10:41am: The Pistons have officially confirmed that Williams won’t return as the team’s head coach in 2024/25, announcing the decision in a press release (Twitter link).
“Decisions like these are difficult to make, and I want to thank Monty for his hard work and dedication,” Gores said in a statement. “Coaching has many dynamic challenges that emerge during a season and Monty always handled those with grace. However, after reviewing our performance carefully and assessing our current position as an organization, we will chart a new course moving forward.
“I have great respect for Monty as a coach and as a person and I am certain he will be successful in his future endeavors. I sincerely wish him and his family the very best.”
8:33am: The Pistons are making a head coaching change, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, who reports (via Twitter) that the team has decided to dismiss Monty Williams just one season into his six-year, $78.5MM contract with the franchise.
Williams, who coached the Suns for four seasons from 2019-23, was let go by Phoenix last spring and appeared to be leaning toward taking a year off. After resisting Detroit’s initial overtures, Williams agreed to meet with Pistons owner Tom Gores and then-GM Troy Weaver and ultimately accepted a massive contract that was largest for a coach in NBA history at the time.
However, Williams’ first year in Detroit was a disaster from start to finish. The Pistons opened the season with 36 losses in their first 39 games, including 28 in a row, which set a new single-season record. The team – which entered the fall with aspirations of taking a step forward and vying for a spot in the postseason – had an overall record of 14-68, making it the worst season by winning percentage in the organization’s 76-year history.
The Pistons parted ways with Weaver earlier this offseason, replacing him with new head of basketball operations Trajan Langdon. Multiple reports since Langdon’s hiring indicated that the new president would be given free rein to make a head coaching change, despite the $65MM+ in guaranteed money left on Williams’ deal.
According to both Vince Goodwill of Yahoo Sports and James L. Edwards of The Athletic (Twitter links), Gores made the final call on Williams within the past 24 hours, with Langdon informing the veteran coach of the decision on Wednesday. Those reports don’t explicitly state whether or not Langdon recommended a change to Gores, but either way, the new top front office executive in Detroit now has the opportunity to bring in his own head coach for 2024/25 and beyond.
The Pistons will join the Lakers and Cavaliers as teams seeking new head coaches. While those other two clubs have been conducting searches for several weeks, Detroit is getting a late start, so we’ll see what sort of timeline the team has in mind for making a hire — the NBA draft is just one week away, while the Las Vegas Summer League schedule will get underway on July 12.
Some of the candidates under consideration for the jobs in Los Angeles and Cleveland figure to be on the Pistons’ radar. One notable name to watch, according to Goodwill (Twitter link), is Pelicans associate head coach James Borrego, who is viewed as a legitimate contender for both the Lakers and Cavs as well. Detroit will strongly consider Borrego if he’s available, says Goodwill. The Pistons have already poached one assistant from Langdon’s former team in New Orleans this offseason, reaching a deal to hire Fred Vinson.
It’s unclear whether Williams will become a contender for either of the NBA’s other head coaching vacancies or if he’ll take that year off that he didn’t get in 2023/24. Certainly, with $65MM+ in pay checks still coming his way, he’ll be feeling no financial pressure to get back to work anytime soon.
As a result of the Pistons’ dismal showing this past season, Williams now has a sub-.500 career record as a head coach, having posted a 381-404 (.485) mark across 10 years in New Orleans, Phoenix, and Detroit. He won five playoff series with the Suns and made the NBA Finals in 2021.
Lmao, I expected this news to happen eventually.
But Monty is gonna get paid nicely the next few years haha
It seemed doomed from the start. He clearly didn’t want the job or wanted to spend time with his family, and they just kept throwing money at him until it was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Plus, that roster is a mess – some nice pieces, but they need to make some big trades if they want to start next year with pieces that fit together better.
Oh yeah, 100% agreed
I think it was reported that part of why he wanted to take the year off was his wife had been diagnosed with cancer recently. Not sure if thats done now or what.
His bank account stays fat.
The word is Phat ……
The main issue is his passion.
