New Detroit Pistons coach, president Stan Van Gundy fascinating, funny, honest to a fault
- May 19, 2014
By Jeff Seidel
Staff Writer, Detroit Free-Press
Stan Van Gundy stepped in front of a screen, getting ready for a photo shoot before taking his official portrait as the Pistons’ new coach.
Van Gundy, 54, didn’t fix his hair. He didn’t look in a mirror. He just stood there, smiling for the camera, his shirt slightly untucked. What you see is what you get. Van Gundy is an open book.
Team photographer Allen Einstein was snapping pictures. Einstein has worked for the Pistons since 1976 — he has three NBA championship rings to prove it — and he has taken photos of every Pistons coach and player since Dick Vitale.
Einstein kept snapping pictures, capturing the moment, which felt historic.
Van Gundy is, by far, the most important hire the Pistons have made since Tom Gores bought the team. The entire organization now revolves around Van Gundy. He is the coach and head of basketball operations, and Gores is betting everything on this man with no front-office experience.
“OK, now, move around,” Einstein said, snapping pictures.
Van Gundy shifted his weight, holding a basketball, moving awkwardly, and it looked like he was trying to dance slowly in quicksand. But he kept smiling.
“I’m not a model,” Van Gundy said, breaking into an easy laugh.
Self-deprecating. Funny. Genuine. Personable. Honest to a fault. That’s Van Gundy.
But that’s only the start of it. There are so many facets to this fascinating man, so many different moments that have defined him.
The brain tumor
Let’s start with the worst day of his life, because it was so revealing.
Van Gundy was in the seventh grade, his brother Jeff was in fourth grade, and Bill Van Gundy, their father, was having brain surgery.
“It’s the one time in my life when I remember being really, really scared,” Van Gundy said. “It was major surgery, and you don’t know what will happen to your father. That day was hell. I don’t remember the details of that day, but I can still feel the emotions of that day. It was just tough. You don’t know what is going to happen, and it’s scary.”
Thankfully, the tumor was benign.
Bill Van Gundy was the assistant varsity basketball coach at Cal State Hayward (now Cal State East Bay). He was a rock of a man. Direct. Focused. Detail-oriented. Hardworking.
And he didn’t have time to be sick, because it was basketball season.
While Bill Van Gundy recovered, Stan and his brother did what seemed natural to boys who eventually would coach in the NBA. They tried to do their dad’s work even though they were still in middle school. The boys started scouting future opponents, bringing back reports to their dad.
“I’m going to tell you, the quality of those scouting reports was very, very low,” Stan Van Gundy said. “We had rudimentary knowledge. I’m not sure he got anything out of those things.”
But it was an important lesson, because Van Gundy started to understand the business and the process of coaching. “My dad was a stickler for preparation,” he said. “My dad was in a bed saying, ‘Somebody has to get there. It’s got to be done.’ ”
That lesson stuck with Van Gundy. It was engrained in him. Preparation is the bedrock for everything.
And now, he vows to prepare harder than anybody in the NBA. He vows to watch as much film, or more, than any other person in a front office in the NBA. He vows to do more due diligence on potential players than anybody in the NBA — doing whatever it takes, calling four, five or six people to find out about a player’s character. And he vows to use the statistics and numbers better than anybody else.
There is no guarantee Van Gundy will succeed as the head of basketball operations. But nobody, he promises, will outwork him.
The baseball fan
Van Gundy loves baseball, even though he wasn’t very good at it. One of his prized pieces of memorabilia is a poster with several pitchers who have recorded 3,000-plus strikeouts. It was signed by Fergie Jenkins, Don Sutton, Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson.
His love for baseball turned into a fascination with statistics. At a young age, Van Gundy studied baseball stats in the Sporting News. He saw magic in those numbers, and he tried to use them to understand the game at a deeper level.
Statistics are important to Van Gundy, especially in basketball, because numbers tell the story of what is happening on the court. How is his team playing defense? The answer is right there in opponents’ field-goal percentage, lay-ups given up and second-chance points allowed.
When he started to study the Pistons’ numbers, he saw a team that played horrible defense last season and didn’t do a very good job rebounding. He says those are fixable mistakes.
But don’t misunderstand. Numbers are important to Van Gundy, but they aren’t everything. They’re just one of many tools.
“He doesn’t let the stats overtake the human element,” his father said. “There are just no stats for some things that happen in the game.”
The kid playing for his dad
Stan Van Gundy played Division III basketball for his father at SUNY-Brockport.
“I’ll tell you one thing, he could shoot it,” Bill Van Gundy said. “He took very good care of the basketball. He wasn’t blessed with any great athletic ability, either one of my sons, but he could get the job done.”
Van Gundy is a lot like his dad. Direct. Focused. Detail-oriented. Hardworking. But he is also like his mother, Cindy.
“My wife is a perfectionist,” Bill said.
Stan certainly shares some of those qualities with his mother, always striving for perfection.
“One thing is for sure, he really does emphasize execution and doing things right,” Bill said.
The lady in admissions
In 1983, Van Gundy became head coach at Castleton State, a Division III college in Vermont, where he met a woman named Kim who was working in admissions.
She was attracted to his passion, honesty and values. “It’s not like he’s rude, but he won’t play games,” she said.
Kim and Stan Van Gundy have been married for 26 years. They have four children, two dogs, a horse and five cats. “I’m sort of a serial adopter,” Kim said, laughing.
On the court, Van Gundy is loud. Intense. Hoarse. Demanding. Nonstop. Frank. Emotional and entertaining.
But there is another side to him. He also is intelligent and family-oriented.
When he was coaching in Miami, Kim and Stan became licensed foster parents. They went through the training during an NBA lockout. At the time, their biological children were infants.
