After a solid home win against Cleveland earlier this week, the Pistons appeared to be on their way toward righting the ship, but Detroit suffered another bad home loss on Wednesday night, falling 119-94 to Milwaukee. It was the club’s sixth loss in seven games, prompting head coach Stan Van Gundy to point out that the mounting losses are jeopardizing the Pistons’ playoff chances (link via Rod Beard of The Detroit News).
“[We’re] certainly not out of it by any means,” Van Gundy said of his team, which is currently tied for 11th in the East with a 15-19 record. “But every loss puts you in more jeopardy, especially when you’re losing at home like we are. There’s no question that you have to understand that. You can’t run from the fact that all those losses are putting you in jeopardy.”
Van Gundy has already made some changes to the Pistons’ lineup and rotation in an effort to pull the team out of its funk, and with the losses piling up, he says that “everything is on the table” as a potential solution (Twitter link via Beard).
However, with nearly two months to go before February’s trade deadline, it sounds like Van Gundy still isn’t ready to seriously explore making a trade that would shake up the roster. According to Beard (via Twitter), Van Gundy said today that he hasn’t heard about teams calling Detroit with trade proposals. The Pistons’ president of basketball operations would rather work with what he has than blow things up.
“I’m focused on getting this group to play better and to try to figure this out,” Van Gundy said (link via Beard). “My focus is not on changing everything. I’ve seen this group win; I know this group can win. I know this group can be good; I know this group should be better than it is. I’m approaching it as a coaching issue. I’ve got a team that is underachieving where they should be, from a coaching standpoint. That’s how my thought process is right now: How do we get this team playing better, bringing more consistent energy?”
While Van Gundy may still have confidence in his current group, the team’s results over the next month or month and a half will go a long way toward determining whether another deadline deal will be required. The Pistons weren’t necessarily expected to be as active on the trade market at the 2017 deadline after making major moves in each of the past two Februarys.
The Pistons’ next opportunity to get back into the win column will come on Friday night in Atlanta.
Why is this guy even running a team?
Because he’s a good coach^
But that doesn’t answer why he’s running the team (i.e.: president of basketball ops) instead of just coaching it.
In-demand coaches suddenly get Front Office Power in the NBA and NFL too. Basically, let coaches pick their players and they have no one to blame.
You would have to think Drummond is safe but then again he has by far the most value on that team and could get them help on the wing and another big. KCP may be moved before he hits free agency and lands a big deal that will make it hard for Detroit to get any cap flexiblity
Kcp won’t be moved cause he’s the main defender on the team he’s assigned all the star guards and van gundy being defensive minded won’t trade him he will likely be resigned at the end of the year but I can see him trading Tobias Harris or Reggie Jackson
Van Gundy needs to apologize to all the Michigan voters who helped get Trump elected. He stepped a long way out of the coaching box when he bad mouthed Trump.
You’re delusional. In an election with two horrible candidates, Trump won and rightly so because he was the lesser evil of the two. Doesn’t mean hes some god like you think he is, or that he has any business running an entire Nation. This is the land of the free and he exercised his freedom of speech. Get over it.
A loser. Like Clinton.
Trade Reggie Jackson, Marcus Morris and Andre Drummond for Elfrid Payton, Vucevic, Fournier, Aron Gordon
Their no way they would make that trade.
Interesting. I bet when we wake up tomorrow we will find out the Pistons traded for LeBron
Time to revisit that Paul george trade rumor
Trade reggie & Harris for Wall &spare