Stan Van Gundy, the Detroit Pistons coach and team president, revealed today why the team let Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk last week when it renounced the shooting guard’s rights.

“What happened was the deal with Boston with Avery Bradley there,” Van Gundy said. “So what we had to weigh there was … Avery comes in, he’s only got one year on his contract against, you know, where the KCP contract could potentially go and if you sign him you’re well into the (luxury) tax and then have significantly less flexibility going forward.

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“It was never a point where it was a matter of what KCP was worth. It was not us saying, ‘Oh, he’s not worth that.’ It was a matter of balancing, OK we can get Avery Bradley and manage our luxury-tax situation a lot better, which allows us to do some other things and to keep flexibility. So that trade-off, when the deal came up, is when he decided to make it. It was not a strategy at the beginning of the summer that we don’t want to pay KCP.”

The Pistons sealed Caldwell-Pope’s fate Friday when they traded Marcus Morris to the Celtics for Bradley, a versatile guard and an elite defender. Moments later, they rescinded Caldwell-Pope’s $5.5-million qualifying offer, making him an unrestricted free agent.

At one point, it seemed the Pistons were prepared to give Caldwell-Pope a max offer sheet of four years and $106.5 million. After they signed guard Langston Galloway on July 1, the Pistons would have been way over the $119-million luxury tax and beyond the $125-million luxury tax apron if they tried to match a max contract offer for Caldwell-Pope.

Van Gundy said team owner Tom Gores was willing to pay the luxury tax, but that a max-offer deal to Caldwell-Pope would have restricted the team’s personnel flexibility in the long term.

“And I’ll re-emphasize, we’ve said all along, we’ve got great ownership and Tom was more than willing to go into the tax, if he had to,” Van Gundy said. “So it wasn’t a financial thing where we had to stay out of the tax. We wanted to flexibility and we could do it with having a very, very, very good starting two guard. So we were able to accomplish all of those things, so that’s really what made the decision for us really.”

Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.