Stan Van Gundy takes responsibility for Sixers debacle
By Duncan Smith
The Detroit Pistons took an awful home loss at the hands of the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday, and Stan Van Gundy took responsibility for it.
The Detroit Pistons returned home from a two-game road trip on Sunday to play the Philadelphia 76ers, and the home side looked like one of the worst teams in the NBA rather than the visitors. While there were a variety of factors that could be blamed for the performance, head coach and president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy fell on the sword for his team.
Thanks to terrible weather and road conditions in the metro Detroit area due to heavy snowfall, Van Gundy opted to forego the Pistons’ usual 10 a.m. gameday shootaround and instead have the players come in at 3 p.m. for a pregame walkthrough. Exacerbating things, the Pistons’ start time was 6 p.m. rather than the usual 7:30.
"“There were reasons for it all, but I’ve been at this a long time and it was pretty predictable that we weren’t going to be ready to play based on what we did,” Van Gundy said. “And I should have known better.”“We didn’t want them coming out twice,” Van Gundy said. “But when you’ve got two days basically of not being together as a team going into that game, we weren’t ready. To hell with the weather. I should have brought them in anyway. No, really. We were just not ready to play. That was completely predictable.”“It’s just one of those things where your mind isn’t engaged for two full days and all of a sudden at 3 o’clock you’re trying to get ready to play. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be able to do it, but it was pretty predictable that we weren’t going to be able to do it.”“We just weren’t ready. We were just not ready. It’s not that they don’t have some responsibility in that, no matter what the conditions. You’re an NBA player. It’s your job to be ready to play. But I didn’t do my job in getting them ready yesterday.”"
While the Pistons opted to skip their shootaround, the 76ers went through with their scheduled morning shootaround at Detroit Country Day High School, and were by far the sharper team throughout.
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Stan Van Gundy deflected blame off his players who were clearly unprepared, but this game was part of a continuing trend the Pistons have of playing down to their competition. The Pistons expected the Sixers to take their beating and go away like a bad team should, but even bad teams can jump on you when you take them lightly. The Pistons trailed 34-12 after a quarter and never recovered.
Of note, Marcus Morris showed up for shootaround on his own, and it showed. He led both teams in scoring with 28 points on 10-16 shooting from the floor.
SVG did the noble thing, but this is on the players. If you expect to be a contending Eastern Conference team, you do away with inferior competition, shootaround or no.