From NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski at Yahoo Sports
“The Detroit Pistons are no longer considering Avery Johnson for their head-coaching position after the two sides could not come to terms on a contract, an NBA source with knowledge of the talks said Tuesday morning.
The source said Cleveland Cavaliers assistant John Kuester is now the favorite to get the job, but
Boston Celtics assistant Tom Thibodeau remains under serious consideration.”
The Issue:
Avery wanted a little a longer contract from a team that goes trough coach like Sheed get techs.
Little upset about it, my Avery Johnson impression is stellar.
Personally if they are going to go with someone with no NBA head coaching experience I would rather see Laimbeer helm.
From the Joe Dumars via DetNews
“Where we are right now as a team is kind of like where we were at the start of the Rick Carlisle era,” Dumars said. “And a $4 to $5 million (a year) coach is not what we need right now. We didn’t have one of those until we were close to contending for a championship when we got Larry (Brown).”
Wow, I’m disappointed. Was looking forward to Avery being coach. How are the Cavs and Boston assts going to be any different from Curry? I don’t see these guys as very exciting….
Yeah dumars is a jackass for letting Avery go now were gonna get stuck with another rookie coach and suck again.. Go get sam mitchell
Yeah, I favor Laimbeer if they’re going to pick a coach with no head-coaching experience in the NBA, too. Even if the WNBA isn’t precisely the NBA, it is closer than being a backup, focusing on one aspect of a team and such. Furthermore, Laimbeer brings the attitude the entire team needs to develop.
I agree, why cant we get our shit together we saw what happens when we put a head coach with no experiance if Joe D keeps this up we are going to have to go after him because his descion makeing as of late has been very poor we need a good strong head coach that knows how to deal with players and draw up plays which we lacked this year it just is really hard to see us fall so hard after years of greatness it has been one bad descon after another come Joe tim to pull up your pants and bring the D back to the top we cant take much more!!!!
Too bad. Looks like we aren’t going to get a coach with head coach experience.
Too bad. Laimbeer doesn’t seem to be an option either.
What a bummer…
yea a little disappointed. I think hiring laimbeer could be a mistake though
my sites are now on Tom Thibodeau, the real genius behind the celtics defense (and houston’s defense a few years ago)
Man, say it ain’t so Joe! Avery would’ve made a great head coach for us… i think that instead of a new coach, and i hate to say this, we need a new president of basketball operations… im sorry joe, because u were a great player, but a horrible gm…. maybe bill davidson’s wife should take over as gm… the last thing joe d could do to save his job is get laimbeer….
oh lord, did someone recommend sam mitchell? god he’s awful, im from toronto… i know
both Thibodeau and Kuester are extremely experienced, even if they dont have head coach experiemce… and i’d take them over mitchell or laimbeer any day… but again, i am disappointed we didnt get avery
joe dumars is fucking up badly. why not got avery??? he has experience and led dallas to the finals!! damn!! im starting to lose my trust in dumars. can we say in a couple of years that dumars is out?? probably with his stupid decision making. for every good move he does, there is 3 bad moves!! wtf is this!!
wow im stunned by all the dumars hate these days, it’s pretty crazy if you ask me
I’m with you Mannie
I am also disappointed. I was looking forward to Avery leading us back to glory. The other two guys are interesting though. I’d love to see if the Celtics D sticks together if we go with Thibodeau, but I think we’ll hire Kuester.
Feeling a little better after reading Kuester’s bio more closely. He was an asst on the 2004 champs team. So Rip and Tay are going to know him, and he when to Carolina and is a friend of Larry Brown. So there is a connection there. I wonder how the players feel about him?
No matter what happens we gotta get behind the new coach….
Yeah, it’s nonsense. It’s easy to bash the decision maker when things aren’t as smooth as they used to be. It’s sad because all the haters will be right back on the bandwagon when these decisions start to pan out in our favor.
Stupid Dumars… Give him more years… Avery is a good coach and I really really wanted to see him coach the Pistons. He was our best chance and believe me, if are team did bad with Avery, I guarantee we would do bad with any other coach.
