Stan Van Gundy was only the New Orleans Pelicans basketball coach for a short while, but 30 days passed between the final game of the regular season and the announcement that the veteran coach would not return for Year 2.
The long timeline was by design, Pelicans Executive Vice President David Griffin said on Wednesday afternoon. The wait allowed for "candid" conversations that made it clear a "disconnect" existed that was unlikely to be remedied. Thus the mutual decision to part ways, he said.
"This is a person who believed in what we were doing here and wanted to be part of building a family that loves each other enough to tell each other what they need to hear," Griffin said. "We did that together, for each other, over the last three weeks. And that’s how we ended up here."
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The decision was not driven by results, he said, but out of a team needing to move in "lockstep," which was unlikely to be the case based on those conversations.
"If we’re not all-in with each other, this doesn’t work," Griffin said. "And we reached a point that it was clear, energetically, that we were not going to be that."
An up-and-down 31-41 season with some highs that were matched time and again by lows made for difficult circumstances, but the COVID situation that Griffin described as borderline untenable made for a narrow path to success beginning with the coaching search itself.
Griffin said the search to replace Alvin Gentry before the 2020-'21 season surfaced a pool of about 20 candidates, which was pared down to nine that were met with in person. None were specified, but several of those names are likely to be involved in the upcoming search as well. That's because the goal of the search hasn't changed much -- despite this week's decision.
“Attention to detail is something that Stan brought with him for sure. Accountability and our ability to get better over the course of the season defensively is something that we cared a great deal about and he did all those things," Griffin said. "There were many, many, many of the boxes that we would’ve checked then, that he checks today and that staff checks. The fit ultimately is very difficult to find and I think the real issue moving forward is just to find somebody that you’re in lockstep with and that includes ownership as well. That has to be something where we’re all moving together in the same spirit and the same sort of energy. And I don’t know how else to put it that that.”
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MORE FROM GRIFFIN
ON TERESA WEATHERSPOON'S EMERGENCE AS AN EARLY CANDIDATE
“I talked to coach Weatherspoon today. Spoon is absolutely, universally beloved by our staff and our players. What I think happened with the inertia that was created around her name as a candidate immediately being launched forward is one of the phenomenons of the social media age. It’s also one of the phenomenons of asking coach Weatherspoon to be our head Summer League coach in a room full of people. So I think a lot was made of that. That gained a lot of traction because of that. Coach Spoon is really, really central to our future. I think that’s a little premature in terms of the conversation around her being a candidate, Fletcher. I think that’s early. She and I spoke about that directly. And I feel like much was made of this Summer League head coach situation and it sort of ran away from itself.”
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IS THERE PRESSURE TO BUILD A WINNER QUICKLY WITH ZION AFTER PREVIOUS STAR DEPARTURES?
“I mean, none of it ... I know nobody’s going to believe that, but that’s not what we do here. We’re not chasing some invisible clock. We’re trying to build a sustainable winner and a team that can begin to contend once it wins with regularity. That’s what we’re trying to build, that’s what the urgency is. I don’t believe in that invisible clock. You’re either all the way in or you’re all the way out and this city is absolutely about that. I think all of you that have lived here for any extended period of time understand there’s not a lot of in-between in New Orleans. You’re here because you love it and you want to be. And we believe our players want to win here and will love to win here. We’re not chasing anything other than the success that we need to have as a group. That’s it. That’s what motivates these things. There’s no artificial urgency that comes from anything else.”
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DO YOU FEEL MORE PRESSURE AFTER FIRING YOUR SECOND COACH IN AS MANY SEASONS?
“It’s no different than the pressure I felt the day we took the job. We’ve been given an incredible opportunity here with ownership that supports us at the highest level. Mrs. Benson and her team have given us every opportunity and every team we’re going to need to succeed, I felt the same pressure walking in the door Day 1. The rest of our staff that we’ve been blessed to be able to hire, which is among the very best in the NBA on so many levels I can’t really begin to explain all of them. Trajan Langdon and Swin Cash being part of the team that will be moving forward interviewing a coach, we’ve been put in a very leveraged position. I felt pressure when I went to be that first night, I feel the same pressure now. We have as much job security as we win. We earn that job security every day, and it’s no different today having gone through three coaches in three years than it was when I walked in the door. Our success if going to determine our outcome, and if we are not successful it’s not going to be because anybody failed — anyone else, rather, failed — or put us in position to fail. It’s going to be because we did not achieve what we need to.”