“All we could do was respite care for infants, where you do short-term foster care,” Kim said. “We are very community-oriented. We focus on anything that involves children.”
The firing
Van Gundy figured he would live his life in the shadows of small-college basketball, like his father, who coached for 40 years. But he started climbing, moving from Castleton to Canisius to Fordham to the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, taking over the Division II defending national champion.
In 1994, Van Gundy was promoted from assistant to head coach at Wisconsin. He was 35, the youngest men’s head coach in the Big Ten. After a 13-14 record and a ninth-place finish in the conference, he was fired after serving one year of his five-year contract.
But it was the break of his life.
“The timing was incredible,” Van Gundy said. “I got fired. A few months later, Pat Riley left New York to go to Miami. He wanted to bring my brother with him, but the Knicks were upset about Pat leaving. They wouldn’t let Jeff out of his contract. Jeff couldn’t leave and go. Pat was looking for somebody, and Jeff said, ‘You should talk to my brother.’ ”
Stan Van Gundy flew to Miami, did an interview and got the job.
“Sometimes, bad things happen and it leads to something better,” he said. “And I think it has happened now. I got fired in Orlando, and that’s very unpleasant. And now, two years later, you are standing in a better place.”
The blueprint
Van Gundy worked as an assistant under Riley for eight seasons. At the time, Riley was president and coach, a front-office structure the Pistons have copied. Though it’s an unusual system, Stan Van Gundy believes in it because it ties the front office to the court.
Is it risky? Of course. Will it work with Van Gundy? Nobody knows.
“With that model comes great unity,” Van Gundy said. “That’s what I saw. There was never any pull between front office and coaching because Pat was on both sides of it. That stuck with me.”
The ring
Before the 2003-04 season, Riley stepped down as Heat coach, replaced by Van Gundy. In his first two seasons in Miami, Van Gundy led the Heat to the playoffs both times, advancing to the 2005 Eastern Conference finals.
In his third season, everything went sour. Van Gundy stepped down as coach in December 2005 after 21 games.
Riley took over, coached the Heat to the NBA title, and Van Gundy was given a championship ring, but he doesn’t wear it. He doesn’t even know where it is. It means nothing to him.
He considers it more of a participation ribbon than a valid ring.
“I didn’t feel a part of it,” he said. “I thought it was an incredibly gracious move to include us in that, but I didn’t feel a part of that.”
The look
Van Gundy doesn’t look like a standard, cookie-cutter NBA coach. He is rumpled. Relaxed. Casual. He was once pictured in Esquire magazine under a headline that said: “People Who Seem Like They’ve Been Drinking.”
And he doesn’t talk like a typical NBA coach. He doesn’t have a filter. He says what he thinks, which can be refreshing, but it also can stir up all kinds of trouble.
In 2011, Van Gundy said NBA commissioner David Stern was “like a lot of leaders we’ve seen in this world lately, (that) don’t really tolerate other people’s opinion or free speech.” Stern snapped back, talking about Van Gundy's “aberrant” behavior.
Van Gundy has had his share of squabbles with players.
Shaquile O’Neal told reporters that Van Gundy was the “master of panic, and when it gets time for his team to go in the postseason and do certain things, he will let them down because of his panic.”
Then, O’Neal stopped an ESPN.com reporter and said: “Now I see why everybody who plays for him doesn’t like him.”
Then, Van Gundy had a squabble with Dwight Howard that played out like a soap opera.
Many believe the squabble with Howard led to his firing in Orlando. Yes, Van Gundy was fired after a 259-135 record.
In Detroit, we would have built him a statue.
The time off
For the past two years, Van Gundy has done some radio and TV, and he became involved in politics. He joined a political group in Seminole County, Fla., trying to preserve a public school system.
“My wife is the driving force behind that,” he said. “I would like to think I would have gotten involved without her.”
But the time off has changed him, too, at least a little. He doesn’t drink Diet Coke anymore. “Just water,” he said. “As you get older, my stomach just doesn’t take it.”
And he has cut back on his intake of Chips Ahoy, although he finds it hard to turn down carrot cake. “I’m not a big dessert guy,” he said, laughing. “I clearly eat too much, but I eat too much of the actual dinner.”
For the past two years, when Stan started to get the itch to return to the NBA, Kim Van Gundy would say: “Remember what you are like when you are coaching.”
He loves coaching but hates losing. It’s both the curse and compulsion in this business.
“Losing a game to him is not acceptable,” Kim Van Gundy said. “He really, really expects to win every game. It’s not a good thing when he doesn’t win a game. But he simply picks up and starts preparing for the next game.”
The plan
No one can question Van Gundy’s ability to coach. Riley once said of Van Gundy: “I think he’s probably at the top, if not the very best, X-and-O strategist in the game today.”
But can he run a front office? Can he wheel and deal? Can he put all the pieces together? Can he fix the Pistons? Nobody knows for sure. Clearly, he needs to surround himself with a talented GM, and he also will have to get better at delegating time, splitting up his duties.
“As intense as he is, the last two years gave him a chance to chill out and relax,” his wife said. “It will probably make him a better coach.”
How will that emotional coach who lives in the moment be able to coexist with the head of the front office who needs to be coolheaded and look at the big picture?
“I’m not basing decisions on emotions,” Van Gundy said. “I’m going to sit down and make decisions based on what I’ve seen on film, what the numbers show me, and what I know about the people on my team and the other team. I think you can be emotional but still make very rational, analytical decisions.”
Yes, it’s risky. Yes, it’s unusual.
But after you talk to him, after you see how he prepares, after you hear his plan, after you consider his track record, it starts to make sense.