Pistons Notes: Prince, Jackson, Van Gundy

Tayshaun Prince said he was angry when he realized the Celtics had traded him Thursday, as Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press details. Prince didn’t call him out by name, but Ellis believe Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge is the object of Prince’s rage. 

“I thought no trade was going to happen at all,” Prince said. I was going to be in Boston and see what happened, whether the buyout was going to happen or not. The buyout wasn’t 100%. So I thought there was no trade at all. We get ready to go on the bus to practice and they said, ‘Come here, you’ve been traded.'”

Prince was set to talk buyout with the Celtics before the trade, but Pistons coach/president Stan Van Gundy doesn’t believe Prince will push for a buyout with his new team, and Van Gundy isn’t inclined to give him one. Here’s more from the Motor City:

• Prince added that he felt disrespected when the Pistons traded him to the Grizzlies two years ago, but “that’s a story for back then,” Prince said, according to Ellis.
• Owner Tom Gores is impressed with the “nimble” handling of the trade deadline that Van Gundy and GM Jeff Bower displayed, as Ellis notes in a separate piece. “Stan believes he can do very special things in this league,” Gores said of new acquisition Reggie Jackson. “I believe there’s something Stan saw in Reggie and thinks he can be a real superstar in the league,” Gores said.
• Van Gundy has said he believes the Pistons job will be his last coaching gig, and he’s not sure if he’d want to work as an executive without coaching, as MLive’s David Mayo notes. The 55-year-old made it sound as if he’d rather coach than manage if it came to that. “I don’t know about that,” he said of an executive-only role. “I didn’t really think about that [after the deadline]. I know I was glad when it passed and you can sort of get back to just having your mind on coaching now, until the season’s over, and then you go back to the draft and free agency. But being able to just focus on what goes on on the court, it’s nice, because that last week, it was tougher on Jeff than it was on me, but it was tiring.”