Curry Has 66 Games To Get Pistons Squared Away — On & Off The Court

The good news is that there are still 66 games left in the 2008-09 season for the Pistons. The bad news is that there are still 66 games left in the 2008-09 season for the Pistons.

Coach Michael Curry is seeing, up close and personal, why it’s so much better to make a blockbuster trade in the season’s opening weeks than at the trading deadline.

Curry has something smoldering in his camp, and it isn’t the remnants of a hot-shooting team.

These are touchy times for the Pistons, who are just 6-6 since trading for Allen Iverson. Though there have been some big wins among those six, there’ve also been some head scratchers.

But it’s not just the record, which includes a pedestrian 5-3 overall at home, that is of concern this morning. As always in the NBA, it’s about the happiness within the ranks. Or UNhappiness, really.

Curry has come highly recommended by the only person who really matters: Pistons president Joe Dumars. So it’s important to know that the coach will have the support of the team boss should the rank and file get too ornery.

Yet I’m sure Dumars would rather that not be necessary because of drama his coach is instigating.

Curry blindsided forward Tayshaun Prince after another lackluster Sunday performance yesterday — a 96-85 capitulation to the young, hungry Portland Trail Blazers.

The coach was asked why Prince had his rump on the bench in the fourth quarter, when the Pistons gamely tried to make a comeback.

“Tay didn’t play that well,” was Curry’s response. Short, succinct, to the point.

Except that this was news to Prince, according to today’s Detroit Free Press.

“Huh?” said Prince, who scored 10 points on 4-for-8 shooting in 22 minutes. “Wow, I thought I was playing pretty good if you ask me. … I don’t know. It’s up to them to see what’s going on, and I guess their decision was to sit me down. I was playing well.”

Then this from the beanpole Prince.

“I was upset when I came out of the game in the first quarter because I thought I started the game off well trying to get the guys in the flow. It’s always tough for me because I’m in the position where I’m put at the point-guard position; I’m trying to make plays for them, get them guys going. Sometimes I’m going to have a good night doing it. Sometimes it’s going to take me out of my rhythm.”

Then there’s the newly-acquired Iverson, who’s already tested the rookie coach’s mettle by snubbing a mandatory Thanksgiving Day practice. Iverson is quick to point out that he’s sitting on the bench in Detroit more than he ever has in his career. Funny, but one of the reasons A.I. was happy to come to the Pistons was the allure of not having to be “The Guy” — the one who carries the load. But Iverson wants to not be “The Guy” and play a lot of minutes, too. I think they have a saying for that, involving cake?

It’s a player’s league, this NBA, and that sometimes collides, head on, with a new coach’s desire to prove that he’s no pushover. It’s what they said about the deposed Flip Saunders: not enough accountability for the rank and file.

It’s an admittedly very delicate balance, and just as his players are trying to get accustomed to a new, high profile teammate, so is Curry trying to get a hang of this “I’m in charge now” thing.

Sixty-six games to play before the curtain goes up on the playoff season. Sixty-six opportunities to find cohesiveness, chemistry, commitment. The three Cs. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are sixty-six games for another C to emerge: cancer.

Look around the league and you’ll see many teams whose potential is snuffed out by various forms of cancer, from the treatable (Nuggets) to the terminal (Knicks). And everything in between. You’re not just an NBA coach, Mike Curry, you’re also an oncologist.

Curry got hit with a double whammy. He was just four games into his first season, fresh from training camp, and now he has to conduct a bunch of mini-camps while the season is going on, with a touchy, high-profile superstar in tow, to boot.

But can you imagine if this trade had occurred in February?

The normally cool Prince bristled at Curry’s surprise negative assessment; that can’t become a trend

Don’t be sucked in and try to draw much of a comparison to the Rasheed Wallace trade of 2004. First, the coach was anything but a rookie (Larry Brown), and Wallace filled a chasm on the Pistons roster, rather than trading one like player for another. And Wallace wasn’t a point guard handling the ball 80-90% of the time up the floor.

Trading for Iverson at the deadline would have been the highest of high risk moves for a GM. It would have eclipsed even the Adrian Dantley-for-Mark Aguirre trade that Jack McCloskey pulled off in February 1989. There simply wouldn’t have been enough time to slay all the dragons and get all the ducks into a row, to mix metaphors (and species).

So Dumars gave Curry Iverson, and 90% of the season, basically, to work with him and find that delicate balance between pushing hard and pulling back.