Joe D. screwed up once again Avery Johnson is exactly what this Piston team needed, an experienced head coach that can teach his players how to play the game the right way, a god fearing man thats dedicated to making his players better man, as well as better ball players. you mean to tell me they couldn’t pay him 5 mil a year for five years, when there basicly gonna give money away to the next coach, bcuz he’s gonna be fired in less than 3 years. I’m sorry to say that the Piston reign is done for at least 10 years again. Thanx Joe!
Matter of fact, why hasn’t Mitchell’s name come up at all? Hate to knock on Joe D, but part of the reason he didn’t hire Avery is because he wanted some say in player personnel. Considering Joe’s track record lately, don’t necessarily blame him.
Wow, you’ve really taken the Pistons’ past success for granted. Joe D put together a championship team that was able to contend year in and year out by acquiring players that other teams rejected and by consistently finding really solid draft picks (except one), and now after one down season you’re ready to throw him under the bus. Pathetic.
looks like the pistons are getting kuester
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4311090
I agree. Fair weather fans drive me crazy.
I am very disappointed. I am losing trust in Joe but I have been a Piston’s fane for over 20 years. No way I am jumping ship, but there is absolutely no excitement or anything to look forward to with any of Joe’s decisions. Everything he says just needs to be taken with a grain of salt. He has always said the right things to make the fans happy, but on the biz side he does what’s best for him & HIS organization. After Hammond left, that’s when a lot of Joe’s decisions became suspect. No one talks about that. But when Hammond left reports talked about how he was the brains behind the 2004 championship team & he orchestrated Sheed coming to Detroit by getting a 3rd team involved in the trade. Everything Joe has said since his “No sacred cows” remark last Summer. Here we are again “MC getting fired is a non issue. He is our coach going forward for the forseeable future” remember that. How about “We are looking to bring in 2 high inpact allstar caliber players with our cap” remember that one? How about “we need a coach with experience & a winning record to get us to where we need to be” oh & my personal favorite “we made the trade because I just didn’t see that team as it was built would compete for a championship. We are in position to get better & compete at a high level now”. Look at all of those crossed out faces to my left. (Hermann needs to be x’d off too). But yea, Joe did a good job of selling us, the fans, on something to look forward to. But we are in rebuild mode, not transition. The team as it stands will not compete for a while. We have no major expiring contracts to look forward too & after Joe signed rip for that 5 year deal last Summer, no one wants a 31 year old slow unathletic shooting guard in return for a a big guy. No one. So face it fans, unless Joe has a rbbit in his coat, this is our team. This is HIS team. He will hire HIS coach & when it fails, he will tell us what we want to hear, then completely flip flop & remind us that this is “not fantasy basketball” that making the right deal is hard to do, so sometimes yu have to go with plan C or D when plans A & B don’t work out. Well with a plan C & D team & a plan C & D coach looks a lot like a F to me. You failed Joe, you freakin FAILED!
Wow! Wikipedia has already been updated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kuester
Keith Langlois says and i quote “Reality Check: Responses to the week that was–
To that slice of fans that bought the hysterical projections that the Chauncey Billups trade was going to somehow allow the Pistons to lure LeBron James and a sidekick – Chris Bosh, perhaps, or maybe Dwyane Wade – as their free-agent haul, news that Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva rushed to Detroit on the first available flight once talks could begin left them a little flat.
It’s also spawned wildly divergent analyses, speculation and reaction, much of it centering on Joe Dumars’ track record in his nine years as Pistons president after a week that included the draft, a coaching change and the most significant agreements yet in free agency. Here’s a smattering of what I’ve read and heard – and my responses, for the sake of clarification or rebuttal.
Joe Dumars changes coaches too often.
Response: It amazes me that the prism through which people view coaching changes hasn’t changed in the last 30 years despite revolutionary changes in the culture of sports over that time. Some coaching hires are flat-out mistakes best remedied as soon as possible. Others just see the coach-player relationship fray to the point that the connective tissue is best severed cleanly before it snaps and causes collateral damage.
