DETROIT — It was obvious why the Pistons wanted Monty Williams. In nine seasons as an NBA head coach, he’d helped rebuild two teams, was named Coach of the Year, reached the playoffs five times and the Finals once. At 51, he was suddenly, surprisingly available, dismissed by the Phoenix Suns after their playoff ouster.
What was unclear, and remained unclear for several weeks, was why Williams would want the Pistons. At first, he didn’t. He needed time off, shaken by his firing and further shaken by his wife’s cancer diagnosis. Pistons GM Troy Weaver called. Owner Tom Gores reached out.
From “no way” to “find a way,” the Pistons and Williams connected and finally arrived at the same place. Hired last week, Williams was introduced Tuesday at the downtown Henry Ford Pistons Performance Center, and in the process of explaining what happened, he revealed fascinating pieces of who he is. Emotional. Thoughtful. Smart. Honest.
Why come to a team that had the worst record in the NBA and hasn’t won a playoff game in 15 years?
“The quick answer obviously is Troy, the players, and the money,” Williams said. “That’s something people don’t talk about. They always say it wasn’t the money. I always laugh at them. I think that’s disrespectful. When somebody’s that generous to pay me that kind of money, that should be applauded, and it should be talked about.”
Gores hasn’t been successful on the court yet, but to his credit, he keeps paying to play. He gave Williams a six-year, $78.5-million contract, the largest for a coach in NBA history. Money was half the deal, and the other half was making Williams comfortable with his life situation as his wife, Lisa, recovered from breast cancer that was diagnosed during the playoffs. Williams has been raising five kids since his first wife, Ingrid, died in a car accident in 2016. He knows all about the tough roads.
The money was the easy part, for Gores and Williams. There was very little negotiation. After Williams initially said no, Gores and Weaver convened for five days at the owner’s Los Angeles home and mapped out a plan. They researched hospitals and schools in the Detroit area. They talked about family, and eventually money. Still, Weaver admitted he thought it was an “extreme longshot.”
“We had to make the offer compatible with life, and that’s really where we got his attention,” Gores said. “I didn’t want to negotiate. He’s a great coach, and we’ll find out in a few years (the contract) is in market. I felt we had one chance to do this right. So we put the human aspect in, and I didn’t want the money to be, hey, a little more, a little less.”
The money is staggering, and probably had to be because Williams could’ve sat and collected $21 million on the final three years of his Suns contract. Two weeks after initially saying no, Williams said yes over Memorial Day weekend. Gores admitted he also felt the urgency for a bold move after the Pistons dropped to No. 5 in the lottery, missing out on a chance to draft star Victor Wembanyama, which he called a “gut punch.” He and Weaver took their time getting to know Williams, and one thing seemed clear.
“What I learned from Monty was, coaching fulfills him,” Gores said. “If he was just looking to plug in, and hey, let’s get to a championship and skip all the hard work, he’s really not that guy. We passed on a lot of very experienced coaches. Once Monty was interested, we had to go for it.”
It would be a mistake to assume Gores simply is trying to buy a winning culture, although there’s nothing wrong with that. It also would be a mistake to assume Williams just grabbed the easy dough. He’s the third straight experienced head coach Gores has hired, after Dwane Casey and Stan Van Gundy. But Williams arrives with the Pistons in a different spot. The 17-65 record is still awful, although Cade Cunningham’s absence, as well as other injuries, partly explains it. The roster is one of the youngest in the league. The salary cap is back in order, with approximately $30 million to spend.
Williams didn’t lie about the money mattering. And we know he isn’t lying about the enormous challenge he faces here.
'I like those challenges'
“I like those challenges,” he said. “I like the process of building, I like to see players get better. I like seeing a guy for the first time navigate crunch-time situations. At the end of the day, this is a get-to, not a got-to. These NBA jobs are privileges, there are only 30 of them.”
As head coach in New Orleans from 2010-15, Williams made the playoffs twice. In four seasons in Phoenix, he inherited a 19-win team and rattled off victory totals of 34, 51, 64 and 45. New Suns owner Mat Ishbia made two bold (impetuous?) moves after taking over. He traded most of the team’s depth to Brooklyn for Kevin Durant. And then after the Suns, playing without Chris Paul, lost Game 6 by 25 at home to the Nuggets, he fired Williams.
Williams was shocked and crushed. He was in no mood to talk about his next job. At the same time, the Pistons were meandering, interviewing people with no head-coaching experience – the Bucks’ Charles Lee, the Pelicans’ Jarron Collins, former Connecticut coach Kevin Ollie.
When the Pistons followed up two weeks after their initial contact, Williams felt the love. Gores sent a private jet to fly him to L.A., and there they sat at a table, talking through everything.
“To be honest, I committed that night, told them if everything worked out, this is the place I wanted to be,” Williams said. “You see the talent (on the Pistons roster), for sure. You see the size. When I talk to (the players), they all look me in the eye. You see it here today. I’ve never seen a press conference for a head coach and everyone shows up. That’s the hunger, the desire. The trials they’ve been through, it doesn’t just give you hope, it gives you excitement.”
Williams gets emotional quickly, unapologetically. When he peered out at the assembled crowd Tuesday and saw his entire team, absent Bojan Bogdanovich, he appeared legitimately touched. There’s an authenticity about Williams, maybe tracing to his days as a player at Notre Dame and in the NBA, or to his personal tragedies. For the Pistons to get him, that’s where they had to connect.
Now, the hope is Williams can connect with Pistons players, most of whom are under 25. He didn’t want to compare his early days in Phoenix, but he did note his immediate connection with a then-21-year-old Devin Booker, who blossomed into a star.
Spirited discussions
Weaver and Gores acknowledge they had spirited discussions about the hiring process, and Weaver joked they needed a “referee” at times. Gores was being ambitious. Weaver was being more practical.
In the end, it was impossible to ignore the quality of the candidate.
“Tom just really poured out his thoughtfulness and his heart into this day,” Weaver said. “That usually doesn’t happen, people don’t think out of the box. Tom really stepped up.”
It’s not all about money and emotions. Weaver likes the basketball tenets that Williams preaches. He raised the Suns’ defensive disposition and their offense ranked in the upper echelon every year. His “0.5” system encourages players to pass the ball, drive, or shoot within half a second of catching it. For a Pistons offense often stuck in dribbling dreariness, it should be a welcome change.
Of course the NBA comes down to talent, but until the talent arrives, leadership must prevail. By all accounts, that’s one of Williams’ strengths.
“He’s the kind of leader that can rally these young men, relate to them, connect with them,” Weaver said. “It starts with discipline. A teacher can take over a class, but if he or she can’t control the class, it won’t work. I think our offer to Monty kind of reset his confidence. And now it adds to our confidence that a coach like him would recognize what we’re doing here.”
It didn’t appear that way at first, but gradually, thoughtfully, it became clear. For different reasons in different ways, the Pistons and Williams perhaps needed each other more than they realized.