He is not passionate about this talented young team. According to the rumor, he likes the money more than the team.
Sorry JJ Reddick….next lakers coach
Monty Williams To The Lakers
Hahaha
LOL !!!!
That was seen coming due to the change in management
Now Gores will have to pay Monty for a long time
Who is next to sit on the bench of that circus? Chris Quinn???, Kenny Atkinson??? Or will Gores do it again but this time stealing JJ Redick from the Lakers? lol
Tom Gores is unserious.
Monty was unserious. He was there 4 the dollars. Shameful.
So, you wouldn’t take a job for money?
That’s a dumb question to ask.
So you wouldn’t take a job for money ? I think I speak for most everyone when I say this is the most brain dead comment ever Van Dumbo .
Report says he was fired, not that he quit.
Billionaire cokehead CEO/owners are ruining USA in every industry.
Bro got the ultimate retirement package
The silver lining in all this is that IF (big if) the pistons ever become contenders, Tom Gores will have no problem buring millions in luxury tax…
Monty is a major disappointment. He simply did not have any proffeasional pride. It is the right move by the Pistons. Hopefully after a year off, he will catch on with another team and Pistoms can salvage some money.
If Monty Williams is smart, he will sit out until this contract ends so that Detroit has to pay him the entirety of that contract
By that time, his head coaching career would be over. He didnt even try to fight for his job, and literally wanted to get fired.
I would be content with my coaching career ending while getting paid another $65 mil over the next 5 years sitting at home.
Coaching career could be over?? Wow!
Yeah… hard to retire on $70 mil. Who in their right mind would consider something so ludicrous.
So you know for a fact he “literally wanted to get fired.”
What team in their right mind would want Monty? He’s never won anything and never will. He just doesn’t have it.
Proffesional pride? Dude look at the roster it has like 7 centers and no shooting at all. I mean that was a trash trash roster they gave him that won about the number of games it should have being that much of a dumpster fire
Like the poster said earlier. This might change the whole trajectory of the Lakers coaching position!
Come’on down Big Monty.
Lebron should just be named because anyone coaching Lebron must let Lebron run the team.
I can’t imagine any scenario where I would take another job if I’m in his shoes. Take the 78 million for one year of work and enjoy life without having to be scapegoated for the incompetence of others.
Scapegoated? He’s a terrible coach. Detroit was 14-68 last season.
Did he put that roster together? What coach do you think would have had that team in the playoffs? They basically had to beg him to come coach this lousy team and then blame him for them being awful. So yeah scapegoated would be the appropriate term. I was also referring to Phoenix as well. We saw them do it once again with Vogel too.
That roster was soooooooo bad with just zero spacing in most lineups
Its to the point where its screwing up Cades development to put him out there and get him reps without proper personel on the court.
I think most folks paying attention realize there’s been plenty of blame to go around. Monty was a big part of the problem, but you could argue Weaver was the biggest culprit. And Gore increasingly meddling in things was problematic.
Also, I’m not sure this would qualify as scapegoating since a) there’s a new front office in place, and b) Gore has basically admitted they collectively screwed up badly and needed large-scale changes. No one of consequence pointed the finger at Monty and Monty alone.
With Vogel, they threw him to the wolves while getting hit pieces published by Shams immediately after his firing. Meanwhile, Jones gets to keep his job and Ishbia keeps running his mouth like a drunk frat boy pretending to be an NBA owner.
Wouldn’t say it’s completely his fault. The team isn’t constructed properly. While the draft picks they’ve made have for the most part been sound, it doesn’t mean that they are going to gel together, no matter who the coach is. With that said, they have some decisions to be made. First off – who is going to truly be the main ball handler? Is it going to be Cunningham or Ivey? Both need ball control in order to be effective. May need to move Ivey. Where does Thompson fit in? Duren, Stewert and Wiseman are all needed at the post? They can’t co-exist on the court together.