Calling out your players to the press before talking to them, though — as what happened yesterday with the normally laid back Prince — isn’t a recommended path toward harmony and success. But Curry will learn. He has no choice, really.

"Tough Guy" Curry Just What The Pistons Need

So, we’re about to find out if the young, African-American man has what it takes to be in charge, despite a rather thin resume and some naysayers. We’ll see if he can jump into a potentially explosive situation and provide calm and leadership. He certainly isn’t short on confidence, nor is he lacking a plan on how to be successful. Expectations, and the stakes, are high.

Shame on you if you thought I was talking about Barack Obama. This is a sports blog, after all. Politics isn’t just a four-letter word here — it’s twice as bad: it’s an eight-letter one.

The man in question is new Pistons coach Michael Curry. And we’ve gotten plenty used to placing the word “new” before “Pistons coach” around these parts. Certainly since Joe Dumars was handed the keys to the executive washroom some eight years ago.

George Irvine was new once, even though he really wasn’t. Rick Carlisle was new, for the most part. Larry Brown was old-as-the-hills/new, but new nonetheless. Flip Saunders was oldish/new, but also bottom-line new. Michael Curry is just plain new. And the youngest of the lot upon assuming the reins.

Curry, just a baby at age 40, for gosh sakes, makes his debut as Pistons coach tonight. No more summer league foolishness or exhibition season boredom. Tonight’s the real deal. Curry is coach #5 in the Dumars Era, which is just eight years old. Joe D. has an itchy ziggy finger, as we all know.

It’s tempting to say that Dumars is going retro here, returning the Pistons to their slapstick days of the 1960s and ’70s when the Pistons coach’s office could be entered through a revolving door. There are still rumors that we may have missed a couple of them, due to ill-timed blinking.

But there really is no comparison to Dumars’s Pistons and those of yore. Back then, coaches were fodder because the talent wasn’t there. Today, Pistons coaches are fodder because Dumars’s expectations are as high as they’ve ever been with this franchise.

This summer, that itchy ziggy finger was supposed to extend to the players themselves.

In a press conference that should be nominated for the Most Annoyed Speaker category, Dumars ranted, just days after the Pistons were eliminated in the Final Four (again) by the Boston Celtics, that no player was safe.

“You lose sacred cow status when you keep losing like this,” Dumars said, still bristling about the Celtics loss.

The doors were open at PistonsLand, Dumars said. I’m open for business, he told the rest of the NBA at that presser. Former sacred cows to be had, if the price was right.

But the market for Dumars’s wares proved shockingly dry. So instead, Dumars canned the coach (again) and signed one free agent of note: former no. 1 overall pick Kwame Brown.

The NBA is as cyclical a league as you’ll ever find when it comes to coaching. All the coaches in the NBA can pretty much be divided into two categories: nice guy and tough guy. That’s it. Which one you prefer is determined by what you just had.

The confident Curry has one thing on his mind: a return trip to the Finals


The Pistons are coming off having had a nice guy (read: not enough player accountability) in Saunders, so now they turn to “no-nonsense” Curry (read: tough guy), who ran a spirited, if not grueling, training camp. Before Saunders the Pistons had tough guy Brown, which they needed to get to the Finals because the man before him, nice guy Carlisle (the term “nice guy” here in reference to Carlisle is clearly relative), couldn’t get past the Final Four. The man before Carlisle, the curmudgeonly Irvine, never really wanted the job but was promoted anyway, and by all accounts certainly wasn’t a nice guy.

The Pistons feel they need a tough guy, and Curry, they think, fits the bill, despite his lack of coaching experience. But, as with others who get a gig like this with questionable credentials, it’s pointed out that Curry was “like a coach on the floor” as a player. It’s what they say about bench warmers who were never stars. Kind of like praising the ugly girl at school for having a great personality.

But I’m actually a Curry guy, despite my smarminess. It’s a player’s league, this NBA, and a quick look around it reflects that. Nowhere else do young (i.e. under 45 years old) men rise to the level of head coach as fast as they do in the NBA. They’re almost always former NBA players. And often they’re practically ripped from their warmups, or their TV analyst headsets, and thrust into the coach’s chair. Curry did a one-season internship as one of Saunders’s assistants, and was himself a player just a couple seasons ago. But, strangely, that may be all it takes for him to be successful. New coaches have taken over teams with far less talent, you know.