Hiring a coach isn’t like exchanging marriage vows. You know going in that it’s an arrangement that will last for as long as the relationship dynamic remains healthy. But it’s a dynamic that’s far more volatile now than it was a generation ago. The reasons are varied, but a big one is the money players make today. It tilts the balance of power their way. It shortens the life expectancy of coaches. Eventually, it gets ’em all. Even Phil Jackson had to step out in LA for a while.
Look around the league. The coaching carousel spins pretty much everywhere. If you can find one that lasts five years these days, you’ve hit a grand slam.
Joe D is a good GM, but he drafts poorly.
Response: Oh, puh-leeze. The first thing to understand is that the NBA draft is a different animal than the NFL, NHL or baseball’s. I blogged about it in May, based on a comment I saw from New Jersey Nets president Rod Thorn: “Here’s how I look at it. In the top 10, there will be three guys who are really good. And two or three guys who are never better than rotation players. Between 10 and 20, there will be two guys who turn out to be very good NBA players. And between 21 and 30, there will be one very good player.”
I looked it up and catalogued several years’ worth of drafts. Thorn is pretty close. First-round draft choices are just as likely to be washouts as really good players and about twice as likely to just be another guy. The deeper you go in the draft, the likelier it is that you’re drafting someone who’ll never leave a mark.
People bring up Mateen Cleaves as a draft mistake. Go back and look at that draft. Cleaves went 14th. Five players taken ahead of him are out of the league completely. Only two are starters. Not one is an All-Star. The players who went before and after him? Courtney Alexander and Jason Collier. The only way to avoid making a mistake in that draft was to trade out of it.
Darko’s the elephant in the room, of course. But nobody would have taken Chris Bosh or Dwyane Wade over Darko back then. Nobody. And a significant majority would have taken Darko over Carmelo – even Denver, which had Carmelo fall into its lap.
Not many teams can say they drafted consistently in the 20s for the past decade and have three players the quality of Tayshaun Prince (and go back and look at how lousy that draft was), Jason Maxiell and Arron Afflalo to show for it. The Darko mistake was turned into Rodney Stuckey. Cleaves was turned into Jon Barry and a No. 1. Rodney White became a No. 1 that was used in the Rasheed Wallace trade.
Far fewer people affect an NBA game than an NFL, NHL or baseball game. So far fewer impact players are found in each draft. They have two rounds in the NBA draft – as opposed to seven in the NFL and a bazillion in the NHL and baseball – because even second-rounders are long shots to carve out a meaningful career.
Bottom line: NBA GMs should be judged like baseball hitters. If they’re batting .300, they’re beating the average.
Joe Dumars should have saved his cap space for 2010.
Response: Dwyane Wade is going to stay in Miami – unless the lure of returning to his hometown Bulls overwhelms him. LeBron James is going to stay in Cleveland – unless the Knicks clear enough cap space to woo him and another max-type free agent. Chris Bosh is either going to become wing man for Wade or James or head home to Texas.
What else is really out there and really realistic? Amare Stoudemire? Carlos Boozer? Both coming off injury-plagued season but both still young and really talented. Still: They want the kind of money that the Pistons just split into two parts and gave to Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, which represents 37 points a game.
You can argue the merits of guys like Boozer or Stoudemire and what it would mean to the future of a franchise to pay them the same kind of money as James and Wade are going to get, but understand this: Half the league, 15 teams or so, have positioned themselves to have cap space next summer. Probably a dozen of them are going to wind up wishing they had an option as remotely attractive as spending their cap space on Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva.
Joe Dumars overspent for Gordon and Villanueva.
Response: Time will tell. But he’s got one huge thing going for him with regard to both contracts: Gordon and Villanueva are both young, 26 and 24. At no point in the five-year terms of their deals will they be on the downside of their careers. At no point in the terms of their deals do they figure to become hard to trade (assuming no severe injury concerns).
