The Detroit Pistons got a good one in hiring coach Monty Williams.
This might seem inconsistent, since I’m the guy who said Phoenix should fire him after that debacle of a loss to the Denver Nuggets a few weeks ago.
But that wasn’t because Williams was a bad coach, it’s because he was a bad fit for the team he ended up with. Williams is a guy who values the needs of his system over the desires of his players.
It wasn’t going to work for the star-driven Suns, but it’s a perfect mentality to turn the Pistons into a driving force.
We could be looking at the best thing to happen for “Dee-TROIT basket-BALL” since Joe Dumars signed Ben Wallace.
Coach Mont’s results speak for themselves.
The Suns were a black hole when Williams took over.
Guys didn’t box out. They didn’t play fundamental defense — or even bother to get back. And they played so selfishly on offense that weekend hoopers in an open run up at Joe Dumars Fieldhouse or over at St. Cecilia’s might wonder how guys like that ever made the NBA in the first place.
Williams put a stop to all of that.
The Suns rebounded better, got stops in important moments and started sharing the ball like it was a plate of communion wafers on first Sunday.
His offensive system is known as the “Point-5,” as in players have half a second to shoot, drive or pass the ball within half a second of catching it. Under this style of play, the Suns went from one of the worst teams in the league to one of the best.
They made the NBA Finals in 2021. They had the league’s best record the next year. And it looked like they were having fun out there, especially the guys who were around for any of the 10-year eclipses in Phoenix before Williams showed up.
But there’s another reason this is a great hire: Detroit can teach Monty Williams some things that will make him a better coach.
The beginning of the end of the Williams era came in the 2022 playoffs when former Detroit Cooley and Detroit Mercy star Willie Green mapped out the astronomical chart for how to play the Suns.
He beat them up.
Green’s Pelicans gave Williams’s Suns all they could handle by going full Bad Boy. There are guys all over Detroit with gym shoes and shorts in their backseats who love that style.
Detroit is a town where it’s a sin to call fouls in pickup games, and even guards like to bang around in the paint.
New Orleans didn’t have the talent to beat Phoenix that year, but Dallas did.
It led to a horrible collapse in the next round, an embarrassing Game 7 defeat at home that followed Williams and the Suns into this season, when Phoenix went out the same way against Denver.
The thing is, even if his teams didn’t show it, Williams has that edge. You can almost feel it when you talk to him.
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He’s a guy who never should have made the NBA as a player. A heart condition had doctors telling him to walk away from the game in college. He prayed his way through it and ended up playing nine years, a tenure that included a fight where he tried to put Nick Van Exel in a headlock and ended up tossing Kobe Bryant into the stands during a scuffle between the Spurs and Lakers in 1998.
Williams needs to instill in Detroit the culture he established in Phoenix.
And Detroit needs to remind Williams that it’s OK to be a dog in the NBA junkyard.
If this happens, the Pistons will be a team no one will want to play next season — except the Suns.
Devin Booker isn’t worried about going to his home state and reminding everybody of what they missed when the Pistons passed him up in the 2015 NBA Draft.
More from Moore: Why can’t the Suns make Chris Paul a player-coach?
Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.