Kuester’s Offensive Vision, Comfort Level Make for a Fit

Posted Thursday, July 9, 2009

Kuester’s offensive vision, comfort level make for a fit

John Kuester gets the job for a lot of reasons. The most important is the comfort level Joe Dumars established with Kuester during his one season on Larry Brown’s bench with the Pistons. A very good season it was, too – it’s responsible for the most recent of the three NBA championship banners flying proudly above The Palace hardwood.

And we’ll get to that comfort level in a moment.

But first let’s talk about another prominent reason Kuester makes sense: He’s recognized as one of the sharpest offensive minds in the game and, coming on the heels of free-agent agreements with Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, this is a Pistons team that is going to have the ammunition to be a far more dynamic offensive team next season.

Like all sports, basketball ebbs and flows. The folks who make the rules – and this goes for football, baseball and hockey, too – are constantly trying to stay a step ahead of the coaches who keep finding ways for defenses to catch up to offenses. The belief is that fans want to see scoring and for where the NBA is at right now, the rules favor teams capable of scoring – and, in particular, teams heavy in 3-point shooters or players who can create their own scoring chances off the dribble.

Gordon and Villanueva punch up the Pistons’ offense in a big way. Gordon is a remarkable 3-point shooter with a career average above 40 percent, elevating him to a stratum not even the great Reggie Miller could attain. Villanueva hit a very respectable 35 percent last season and takes a healthy number for a big man, about three per game to Gordon’s five.

Both are young – Gordon 26, Villanueva 24 – and 3-point shooting is the one statistical area where young players show consistent improvement as their NBA careers advance. So if those percentages are moving, they’re more likely to go up than down. Especially if put in an offensive system that favors their skills, which is what you would expect from a coach known for offensive innovation and the ability to quickly seize on an opponent’s soft spot.

People who watched a ton of college basketball last year said Austin Daye probably was the best shooter in the game this side of Stephen Curry. Daye might not be ready for full-time rotation duty next season, but as a spot 3-point shooter at 6-foot-11 he would lend another dimension to an offense that’s suddenly bulging with them.

It’s the kind of stuff that makes savvy basketball coaches giddy with excitement as they spend their summers doodling plays on legal pads or whiteboards. And John Kuester is very much a savvy basketball coach. The Cleveland Cavaliers, from head coach Mike Brown to superstar LeBron James, were quick to credit Kuester for invigorating Cleveland’s staid offense over his two seasons there.

I suspect much is going to be made of the fact Kuester’s never been an NBA head coach and people are going to point out that Joe Dumars said, upon firing Michael Curry last week, that now was the time for an “experienced coach.”

That’s what I heard in the many interviews Joe D obliged that day – an experienced coach. Kuester has two decades on NBA benches, never mind the two stints as a college head coach or the time spent as a college assistant before that or the four years he spent as a player learning at the knee of the vaunted Dean Smith at North Carolina.

That’s rich experience. It’s just not NBA head coaching experience. I’ll make no attempt to dismiss the significance attached to moving down those 18 inches to the big chair, but certain things you see in assistants cut the risk inherent in the transition.

And what Joe D saw of Kuester in the 2003-04 championship season gives him the confidence that to the extent any first-time head coach represents a gamble, this one is more heavily calculated than most.

Dumars and Larry Brown got along swimmingly that first season before LB’s self-destructive second year unfolded, but Brown brought along all the advertised quirkiness to the job. Politely put, he’s extraordinarily impulsive. Kuester was the counterbalance – the voice on that staff most likely to point out that not all of the ideological eruptions Brown produced were the stuff of genius.

It’s true that Dumars first reached out to Doug Collins and then to Avery Johnson, but it’s telling that he didn’t blink when both asked for more – either money per year, years in total or power beyond coaching – than he was prepared to give. It should be clear why Joe D went into those talks with finite, if not rigid, negotiating parameters. It’s because he had an option he deemed perfectly acceptable before he placed that first phone call – and, you can safely assume, before he made the decision to part with Michael Curry.

Dumars told Chris McCosky of The Detroit News that the Pistons are in a similar spot to where they were when he hired Rick Carlisle eight years ago. Carlisle wasn’t known beyond NBA coaching circles then, never having been a head coach anywhere and with far less on his resume than Kuester has today.

Rip Hamilton is suddenly the oldest Piston at 31 with Tayshaun Prince behind him at 29. Unless Antonio McDyess returns to take the final chunk of cap space the Pistons have available, not one player who figures to have a shot at minutes next season – Rodney Stuckey (23), Jason Maxiell (26), Kwame Brown (27), Will Bynum (26), Arron Afflalo (23), Austin Daye (20), DaJuan Summers (21), Jonas Jerebko (22), Walter Sharpe (22), Deron Washington (23), Gordon and Villanueva – is older than 27 at this point.

That’s a roster that makes you wonder if Collins or Johnson, the other finalists, would have truly had the tolerance for teaching this job would have required.

Collins is brilliant, but his track record is pretty clear. He throws himself into the job and it chews him up. If he would have taken it, he would have left the Pistons in a better place than he found them, but it wouldn’t have been an easy few seasons – and it wouldn’t have been more than a few, in all likelihood.

Johnson, too, has much to give, but his time in Dallas is well-documented. With an all-timer at point guard in Jason Kidd, the closest thing in today’s NBA to the clichéd “coach on the floor,” Johnson drove the Mavs crazy with micromanagement. Mark Cuban admitted he fired Johnson to avoid an all-out player revolt. Maybe he would have done for Rodney Stuckey what Brown did for Chauncey Billups – or maybe he would have paralyzed him with constant information overload. It’s worth considering that Devin Harris flowered after the Mavs traded him to New Jersey.

That’s a long way of saying that spending big money – and handing over the empowerment that comes with big money – on either when significant questions prevailed seemed imprudent, and the familiarity of Kuester, by all estimations a measured yet decisive and insightful candidate, carried the day.

The fact he’s already acknowledged as an offensive visionary, coming to a team recently fortified offensively to capitalize on the tilting of the rules to that end of the floor, sure doesn’t hurt his chance for success, either.

(Memo to Pistons Marketing: If you’re going to give out free pizzas or tacos every time the Pistons score a certain number of points next season, add 10 points to whatever number you were considering.)