That’s a huge consideration. That’s what I would have feared with a Hedo Turkoglu signing. Turkoglu, at 30, might have played his best basketball. That’s a scary realization when you find out in training camp, with five years of an annual eight-figure contract still to pay off. Imagine how Chicago Bulls brass felt in the fall of 2006 when it was clear that the Ben Wallace they’d just committed $60 million and four years to was not the player who’d terrorized them over his six seasons with the Pistons?
The Bulls wound up having to take on somebody else’s damaged goods in order to get that contract off their books.
If Gordon is going to make $11 million a year, as reports indicate, sure, that’s a nice chunk of change. But I know this: The list of people who make $11 million or more is longer than the list of players who average 20 points a game. Gordon’s on both lists. And if you figure his contract on a dollars-per-point basis, he comes out as one of the best bargains on the list.
Villanueva could prove to be a steal. At 24, with his size and scoring touch from all three levels, there would appear to be plenty of room for growth. But if Charlie V gives the Pistons what he gave Milwaukee last season – 16 points and 7 boards, and all of that in just 27 minutes a game – that’s great production for the estimated $7.5 million per season that’s been reported.
There. I now yield the floor.
http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/truebluepistons.html
Whatever you do Joe D, You need a coach with experience like you said.
Stupid Dumars? Dumars F’d up? Really everyone? I’m with you that I thought Avery would be solid, but why is everyone so convinced that he was “the answer.” It is amazing to me how everyone thinks they know better than the guy who put together a championship contending team from what he was given, which was practically nothing. It’s cool to have an opinion, but there is no way to state it like fact that Avery would have taken us anywhere. In reality, he didn’t really take Dallas that far when considering what he was given there.
SOB, now we’re in a major pickle. I’m really hoping that Joe is considering someone else with head coaching experience, because the chances of someone who only has assistant coaching experience doing a good job is 50/50. At that rate it would probably be smartest just to go with Laimbeer, since he at least has been a head coach in a pretty large league.
Please Joe don’t risk another assistant coach signing!
Dumars is now one of the worst GM’s in the NBA. He cant even get a coach that is on the top of the list. If he cant get a coach how do you think he will be able to take players at the top of the list. ’04 was his only good year. After than its been a freefall. First we lost Ben, than Chauncey, after that Rasheed. Rip and Tay are next. Kuester is going to be another Curry. We are not going to win another championship until Joe DUMNars leaves. The only person I know that can fire Dumars his the owner. And I dont know who that is.
I wonder what Dumars will do when his next coach doesnt work out.
All Johnson ever lead Dallas to were a few first round exits from the playoffs. Unfortunately, since Detroit is still paying Michael Curry to not coach, and probably still paying Flip Saunders not to coach, their budget for head coaches is pretty dried up.
I’ll take Kuester, he at least has some winning experience, he’s been around the league as a coach for a while, and the Pistons really couldn’t do worse than Curry.
I’m more disturbed by the fact that Joe admits the franchise has taken significant steps back that warrant not hiring a championship caliber coach.
Given our need to teach Stuck how to be a floor general, I think we lost a grand opportunity in Johnson as coach.
Joe Dumars got us in this mess how do you fire all the coaches because they cant corral the players then fire the players ” Not resiging sheed ” that couldnt be tamed, it would be nice to have larry sitting bench with a bunch of nobodys and has beens ” thats how its going to be when rip leaves ‘
Hold up U dont know basketball, if I recall in the year of 2006 I recall his first year as Dallas headcoach he led them straight to the NBA Finals, than afterwards two first round exits, but he’s a better coach than any other coach he’s about to hire with no headcoach experience. Joe D. is cheap he wants a championship, but he wants to rent a coach for two years instead of giving him some room to work with, he basic wants to rent a coach, and how tough the east is going to be this year its going to take at least three years to get back to contension, now it might take even longer with this coach he’s bout to hire. I’m still a die hard Piston fan but, Joe is making it very hard right now becuz of these stupid decisions he’s making with free agency and coaching moves, you spend 55mil on a 6’3 shooting guard but cant spend 16mil on a coach, that lets u know his priorities for the team. He actually should of hired Avery last year before he hired Curry.