris said. “A coach says it, everybody's got to respond to it.”
Quite the response by the Pistons, who with a win at Atlanta tonight would cap a remarkable road trip and return home with a winning record – and the prospect of the return of leading scorer Reggie Jackson.