It’s all there, really, for Michael Curry to win. He’s got the players, clearly — both old and young. He has the support of his boss, no matter how fleeting that’s proven to be in the past. He has the advantage of a sort of back-door hunger, the result of four straight seasons sans a championship, and three without an appearance in the Final Two. And he’s a recent player who appears to have the respect of his charges. Not to mention, he’s that all-important tough guy.

Now, all Curry has to do is go out there, win the expected 50-55 games, navigate through the Eastern Conference’s minefield during the playoffs, and reach the Finals. All in his first season.

It says here that he has the chops to do it. Bald-headed guys named Michael have done OK in the NBA in the past.

Curry Was No Star Player, So He’s Destined To Be A Great Coach

The new coach of the Detroit Pistons couldn’t score 20 points as a player unless you gave him a week to do it.

I like him already.

Those who can’t do, teach – and that’s especially true in professional sports, where it seems that a prerequisite to being a great coach/manager is to NOT have been a great player.

Or, to reverse fields to prove the theorem, some of the greatest players in sports who’ve tried their hands at leading teams on the sidelines or in the dugout have been some of the most wretched generals you’ll ever see.

Take Teddy Williams, Hall of Fame hitter – some say the best ever to swing a bat. Eccentric Washington Senators owner Bob Short hired Teddy Ballgame to manage his ball club for the 1969 season. Williams had never coached before, let alone managed. But the moribund Senators needed something, anything, to breathe life into their franchise. Somehow, Short managed to lure – no pun intended – Williams from his dream life as a retired ballplayer/turned fisherman and into the Senators’ dugout.

The experiment looked like a stroke of genius, when Williams was named Manager of the Year and the Senators turned things around and had a winning season. But the success didn’t last, and before long, Williams’s rough-hewn personality was rubbing just about everyone the wrong way, especially the pitchers, who he detested and had no clue how to handle. His teams regressed yearly, until he went back to fishing after the 1972 season.

Williams (right) fizzled after a fast start as manager

The list goes on. Isiah Thomas. Bart Starr. Magic Johnson. Maury Wills. Oh, for an entire Sunday I could throw examples at you – superstar players who just couldn’t transfer their glory days as a player into any sort of success as a coach. Have there been exceptions? Yes. But they are best described with that depressing combination of the words “few” and “far between.”

Michael Curry was hired by the Pistons last week, just days after Flip Saunders was given the ziggy by GM Joe Dumars. He’s a recently-retired player, and was never a star – not even close. His claim to fame was playing tough defense and surviving ten-day contracts and being a cerebral player who was the president of the NBA Players Association.

Perfect coaching material.

Let’s take a look around.

Phil Jackson, with almost enough championship rings as a coach to fill the fingers on both his hands, is the Grand Master of cerebral. He’s a former hippie, playing for the Knicks in the late-1960s and early-1970s as a rarely-used backup forward and center, more likely to read up on Kant and Freud than the Celtics or the Lakers. Yet he parlayed a nondescript playing career into a Hall of Fame shoo-in as a coach.

Scotty Bowman, who I don’t even know where he came from. I DO know that he wasn’t an NHL player; not even close. He might have come out of the womb coaching, for all I know. You can make a case – and I have – that he’s the greatest coach of any sport, in any era, for any amount of money.

Sparky Anderson, who spent one mediocre season as the second baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies before turning to teaching because he couldn’t do. He piddled around in the minor leagues before becoming a 36-year-old manager for the Cincinnati Reds, though Sparky never looked a day younger than 45 in his life. His likeness is etched onto a plaque in Cooperstown, in the Baseball Hall of Fame. And not for his playing.

Vince Lombardi, who was a decent enough college lineman for Fordham University, but who never played a down in the NFL. The best he could do was some semi-pro football in the late-1930s. Today, NFL teams have one goal in mind and one goal only: to win the Super Bowl trophy that bears his name.

Red Auerbach, who chomped on cigars almost as vigorously as he chomped on winning in coaching the Boston Celtics through their dynasty years of the 1950s and 1960s. Red was no hoops star as a player, yet he made so many of them Hall of Famers as a coach.

There’s more. Bill Parcells and Bill Walsh and Chuck Noll in football. Glen Sather in hockey. Tony LaRussa and Connie Mack in baseball. None made any significant impact on their respective sports while part of the rank-and-file, but all are held as standard bearers when judging the merits of others with chalkboards and whistles.

Curry’s administrative side is far more impressive than his playing history

I remember also Charlie Lau.

