Kuester in Quicksand Coaching These Bratty Pistons

Herbie Brown, when he first came to town in the mid-1970s, was a frenetic, nervous man with wide, plaintive eyes, long curly hair, and a mission.

He arrived in Detroit in 1975 as the new assistant to Pistons coach Ray Scott, who performed the task for two years without any help.

But Ray, one of the finest men you’ll ever meet, did a favor for a fellow coach and long story short, hired Brown to be Ray’s assistant.

That favor would come back to bite Scott in the you-know-where.

“I guess I didn’t see it coming like some others did,” Ray once told me.

You might know Herbie Brown by way of his more famous coaching little brother, Larry.

So Herbie comes to Detroit, joining Ray Scott, and before long it’s obvious to some of the sportswriters in town, like the Detroit News’ Jerry Green, that Herbie is gunning for Ray’s job, the “it” that Scott says he didn’t see coming.

Ray told me of a meeting he had along the Detroit Riverfront with Green, in a car near Cobo Arena, in which Jerry tried to warn Ray of Herbie’s intentions.

In January, 1976, Ray was fired, the Pistons tumbling from first place toward oblivion in the latter part of December and early January.

Herbie Brown’s mission was accomplished; he was the new Pistons coach.

For better or for worse.

The Pistons actually played hard for Brown initially, using a late-season run to squeak into the playoffs. Then they upset the Milwaukee Bucks in a best-of-three series before taking the defending champion Golden State Warriors to six games.

The following season, Brown was still frenetic and manic and he still wore shoes with no socks and open-collared leisure suits. He looked like a reject from Studio 54, coaching the Pistons in Cobo Arena and throughout the arenas of the day.

One day in practice, according to Green in his book “The Detroit Pistons: Capturing a Remarkable Era,” Brown was overseeing a ball movement drill and noticed one of the Pistons being checked in a mismatch by point guard Kevin Porter.

Porter was an angry, simmering player who scowled a lot and distrusted coaches. He and Brown were very similar people, which was part of their problem.

Brown saw the mismatch and implored the bigger player to shoot.

“You got a midget on you! Shoot the ball! You got a midget on you!”

Kevin Porter didn’t like being called a midget by the disco-dressing Herbie Brown.

That was part of the tenuous, stormy relationship between coach and point guard, which at times nearly turned physical in its confrontations.

Brown would sit Porter during games and not call on him for chunks of minutes at a time. Porter would glare and scowl. Herbie would finally call for Porter and it was even money whether Kevin would actually acquiesce and enter the game.

This went on for most of the 1976-77 season, a year in which the Pistons managed to win 44 games despite several key players (like Bob Lanier) holding Herbie Brown in complete disdain.

Herbie was eventually fired in December, 1977.

Herbie Brown rubbed his players raw, like a cheese grater. He yelled a lot, which even back then wasn’t the best way to get through to NBA players, even before they made salaries that would make a lot of corporate magnates blush.

Unlike Herbie Brown, Chuck Daly got it.

Chuck, the Pistons coach from 1983-92, knew his place. He knew that NBA players weren’t seventh graders who needed to be taught basketball and scolded. Rather, they were, in Chuck’s own words, 12 different corporations who responded to diplomacy and empowerment, even if the latter was disingenuous.

Chuck Daly’s brilliance was that he made it seem like the players were in charge more than he was. He let them police themselves, realizing that if you have tough-minded leaders like Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer on your roster, you might as well have them work for you rather than against you.

Once, during the 1985-86 season, the Pistons in a terrible slump, rumors were abound that Daly was to be fired—soon, any day now.

But Thomas went to bat for his coach. He encouraged GM Jack McCloskey to give Daly some more time.

A couple years later, the Pistons were in the NBA Finals. The next two after that, they won them.

Daly would end up as the greatest coach in franchise history, not that any of us saw it coming when he was hired from obscurity in 1983.

I can’t help but think of the cautionary tales of Herbie Brown and Chuck Daly as I watch John Kuester wallow in his tenure as the coach of today’s bratty Pistons.

No one seems to have Kuester’s back, as Isiah and Laimbeer did for Daly, back in the day. Rather, the coach appears to be surrounded by a lot of Kevin Porters.

As I write this, the Pistons have played 12 games. It seems like 112. The drama that has occurred so far is enough to keep a soap opera writer on retainer.

Guard Rodney Stuckey, who started yapping in training camp about being tired of not yapping enough previously, has already spent a game tethered to the bench as punishment for not leaving a prior game upon Kuester’s request.

