Wearing two hats doesn't usually work.
But since the predominant organizational headgear for the Detroit Pistons the past five years resembled that of a court jester, there's understandably some excitement at The Palace of Auburn Hills that their search for a new president of basketball operations and head coach ended with a single hire.
Stan Van Gundy can coach. But Tom Gores is gambling a reported $35 million over the next five years that Van Gundy can capably juggle the daunting responsibilities of coaching a team that chews coaches up and spits them out with regular ease, while also overseeing a vast organizational cultural change.
Good luck.
Van Gundy's a recycled coach liberated from the NBA scrapheap, cleaned, polished and passed off as a fresh new vision for what would be his third team.
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Nobody disputes that he knows his basketball. But if this was the best chief executive that the headhunting firm Gores commissioned to engage in a far-reaching personnel search could come up with, it's yet another example of the Pistons being more interested to engage in what's expeditious rather than what's the correct path for a franchise desperately seeking a complete rebuild.
The best candidate's often the guy you never heard of, somebody unearthed through exhaustive diligence. There was an assistant general manager out there with a wealth of knowledge from successful organizations such as the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder that have consistently won through sound drafting.
But instead the Pistons opted for an attention grab, combining both positions to entice interest amid other more high-wattage head coaching openings with the Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers.
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