For five days in Los Angeles, Tom Gores and Troy Weaver hunkered down at Gores' mansion and hashed out their vision for the next head coach of the Pistons. As they bounced names back and forth like a basketball, they kept returning to Monty Williams. The 2022 NBA Coach of the Year had turned down the Pistons' initial overtures after having been fired by the Suns, but Gores felt the organization owed it to its young players to take another run at Williams when the time was right.
"I said to Troy, 'Those young men are relying on us.' I wouldn't call it a yelling match at all, but we talked about how important it was to deliver for our players," Gores said Tuesday as the Pistons introduced Williams as head coach.
Weaver had been one of the first people to reach out to Williams when he became available. The two have a friendship dating back to their days in the DMV area. As Weaver said Tuesday with a laugh, "We drank the same sewage for a long time." But the timing wasn't right for Williams. A man who's been molded by the tragedy of losing his first wife Ingrid to a car crash in 2016 -- the two had five children together -- Williams and his second wife Lisa had just found out that she had breast cancer. When Weaver called to gauge Williams' interest in the Pistons' coaching job, Williams told him, "I gotta take care of my family."
Williams mentioned this Tuesday to stress the importance of early-detection breast cancer testing for women. Scans revealed his wife's condition early "and that may have saved her life," Williams said, "and it can save others." He also brought it up because the Pistons never issued him a deadline or turned their back on him, the way other inquiring teams might have. They gave him the space he needed to tend to a situation much bigger than basketball, then rounded back when Williams and his wife got "great news a lot earlier than we thought we would," he said.
That's when Weaver reached out again, and when Gores stepped up with an even bigger offer. The Pistons would make Williams the highest-paid coach in the NBA with a six-year contract worth $13 million annually if he would take the reins of their young team. They flew him private to LA, where Williams had dinner with Gores and Weaver and talked about the Pistons' path forward. Weaver broke down the roster to a man, and Williams said that "listening to them and their passion for the players and this team and this city made me want to be a part of it." He committed to the Pistons that night.
"When somebody shows this kind of confidence in you," said Williams, "it gives you confidence to move forward with them."
Williams, 51, is no stranger to rebuilds. When he took over the Suns in 2019, they had lost the most games in the NBA the prior four seasons and had just bottomed out at 19 wins. He took them to 34, 51 and 64 wins the next three seasons, including a trip to the NBA Finals. With that kind of resume, Williams could have waited on a contender to come calling this spring -- and the Bucks and 76ers reportedly expressed interest. Instead he chose the team that lost the most games in the NBA the past four seasons and just bottomed out at 17 wins.
Why take on another rebuild in Detroit?
"The quick answer is obviously Troy, the players and the money," Williams said. "That’s something that people don’t talk about. They always say, 'It wasn’t the money.' I laugh at that, I think that’s disrespectful. When someone is generous enough to pay me that kind of money, that should be applauded."
But it wasn't just the money. Williams was also drawn to Detroit by where the Pistons have been and where they appear to be going. With a young roster headlined by Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren, and a GM ready to attack the offseason with tons of cap space and the fifth overall pick in the draft, the Pistons just might have a future that resembles their past.
"When you think about the history of this city as it relates to basketball, it’s a storied franchise," Williams said. "I know Troy feels the same way: I want to have success here to the point that people think I’m from Detroit, the way they think Dave Bing is from Detroit even though he’s from D.C. I want to have that kind of impact here. I’m marrying myself to the job. I told the players this morning I'm going to give them everything I have because it's a franchise with a rich history."
And now it's a team with one of the top coaches in the NBA. Weaver believes Williams' arrival will be a "shot in the arm" for the Pistons players, almost all of whom were on hand for Tuesday's presser, knowing that a "coach of this caliber wants to come lead them." It also has to be reassuring for Weaver to know that Williams believes in what the organization has started to assemble. Asked if this is the most enthused he's felt about the Pistons' outlook in his three-year tenure as GM, Weaver said, "Without a doubt."
"You grind, you work, you turn over the roster, you do all these things and it hasn’t yielded the wins. But for a coach like this to recognize what we’re doing here, yeah, absolutely, excited about that," he said.
Two of Williams' biggest challenges will come on opposite ends of the floor. First, improving Detroit's defense, which has always been at the core of the Pistons' identity. And second, crafting an offense that flows smoothly through Cunningham and Ivey, which may well be the crux of the Pistons' future. But before any of that, said Weaver, Williams just needs to get "these young guys playing with some discipline -- sustained discipline. That will be our mantra from Day 1."
"I like the process of building," said Williams. "I like seeing players get better, I like seeing a guy for the first time understand what it’s like to navigate crunch-time situations. That’s part of the process I enjoy."
A man who puts his family first was led by family values to Detroit. From a young age, Williams watched his mother work 10-hour days and then take classes late into the night. He said the Pistons will have the same refusal to quit. And it was a saying that Weaver passed on from his father that resonated with Williams as he thought about the job and the opportunity at hand: "When something has been great, you can restore it to greatness."
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