Forward Tayshaun Prince has already verbally sparred with Kuester via the press, then cut out the middle man and sparred with him face-to-face during a game at Golden State last Monday. The coach had to be restrained during that delightful encounter.

The Pistons cannot compete with the league’s elite. There was a sorry blowout loss at home to the Celtics, which was one of the worst efforts I’d ever seen from a Pistons team.

Then the ultimate indictment came on Wednesday night.

The Pistons entertained the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers, and they did so in every sense of the word. The Pistons laid down for the Lakers. They all but brought out appetizers and cocktails before serving them a main course of an easy win.

Afterward, Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who’s been at this NBA coaching thing for over 20 years now, delivered the worst zinger of the year.

“It looked like some of their guys weren’t playing very hard,” Jackson said.

They ought to put that on the 2010-11 Pistons’ epitaph.

It was the worst, cruelest blow. Jackson’s words, coming from a spoiled victor, ought to embarrass the Pistons to no end.

But you want to know the worst part?

Jackson’s charge won’t embarrass this group of petulant Pistons one iota.

John Kuester is no Chuck Daly, but he’s no Herbie Brown, either.

Still, Kuester is likely to suffer the same fate as Brown, eventually.

That’s usually what happens in the NBA, when you can’t get all the corporations that Daly spoke of to play ball—literally and figuratively.

Pistons' Coaching Job Not As Appealing Anymore -- And Coaches Know It

Avery Johnson is a smart man. Of course, you can be awfully smart when you're not desperate.

Johnson is having his cake and eating it, too. He's the fired Dallas Mavericks basketball coach who's still drawing cool millions from Mark Cuban -- in addition to gabbing into a microphone as an NBA analyst for ESPN. And he's not doing that for free, either.

Johnson hosted Pistons President Joe Dumars --- Sunday, it was reported --- at Johnson's home in Houston. The two met for nearly four hours, reports say.

Dumars flew to Houston firmly expecting to return to Detroit with Johnson signed, sealed, and delivered as his next basketball coach --- Joe's sixth since taking over the front office in 2000.

Once, that would have happened, without question.

Dumars would have flown to Houston to talk to someone like Johnson --- an experienced, highly-regarded coach --- and indeed Joe would have returned to Detroit having gotten his man. A press conference would have been called, perhaps the next day. Another go-round with a coach would have begun, the clock already ticking loudly on the new guy's time with the Pistons.

Johnson is no dummy.

He knows that Dumars no longer deals from strength when it comes to hiring coaches.

The Pistons job isn't an unattractive one, necessarily, but it's no longer one that you drop whatever you're doing and follow Dumars to Detroit, as if he's a pied piper.

The sticking point between Johnson and the Pistons, we're told --- and it makes sense --- was that Avery wanted no less than a four-year commitment from Dumars, at something around $4 million a year.

The Pistons were only willing to offer two years plus an option for a third.

Johnson was intrigued by the Pistons, but not enough to budge on his demand for four years.

He got himself into a staring contest with Dumars and this time, Joe blinked.

So Dumars flew back to Detroit, still coach-less.

Johnson knew that Dumars and the Pistons needed him a whole lot more than Johnson needed the Pistons.

So do others in the coaching fraternity.

Doug Collins was Dumars' No. 1 choice. Collins coached Dumars in Detroit, and has made it known that he's itching to get back into coaching. Dumars wanted Collins; Collins wanted the Pistons.

At first.

Then Doug came to his senses and looked at all the notches on Dumars' belt and decided that maybe he didn't want the Pistons so bad after all.

Dumars, sources say, is close to hiring Cleveland Cavaliers assistant John Kuester as his sixth coach --- with the two-year/option deal that Johnson rejected, and at a considerably lower price, it's presumed.

Kuester will be, if my math is right, Dumars' third choice. They say Kuester gives Dumars a comfort factor because of his one season in Detroit as Larry Brown's assistant (the year the Pistons happened to win the NBA championship), and his being an offensive guru of sorts for Mike Brown and the Cavs, which include one LeBron James.

Funny how those traits weren't enough to make him the first choice.



First Collins (top), then Johnson (above) turned Dumars down, each having their own reservations


Former football coach Bum Phillips used to say of the job insecurity of his profession, "If they want to fire you, they'll come up with a reason. He's too mean, he's too nice."

Same thing with hires.

To steal from Bum, if you want to hire a third choice bad enough, you'll come up with a reason to do so.

But just because John Kuester isn't even sloppy seconds, doesn't mean he'll be a bad hire.

Dumars had a rough year personally. In March, he lost longtime owner Bill Davidson, who was like a father to him after Joe's dad passed away in 1990. Davidson passed away rather suddenly, despite his being in poor health.