Lau was the preeminent batting coach of his day – and we’re talking the 1970s and ‘80s – having taught the science of hitting to the likes of George Brett, Hal McRae, and others with the Kansas City Royals, when KC was known for good baseball. Hitters swore by Lau’s techniques, supported by new-fangled methods such as videotape and computer programs. He was a hitting “guru,” that overused word.

But Charlie Lau couldn’t hit a lick as a player. His exploits as a big league hitter wouldn’t have filled up a 3 x 5 card. Those who can’t do…

The Pistons haven’t tried this route in a long time – hiring the recently-retired player who’s devoid of any significant coaching experience, as they’re doing with Michael Curry. The high-profile, coaching veteran route hasn’t worked the last three seasons – an eternity in pro sports.

In fact, the last time the Pistons did this, giving the coaching job to one of their former players who wasn’t far removed from donning a tank top and shorts himself, the year was 1972.

After his first full season on the job, Ray Scott won the NBA Coach of the Year Award. Ray could play, though. He was one of those exceptions.

Coach Dave Bing? The Pistons Chose Not To, Back In ’79

The Pistons didn’t want David Bing. The fans didn’t, either — even the ones who had heard of him. To them, anyone was sloppy seconds if the team couldn’t get Snazzy Cazzie Russell.

The Pistons lost a coin toss in 1966, a toss that would have given them the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft — a pick they would have used on Russell, the talented gem from the University of Michigan. But the coin didn’t come up right, so the New York Knicks got Russell, and the Pistons were left with Bing, the smooth guard from Syracuse. The Pistons felt slugged in the gut. They dreamed of box office success, if nothing else, with Russell playing for them. One night at Cobo Arena, Russell still in college, the few thousand fans at that evening’s Pistons game rose to their feet and went crazy as they saw the Michigan senior walking to a seat, a guest of the Pistons for the night. EVERYONE drooled at the thought of Cazzie Russell as a Piston.

The Pistons got Bing, and he eventually went from sloppy seconds to being beloved in Detroit. He, along with Bob Lanier, turned the team into contenders and playoff visitors.

In 1979, Bing could have changed the fortune of the Pistons yet again, but unlike when he was drafted, this time he wasn’t given the opportunity.

The Pistons had fired Dick Vitale and were looking for another coach. The job was given, by default, to assistant Richie Adubato in one of those interim deals.

Dave Bing had an idea.

What if he, Bing, stepped into the coach’s chair? What if he was the one to return the Pistons back to respectability after the clowning achievements of Vitale? Bing was 34, not quite two years removed as a player himself. He had the hunger. He wasn’t yet a steel magnate and civic leader. Basketball was still his first love and interest.

Bing as the unwanted senior from Syracuse, circa 1966

So Bing wasn’t shy about letting the TV people and sports columnists around town know that he was interested in becoming the Pistons’ next coach. It was a tactic that had worked so well for Vitale in the spring of 1978, when he launched a marketing campaign at the behest of some of the journalists in town.

Maybe owner Bill Davidson was once bitten and twice shy about such campaigns. Perhaps he was still sore at Bing for a contract holdout in 1974 that led to his eventual trade to Washington in 1975. Whatever the reason, despite the swelling of support for Bing as Pistons coach, Davidson would have none of it. He never gave Bing even a sniff. No interview. No returning of phone calls. Nothing.

Adubato finished out the 16-66 year and was replaced by Scotty Robertson.

The Pistons today, if you believe the rumors, are set to hire Michael Curry as their next head coach. Perhaps an announcement will come no later than Wednesday. Curry, like Bing in 1979, is not far removed as a player. The Pistons have tried this before, when they hired Ray Scott not long after Ray retired, back in 1972. And Ray was a pretty good coach here. They didn’t try it with Bing, though — and haven’t gone to the “recently retired as a player” well since Scott, in fact. Lately, the Pistons have latched onto high-profile coaching veterans whose playing days were in college, and when the shorts were tight and the socks droopy. Doug Collins and Rick Carlisle were former NBA players, but not for quite some time when the Pistons hired them as coaches.

It’s futile yet intriguing to wonder how the Pistons’ fortunes would have gone had Bing been hired as coach in 1979. Robertson was fired after three seasons, replaced by Chuck Daly. That ended up working out pretty well, if you recall. But would Bing have been fired after three seasons? Would he have accelerated the rebuilding process faster than Robertson, thus earning more time? Would there even have BEEN a Chuck Daly Era in Detroit?

We’ll never know, of course. Then again, maybe Bing wouldn’t have become the business and socio-economic leader that he turned out to be, either. So maybe it was for the best, after all.