There’s some deals to be made. I can’t blame Monty for the poor execution, he’s working with what he had been given. When in Phoenix, and a lineup properly staffed, he showed how he can be successful. I’m sure he’ll wind up on someone’s bench at some point down the road.
Wiseman has a $15.8M Team Option contract for next season.
That’s a hefty amount for a backup Center and will likely be Declined by Detroit.
Wiseman might have to take a 2-way
What record would Phil Jackson have gotten out of that talentless roster?
Dwayne Casey got 3 more wins out of a worse roster. Remember that Cade only played 14 games last season
Monty Williams and Frank Vogel have the jobs of a lifetime
Maybe Monty Williams is a genius. He takes $78 M from a billionaire, coaches the Pistons to a horrid season, and now gets a very early, very long, very well paid vacation
Not really. He looked bad professionally, like he didnt care. He meeds to take a yr off and bounce back.
Who wouldn’t wear a clown suit three times a week for 6 months for $78 million?
Some do it for free.
NBA dress code changes meant he could have worn almost anything, not just a clown suit!
A year? More like five years, maybe ten
Good coach, Bad team.
Mediocre coach, bad team
Wrong coach for wrong team. Monty is not a player development coach. they need a coach that is patient and knows he will not win for a few years to build a team. A young coach that wants to build a team and let the young players play.
This has to be one of the dumbest decisions of all time. The Pistons aren’t one coach away from being a contender. Keep Monty another season or two so that you don’t owe him $65 million like a bunch of clowns.
He didnt fight for his job. Good riddance.
How do you know he didn’t fight for his job? Because he didn’t make a bunch of noise in public?
He didn’t even fight as the coach last season. A record of 14-68.
With that team, would you?
What record would someone like, say, coach Pop get from that talentless roster?
I can guarantee you he wasn’t fired because the new front office was worried about wins and losses next season. He was not good for the development of the young players. It’s not hard to understand.
He ran a dysfunctional offense, had poor rotations, alienated a key long-term piece (not the first time that’s happened), and lost the locker room. Why would you trust this person to lead the team moving forward? The thinking that you can have any random person coach a rebuilding team and it shouldn’t matter because wins won’t matter is silly.
The clown move was simply giving him that fat contract in the first place, especially when he may have been checked out already with the issues back home, but you can’t turn back time. Move on and be less stupid in the future.
This is crazy, you are paying this much for someone to do literally nothing. They should have kept him one more year to see if he could fix this mess and if he couldnt then fire him. At least the amount you would pay for him to do nothing would be less but I guess I am not a gm for a reason
It’s actually a bold brave move. Why waste a sngle day if the coach doesnt want to be there?? They know that he will catch on with another team after 1-2 yrs off.
You keep saying that “he doesn’t want to be there”. You don’t know that. Sure he did a bad job last season, but that could just mean he’s bad. The conspiratorial bulls**t is idiotic.
It makes me think its corruption between the Pistons owner and Williams to hide or stash money. Williams probably gets $10M and the Pistons owner gets to store the rest in someone else’s name?
Why would Gores concoct this silly scheme to steal money from himself? He owns the team by himself so there is nobody else to steal from. This is simply a rich, impulsive guy finally taking his lumps for a stupid decision he forced.
You don’t know what money laundering is?
Imagine getting paid almost $80M to work for less than one calendar year? Man is living the dream.
Every coach and player in the NBA is living the dream
It reeks of corruption tbh
This doesn’t seem a smart move for GM and the team. The coach needed one more year to figure out how he can improve the team. If it doesn’t work everyone knows who to blame. If it works it’s win-win. Now, if the new coach doesn’t make the team better it’s on GM as well as new coach. Keeping Monty would be a smarter move for the new GM.
Figure out what? So the team can go from 14-68 to 18-64? Monty is a lost cause. What has he ever won?
What talent did he have? Pistons are horrific.
Enough talent to not be as historically bad as they were last season, that’s for sure.
Continuing to start Killian Hayes during the epic losing streak showed his unwillingness to acknowledge mistakes and correct them. Presumably the new GM talked with him multiple times and concluded he wasn’t willing to make the changes needed to develop the young players and improve the team. Keeping him just prolongs the problem.