Then, in May, Joe's old coach, Chuck Daly, died from cancer. In about two months, Dumars lost two influential men in his life.

But Daly, a Hall of Fame coach, was hardly the Pistons' first choice back in 1983, when he was hired.

Jack McCloskey, the GM, let me in on a secret, when I interviewed him in 1989, shortly after the Pistons won their first of two straight titles.

John Kuester, even as a third choice, is one up on Daly.

McCloskey told me that, after firing Scotty Robertson, he offered the job to two high profile guys -- just like Dumars did last week. The two men were the iconic Dr. Jack Ramsay and the former Lakers coach, Jack McKinney. Both coaches said thanks but no thanks. Then a third man, who McCloskey didn't identify, turned him down, too.

Daly was the Pistons' fourth choice in 1983. A former Cleveland coach, too, to boot.

Huh.

But the facts are these: Dumars doesn't have himself the same shiny job to dangle in front of potential coaching candidates as he once had. And he no longer negotiates from a position of strength.

Doug Collins and Avery Johnson both read that, crystal clear.

And John Kuester just wants a crack at a head coaching job.

If Dumars could ever use some of fourth choice Chuck Daly's magic, even posthumously, now's the time.

Third (At Least) Choice Daly Proved To Be The Right One, After All

Chuck Daly wasn't even sloppy seconds. He was thirds--whatever the unflattering prefix to that is.

He may even have been, frankly, fourths or lower.

They say that sometimes the best trades are the ones you don't make.

I submit that, likewise, sometimes the best hires are the ones you don't make.

Daly, who passed away Saturday from cancer at age 78, wasn't necessarily on the Pistons' radar back in 1983.

GM Jack McCloskey had just fired Scotty Robertson, a ziggy that many of us thought was terribly unfair. Scotty had taken the remnants of Dickie Vitale's 16-66 disaster and, within two years, coached it to a very respectable 39-43.

But the team wasn't playing defense the way McCloskey preferred.

So Jack fired Robertson and went in search of a new coach.

The coaching search when it came to the Pistons in those days was always fraught with danger. And laughs.

This was a team that, after all, had once made a 24-year-old a player/coach, and who tabbed its radio announcer to be the new GM. A team that burned through coaches like a teenager and his allowance.

But Jack fired Robertson, and in his mind it was for the good of the team's future. The Pistons had two young stars--Isiah Thomas and Kelly Tripucka--and they needed the right man to mold them and to use the supporting players McCloskey would provide to play their roles to the "t".

Two men, at least, turned McCloskey down when approached to coach the Pistons.

Dr. Jack Ramsay, with a wealth of experience under his belt, politely declined McCloskey's overture.

Next, McCloskey turned to old co-worker Jack McKinney, former Lakers and Pacers coach.

McKinney said no, as well.

Three Jacks in the mix, and still the Pistons were playing with a losing hand.

There was another coach, rumored. Through the grapevine it was reported that he, too, turned the Pistons job down.

Enter Chuck Daly, former Ivy Leaguer and NBA assistant, then beleaguered interim head coach and part-time radio analyst.

Actually, Daly's background seemed to fit perfectly into the Pistons' twisted jigsaw puzzle of former coaches. He was unknown, with a college background somewhere. He had been a radio guy. His NBA coaching record with Cleveland was 9-32.

Perfect!!



So this was the guy who was going to lead the Pistons to championship glory?, we asked in 1983.

Well, yeah--after several others told the Pistons no.

It's very ironic that in the same week, two previously unknown, unwanted men connected to the Pistons were in the news.

First there was former player Dave Bing, elected to be the new mayor of Detroit. Bing, in 1966, was unwanted from Syracuse by a fan base hoping for U-M star Cazzie Russell. But the Pistons lost a coin flip and were "stuck" with Bing.

Then Daly, who passed away on Saturday. I can assure you, there weren't a lot of season ticket sales generated by his hiring. Let's just put it that way.

Now Bing is mayor and Daly has a banner hanging from the Palace.

Lovely.

Chuck Daly wasn't happy unless he was worried about something. They didn't call him the Prince of Pessimism for nothing.

But nobody worried better, and happier, on the Pistons' sidelines than Daly.

Maybe nobody ever in the NBA, now that I think about it.

Like Daly, Babcock Just Another Great Coach Who Goes Unfeted

Mike Babcock is the best coach in the NHL, yet he'll likely never win Coach of the Year honors.

Such is how coaches and managers are viewed.

You may as well rename the COY award the "Most Improved Team and So Here's an Award for their Coach" Award.

