Detroit — The Pistons’ pursuit of Monty Williams as their new coach began not long after he was fired by the Phoenix Suns, following a second-round exit in the playoffs.
The road to getting Williams, who was introduced Tuesday, wasn’t normal, by any means. The Pistons gave him a very generous contract — six years and $78.5 million guaranteed — but the journey was more than just offering the record salary.
As Pistons team owner Tom Gores and general manager Troy Weaver tried to have initial talks with Williams about coming to the Pistons, Williams’ family was in the midst of getting some difficult news.
Williams, who lost his first wife, Ingrid, in a tragic car accident in 2016, revealed during his introductory press conference that his second wife, Lisa, was diagnosed with breast cancer this year. That news was part of the reason that the Pistons had an extended negotiating process and took a lot longer than most of the coaching hires around the league.
“My wife found out that she had breast cancer during the playoffs, and the reason that I bring it up is to not talk about my family, but to make it more of an emphasis that women need early-detection testing,” Williams said. “We had genetic testing done and then scan after scan after scan and we found it early, and that may have saved my wife’s life, and we can say it publicly.
“As we navigated all of that and talking to Troy and telling him, ‘Man, I couldn’t (talk about the job) right now because I’ve got to take care of my family,’ and then we got great news that we would find out about her situation a lot earlier than we thought we would.”
Much of the speculation following his time in Phoenix was that Williams would take a year away from coaching, and it looks to be that the focus on his family — specifically, his wife’s diagnosis — was the reason. Williams said that his wife has a family history of breast cancer, and some initial testing found that she had the genetic marker for cancer.
“So, that ramped up the testing for us,” Williams said. “Then (the doctors) finally saw something. So, we had to have the surgeries to take all of that out. She had the full (mastectomy), and then you have to do all the pathology stuff along with that to see if you need chemo or radiation.
“Once we got the news that she wouldn’t need any of that, it allowed me to go forward with this. She was already gung-ho about going, but once she saw the intentionality of the contract, she said, ‘Honey, you’ve got to talk to these people. This is different.’”
For the Pistons, the effort to get Williams to come to Detroit wasn’t just about the salary numbers or about hard-sell tactics. Instead, they wanted to make him feel comfortable with the situation and the transition from Phoenix to Detroit, ensuring that his family had everything they needed.
That seemed to be the difference.
“Yeah, I would say one, we never put pressure on him as far as that, like (his family) is the priority. And he had some experiences where he got pressured to decide now or not, and he just wasn’t in a position to do that,” Gores said. “So, that was I think our first time around, and we just didn’t really do that, and so we did put in his family situation first.”
Williams didn’t downplay the impact of the record-setting salary part of the offer: “You’re sitting there talking about that kind of money and you’re like, ‘It’s not about the money — that’s silly.”
In this case, there was more than just the money that played a role in getting him to agree to become the Pistons’ 37th head coach. Williams was courted by other teams with winning records and more-seasoned rosters that could have proven more attractive to a coach looking for a path back to the playoffs.
In the end, the Pistons, who had the worst record in the league last season, prevailed.
“As Monty said, the money was important, but at the end of the day, though, I don’t know that we get his attention just with that,” Gores said. “We really got his attention because of the care, and they were going through a lot and the Phoenix transition, and all that, so I think that got us there and opened the door for us.”
Williams also pointed to the impact of the abundance of concern that Gores and the Pistons showed in trying to put all the details in place for an easier transition in moving to Detroit.
“It was huge. I mean, I think that’s something that my family was concerned with. The team that allowed for me to feel comfortable — not just the coaching part, but the life part. The contract had some things in it that had my kids in mind and her in mind,” Williams said. “…It was just Mr. Gores — that’s who he is.”
Twitter.com/detnewsRodBeard