Billups?…
Monty got 5.6 million per win.
Hell, they could have paid me a million to NOT coach the Detroit Pistons.
Monty to Cleveland?
Good move by the Pistons as Monty was a fish out of water coaching this team. His decisions were questionable especially starting Killian Hayes for as long as he did and having his 2nd unit being outmatched almost every night. In addition, he was never was able to get a cohesive rotation and seemed to be going through the motions most nights. Anyone could have been a better coach let alone one making $78 MILLION DOLLARS!!! At least Gores is willing to eat his mistake wh/ says something about him as owner
Tank for Sarr and he didn’t do a good enough job apparently
Coaching isn’t this team’s real issue.
Casey doubles Monty’s win total with this team. Still only 28 wins, but Monty made a young, struggling team worse, not better.
Ridiculous move.
Can I please be the next coach
Wait, he gets the full $78 million? This reeks of corruption.
Guess it’s an unpopular opinion, but props to the new POBO—and to a lesser extent Gore—for having the guts to make this move now rather than wait a year to make this inevitable decision . 99% of the time, you would see Monty being kept for another year due to either the sunk cost fallacy, some misguided hope that he’ll change/grow in meaningful ways, or just for the sake of giving someone additional time to be evaluated despite an already-big-enough sample size of data to work with. Normally I might preach patience, but when the fit is bad, it’s bad. And it’s doubly true with a veteran coach.
I have no doubt the Pistons would have been better next year even under Monty, but that’s beside the point. The problem was all the flaws he had in Phoenix reared their ugly heads again in Detroit, except he didn’t have an overflow of talent to paper them over. Extreme stubbornness, a flawed decision-making process, playing favorites to the detriment of both team and player, an incoherent and uncreative offense…none of this was new. But when you have an unbalanced, inexperienced, and less talented roster you can’t hide anymore.
Obviously, the decision to hire Monty was a bad one, but many of us knew it was a bad deal at the time of signing. Better to bite the bullet now and trust in the new front office to make better decisions moving forward. Wasn’t that the whole point of hiring them in the first place? Let them make the call, which they clearly did in this case.
Can someone explain to me the pros of waiting this long to fire him? Wasted months talking to potential new coaches for what?
I imagine it’s because the new front office wanted some time to do a full evaluation of the organization and only felt confident in making this move now.
I mean you’ve got an org with leadership in flux and they’re leaving a lot of money on the table. Maybe it wasn’t an instant decision? Does that explain it for you or do you need it broken down even more?
Ouch, that’s a pretty big payday to give out to a guy who only made it through one season.
I guess Pistons is as Pistons does!
Long overdue . I want to know. Who is directly responsible for signing him. Don’t think it was owner. He signed off on it, yes. But whoever is responsible for signing him. Also needs to walk …… a yr too late.
Monty should be banned from NBA. I’d never hire this guy for anything …….
It was most certainly the owner. Weaver, the former GM wanted someone else but Gores wanted Williams and kept increasing the contract size to get him. There is zero chance Weaver would have been approved to pay out a record contract for a coach Gores didn’t want as much or more. Weaver was already on thin ice entering this season. He certainly didn’t have a blank check.
Seems bad just overpaying. This is what happens with owners who meddle. In NBA business. Dolan was one of worst.
The pistons have to fire Arm Tellum and his stupid kid to give themself a true shot at a real team
Make no mistake, Gore’s is one of these inept team owners, but this Monty firing seems s bit sticky.
Monty was there to be fired a few months ago, yet he wasn’t. Here comes Langdon and a few weeks later Monty gets fired.
Maybe this is Gores doing his new GM a solid, taking whatever heat for Monty’s exit. Maybe.
Resource management …. Monty should have been given the chance for another season, maybe giving him a more balanced line-up this time….. say, trade for of those inept bigs with more shooting.
Time to make coaches salaries part of the salary cap.