There's a fallacy that great teams can't seem to be coached by great coaches. Or, at the very least, great teams would be great no matter who coaches them.

Baloney.

Sparky Anderson, his critics said, only needed to possess a pen when he managed the Reds. That's all that was required to write in the names of Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench and the rest every day.

Sparky's Big Red Machine -- that could have been managed by anyone and the results would have been the same.

Again, baloney.

If that was the case, if only the most talented teams won championships year after year, then we would be spared the drama of actually having the games be played.

We'd simply feed every team's roster into a computer and have it declare the champion for that year.

I won't deny or disparage the coach who coaxes maximum results from a talent-challenged personnel group. There's no doubt that it takes a special effort to turn ugly ducklings into beautiful swans, in one year's time.

Jacques Demers arrived from St. Louis in 1986, about to take over a Red Wings team that won all of 17 games and totaled 40 points the season before. Demers surprised the Blues with his defection, but he decided that the challenge and opportunity to work for Mike Ilitch was too good to pass up.

The Red Wings improved from 40 points to 78 points in Demers's first year and made it to the Final Four. He won the Jack Adams Award for best coach. Then, the next season, Demers again led the Red Wings to the Final Four, despite losing Steve Yzerman for the last month of the season and the first two rounds of the playoffs to a knee injury. Once again, the NHL honored Demers with the Jack Adams.

Were there better coaches, with more talent, who should have edged Demers out in one of those two years? Probably yes, especially the second time.


As long as Babcock keeps sipping champagne from Cups, I suppose he won't sweat not winning any Jack Adams Awards


Chuck Daly never sniffed a COY award with the Pistons, even though I'd have no one else on my sidelines if I was an NBA owner in the mid-1980s to early-1990s. Pat Riley was another who was annually snubbed, coaching the Lakers.

How come the Atlanta Braves could win 15 straight divisional titles yet only one World Series?

How could the talented Tigers finish 74-88 in 2008?

Or how about any team with star players who just can't mesh and jell?

There was no man who was more qualified to coach the Pistons championship teams than Daly.

"Daddy Rich" correctly understood one thing. A tenet that should be made into a placard and mounted on the wall in every NBA coach's office in the country.

"You're not just coaching players," Daly once intoned. "You're managing twelve corporations."

Not only did Daly understand that, he put it into practice. The Bad Boys Pistons, had they been under the charge of a lesser coach, could have imploded.

Perhaps the greatest testament to Daly's brilliance occurred when GM Jack McCloskey put his coach on the spot by trading Adrian Dantley for the volatile Mark Aguirre.

Trader Jack did it to Chuck on Valentines Day, 1989, the playoffs about two months away. Not much time to integrate Aguirre, who had a bad rep, into the scheme of things.

No worries. Daly's players, on their own, took Aguirre out to dinner almost as soon as he reported for duty. But this was no congratulatory, feel-good meal.

Led by Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer, the Pistons contingent let Aguirre know, in no uncertain terms, what was expected of him in Detroit. They made sure Aguirre was aware that this wasn't Dallas, from where he came. Aguirre wasn't going to be "the guy" any longer.

Fit in, or else.

Laimbeer was the most pointed.

"The only reason I'm giving you a chance is because you're Isiah's friend," Laimbeer was reported to have said to Aguirre at the dinner. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have anything to do with you. I've heard a lot of bad things."

The Pistons players did this on behalf of their coach because they believed in Daly and what he had put together.

Think that happens every day?

Yesterday, Mike Babcock became the first coach in NHL history to win 50 games in the first four years with a new team. He joins Scotty Bowman, no less, as the only other coach to win 50 games four times in a row, period.

Babcock displayed his coaching genius in last year's playoffs when he sat goalie Dominik Hasek down in a 2-2 first round series. It was a bold move, predicated on the belief/hunch that Chris Osgood gave the Red Wings a better chance to win, at that moment.

Babcock may have won the Stanley Cup for the Red Wings with that decision -- one that very few coaches in the league would have had the cojones to make.

But Babcock won't win the Jack Adams Award this year. Just like he didn't win it last year (he was a finalist but finished third). And like he won't win it next year.

Ironic, that the award is named for a Red Wings coach, isn't it?

The Unknown Coach: Don't Fear Him, Necessarily

Let’s take a little poll.

By a show of hands, how many of you heard of new Lions head coach Jim Schwartz prior to, say, Christmas Day?

I don’t see too many digits wagging. Let’s try by round of applause.

Hmm…awfully quiet in here, isn’t it?

