5:18pm: The hiring is now official, the team announced via press release.
10:20am: Pistons president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy plans to hire Quentin Richardson for a role that would include player development and mentorship duties, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Presumably, the job would mark the end of Richardson’s 13-year NBA playing career.
The former McDonald’s All-American emerged as a valuable swingman for the Clippers in the early 2000s, setting a career high with 17.2 points per game in 2003/04. He led the NBA in three-pointers made the next season as a member of the Suns. He averaged 10.3 points and 35.5% three-point shooting during his time in the league that also included stops with the Knicks, Heat and Magic. He played in just one regular season game and five playoff contests during 2012/13, his final season in the NBA, when the Knicks signed him shortly before the postseason. They shipped him to Toronto as part of the Andrea Bargnani deal the next summer, and the Raptors released him before training camp this past fall.
That swap was the sixth trade in which Richardson had been involved during his career, the most notable of which was the one that briefly sent him back to the Clippers in 2009 and allowed the Grizzlies to acquire Zach Randolph. He made more than $63MM as an NBA player, according to Basketball-Reference.
The Central division just keeps getting tougher. Answer the QRich move, Cleveland!