Detroit Pistons fire Stan Van Gundy
The Detroit Pistons fired Stan Van Gundy as head coach and president of basketball operations on Monday.
The firing, which was first reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, comes with one year and $7 million left on Van Gundy’s five-year contract.
Wojnarowski reported that the Pistons will separate the head coach and president of basketball operations positions going forward in their hiring process and that sources told him former NBA player Brent Barry is a likely candidate for a front office role.
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“We have decided that this change is necessary to take our basketball organization to the next level,” said Pistons owner Tom Gores in a statement issued by the team. “This was a very difficult decision and we did not come to it lightly. I am grateful to Stan for everything he’s done for the Pistons and for the City of Detroit. He rebuilt the culture of our basketball team, re-instilled a winning attitude and work ethic, and took us to the playoffs two years ago. He went all-in from day one to positively impact this franchise and this community.”
Gores also emphasized in his statement that Van Gundy wanted to return to the team.
“Stan is a competitor and he wanted to finish the job,” Gores said. “He retooled a roster that we think can be very competitive in the East.”
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/DetroitPistons/status/993546849029115904″,”author_name”:”Detroit Pistons”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/DetroitPistons”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;The Detroit Pistons announced today that Stan Van Gundy will not return as the team’s President of Basketball Operations and Head Coach. &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/XLDT7ktbLK”&#gt;https://t.co/XLDT7ktbLK&#lt;/a&#gt; &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/6QlMjzOlvW”&#gt;pic.twitter.com/6QlMjzOlvW&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– Detroit Pistons (@DetroitPistons) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/DetroitPistons/status/993546849029115904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;May 7, 2018&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
Van Gundy led the Pistons to a 39-43 record this season, missing the playoffs for a straight straight year. He posted a record of 152-176 overall in his four seasons in Detroit, guiding the Pistons to the playoffs only in 2015-16, when they lost in the first round.
He also has coached the Miami Heat and Orlando Magic in his career, posting a 523-384 record overall as an NBA head coach.