Schwartz is the poor sap Lions management has tapped to transform its wretched football team into something that you can, at the very least, watch with both eyes open. That few people had ever heard of him prior to his name being bandied about in rumors after the season is inconsequential. He’s The Guy. So deal with it.

For the record, Schwartz was the defensive coordinator for the Tennessee Titans. Been that for the past eight seasons. By the numbers, Schwartz has coordinated some of the finest defenses in the NFL. Still, he did so largely in anonymity. Only the most diehard fans keep track of who the coordinators are for every team in the league.

Soon after the 2008 season ended – the Lions sans even one victory throughout the 16-game schedule – coach Rod Marinelli was canned. No surprise there. Then the names started being bandied about.

Schwartz’s kept rolling off the tongues of the so-called NFL “insiders”. The cape of anonymity was beginning to be ripped away from his back.

Defensive coordinator, Tennessee Titans. Even casual fans knew that the Titans have been known lately for having shutdown defenses.

2008 turned into 2009. Shaking off the fuzz of the New Year’s frivolities, more and more Lions fans became acutely aware of Jim Schwartz. He was going to be interviewed, in cloak and dagger fashion, somewhere in these United States.

Other names were mentioned as possible Lions coaches. But none more than Schwartz’s.

Then, on Monday the 12th, the Lions made Schwartz available for the media. He was in town for interview no. 2. This one was going to be with owner Bill Ford Sr. It was becoming more and more evident that this previously unknown assistant coach and little-known defensive coordinator was the Lions’ man. At the press gathering, Schwartz made a joke.

“I think,” he said of the Lions’ quarterback situation, “that it’s time to find a replacement for Bobby Layne.”

Schwartz displayed a key quality needed to coach the Lions: a wonderful sense of gallows humor.


Schwartz, prowling the sidelines as the Titans' Coordinator of Defense


Then, on Friday the 16th...

“I’m not here to exorcise ghosts of the past,” Schwartz, newly-hired as Lions head coach, said to the throng gathered at Ford Field. It was a nice sentiment, but someone should have broken the news to him: that’s exactly what he’s been brought to Detroit to do. Or else, why bother hiring a new coach at all?

Jim Schwartz has some credentials. He’s worked for a winning NFL program, in the upper level of coaching management. A coordinator position, if it was a beer, would be known as Head Coach Lite.

Don’t always fear the unknown.

In 1983, a well-coiffed gentleman stood before the Detroit media and posed with a basketball. He was dressed to the nines. We’d soon find out that, to Chuck Daly, “casual day” meant you left the hanky out of the pocket.


Chuck Daly: from unknown to Hall of Fame


Daly was unknown, largely. He had been a basketball coach out east, at the college level. He was an anonymous NBA assistant in Philadelphia. In between he gabbed into a radio microphone for a time, analyzing the Sixers games. Then, due to some unfortunate luck, Daly became interim coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. It was a time when the team was derisively known as the Cadavers.

His record as an interim was 9-32.

And that was his career NBA coaching record when Pistons GM Jack McCloskey tried to sell Chuck Daly to the denizens in town as the answer to the team’s ongoing troubles. It was soon learned that Daly became the Pistons’ coach because a few bigger-named guys turned McCloskey down flat.

I can assure you that hardly anyone knew who the hell Chuck Daly was before he was unveiled to the media in May 1983. Then his resume was printed in the paper, and many of us wished we never met him at all. He appeared to be, at the time, just another sad sack coach breezing through town.

Today, when you walk into The Palace of Auburn Hills and look up, way up, you’ll see a banner with Chuck Daly’s name and symbolic “number” – 2 (for two NBA championships) – emblazoned on it.

The unknown coach hasn’t always worked out. To that, I must admit. And the Lions have had themselves plenty of those types.

Rick Forzano. Tommy Hudspeth. Marty Mornhinweg. Rod Marinelli. They were, after all was said and done, guys who were indeed just breezing through town.

So it’s forgivable and understandable for you to be wary of yet another low profile, no-name guy who’s been brought in to resuscitate pro football in Detroit. I don’t expect handstands and confetti because the Lions hired Jim Schwartz.

But Schwartz can coordinate himself some defense, and if there’s anything that was most slapstick about the Lions’ 0-16 season, it was the Swiss cheese defense they put on the field every Sunday. It was a defense bereft of playmakers, with pass defenders who played as if they were allergic to the football. It was, frankly, a joke.

Still, you’re given a free pass if you snicker and sneer at the hiring of the previously unknown Jim Schwartz. You do, after all, have history mostly on your side.

But what if Schwartz can coach a little bit, and sticks around for nine years or so, like Chuck Daly did with the Pistons?

It’s not like the Lions aren’t due or anything.