Vince Ellis

USA TODAY Sports

Detroit Pistons coach and president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy took questions from the media last week about the contract impasse with restricted free agent Greg Monroe after introducing free agent pickups D.J. Augustin and Caron Butler. Here are some of his answers.

Question: How realistic is it, compared to a month ago, that Monroe will take the qualifying offer?

Van Gundy: That's always been a possibility. There's only so many things that can happen. There's four things that can happen when you get into this situation. You reach a deal with the guy ahead of time. You reach a deal with him. You do a sign-and-trade. He signs a qualifying offer or he goes and gets an offer sheet and brings it back to you and you make your decision to match or not. We're prepared for all of those. I just keep saying the same thing. We're prepared in all of those things. I really don't feel a real sense of anxiety about it. I know I would love to have Greg long-term, that's what I want. But you can only control what you can control. I'm fairly relaxed about it.

Q: Are you worried about signing him more because you want to know what you have long-term?

A: If I ever feel a sense of anxiety it's usually over things that I have some control over or I'm anxious about me making the right decision. I don't have that kind of anxiety with Greg's situation because we're prepared on every one of those fronts and the rest of it's not in my control. I would like it to go the way I want it to go, but I don't have control over that.

Q: If you threw him a maximum deal you could end it right there, right?

A: I don't know about that. I don't even know if that's true.

Q: When you say no control, how are you convincing him? Recruiting him?

A: We have tried. ... We've tried to make him understand what we're trying to do and why we think he's an important part of it. But he's got some decisions to make, too. Part of it's to do with us, part of it has to do with his first four years here and everything else, and part of it has to do, I guess, with what he wants in the future, so we don't have a resolution on it right now.

Vince Ellis writes for the Detroit Free Press, a Gannett property. Contact him: vellis@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @vincent_ellis56 . Free Press staff reports contributed.