Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores said his new coach, Monty Williams, has a lot to prove.
Gores has more.
Williams, after all, has coached in the NBA Finals, and in the playoffs multiple times with both teams he has coached.
Gores, meanwhile, bought the Pistons 12 years ago. His team has been to the playoffs once and got swept in the first round.
This is the owner’s latest attempt to change that dismal record, helping lure Williams with a six-year, $78.5 million contract. To Williams’ credit, he said his decision to take the job was absolutely about the money.
“People always say it wasn’t about the money,” said Williams. “I laugh at that — that’s disrespectful.”
Of course, the money made a difference. And Gores deserves kudos for his willingness to spend it to get Williams.
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As Williams told Gores during Tuesday’s news conference at the team’s practice facility:
“Mr. Gores, your generosity … it’s changed my life.”
But Williams isn’t here, either, without his connection to general manager, Troy Weaver – the two worked together in Oklahoma City and their relationship even predates that.
Nor is he here without the shape of the Pistons’ roster. It’s promising, as long as everyone is relatively healthy. Williams has a reputation for turbo-boosting young teams. He’s not a miracle worker, though. No NBA coach is.
He isn’t taking this job if Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren aren’t on the roster. Nor if there aren’t a couple of solid veterans in Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks.
Williams noted that when his Phoenix Suns came to town during the 2022 season Cunningham spotted him in the halls after the game, hustled over and introduced himself, extending his hand and looking him straight in the eye. Williams thought of that exchange recently and told Weaver that “you’ve got a good one.”
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Now he gets to coach him, and developing Cunningham is his biggest charge. As tantalizing as Ivey’s last couple of months were his rookie season, Cunningham is the key to the rebuild, and the player with the highest ceiling.
Beyond individual development, Williams’ top priority will be to instill a competitive spirit that doesn’t take plays off, let alone games. To him, that means discipline, a word highlighted on a series of tv monitors surrounding the practice gym floor.
Saying a team needs to learn to compete is something every coach says. But if you watched Williams’ teams — both in New Orleans and in Phoenix — the compete level was noticeable almost without exception.
So was the low turnover rate, the defensive connectedness, and the toughness his teams showed night in and night out. It’s a simple recipe in theory, but a hard one to instill, mostly because professional athletes think they know what it means to compete.
This is different from effort. Sometimes teams are distracted or exhausted and that can look like they aren’t trying, even if they think they are. Competing is understanding the nights when a part of your game isn’t there and finding a way to compensate.
“The ability to compete every possession … is hard to do on every possession,” said Williams.
He’s right, but it’s not just hard, it’s excruciatingly hard, especially for a young team. Williams thinks he has the team to take and meet the challenge. He asked around the league, he said, and “I feel like I have a great group of guys that just want to get better.”
Weaver is convinced he’s got not just a receptive audience in the locker room for Williams’ style and sermons, but a bunch of gym rats that are ready to start winning. This was part of the pitch to Williams, too.
In fact, he’s already seen it.
“Jaden Ivey may as well have his mail sent here,” Williams told reporters. “We have to kick guys out of the gym.”
Gores — and Weaver — figured the match of the “cleaned-up” roster — Gores phrase — and Williams’ track record with developing young teams was worth the richest coaching contract in NBA history. The Pistons’ owner has gone big before after coaches, most notably when he gave the whole kingdom to Stan Van Gundy.
He is certain the team is finally in the right spot to truly grow in a way it hasn’t been since he bought it in 2011. This is why he went so hard after Williams.
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“It’s critical,” Gores said. “It’s a really important time.”
Consider how long it takes to get here, to a place where the player contracts are solid, and the players are mostly promising. Yes, if Cunningham and Ivey and Duren aren’t what Weaver — and now Williams — hope they can be, Gores will be tearing it all down again a few years from now and 12 years of mostly irrelevant basketball will turn into 20.
It happens. Look around the league.
This, more than anything, is why Gores wanted Weaver and the franchise to take their best shot with Williams. He doesn’t guarantee a title run, obviously, but he’s proven that he is the kind of coach that can fit with the kind of group the Pistons have.
Said Williams:
“You see the talent, you see the size. When I talk to them, they all look me in the eye, which is impressive. I text them and they get right back to me, which is rare in the NBA.”
Rare or not, Williams has the chance to prove again what he can do, and Gores has the chance to prove that he is finally getting it right — in the right moment.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.