Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores: Firing SVG one of his 'tougher' calls

Vince Ellis | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Detroit Pistons hire Dwane Casey as coach: Free Press writers react Free Press sports writer Vince Ellis and columnist Shawn Windsor share their thoughts after Detroit Pistons hire Dwane Casey as coach June 11, 2018.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Sitting in his living room Friday evening, Tom Gores mood can be described in one word.

Hopeful.

It’s four days after the Detroit Pistons announced the hiring of Dwane Casey as the 36th head coach in franchise history.

Casey jumps right back into the fray, having led the Raptors to their best regular season ever in 2017-18.

He was fired for his efforts.

Gores, who has owned the Pistons since June 2011, feels fortunate that Casey was available after the deciding to plot a new course for the franchise when he fired Stan Van Gundy as team president and coach.

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But in an exclusive 30-minute interview session with the Free Press, Gores makes clear there a few other things on his mind.

He had to be convinced Casey was the right man to lead a roster he believes can win now.

He calls the decision to move on from Van Gundy one of the “tougher” decisions he has ever made in business.

He brings up the absentee-owner criticism from fans and media and knows it comes with the territory when you have only one playoff appearance to show since the team has been under his stewardship.

But just like the initial missteps when he founded his private equity firm, Platinum Equity in 1995, he’s confident he and the organization has learned from mistakes.

The questions and answers have been edited for clarity and length.

I’m surprised to learn that you needed to be sold on Casey. Given his background, why is that?

“As much as he brings in experience, we really wanted to make sure that he really liked this team. He knew our players, he liked the team. He really dove in over different parts so I feel like we were very fortunate, but we didn’t say ‘Dwane Casey, coach of the year, let’s just hire him.’ We really vetted it out and I think he did his homework, too. He could have taken any job he wanted next year and he could have easily waited a year, but he thought this was special.”

(The Raptors owed Casey $6.5 million for one more season.)

Meet new Detroit Pistons coach Dwane Casey A quick look at the newest Pistons coach, Dwane Casey. Video by Ryan Ford, Detroit Free Press.

But after you were impressed with Casey and vice versa, you had to sell his wife, Brenda. I hear you sold the Detroit comeback as part of your sales pitch?

“I wouldn’t say I had to sell Brenda. She’s a great adviser and everything happened so fast for them. They were in Toronto for seven years and everything happened so fast. After Dwane and I met, he was very convinced and I think she was surprised. ‘Geez, what is so good about this? Are you sure?’ It was only a few weeks after his time in Toronto. In a way, she was only verifying all the talk and me growing up in Flint and how we do love Detroit and all the things we are committed to. All of it can be better by winning. She was only verifying what Dwane had known already — and the fact that we do care.”

And she was sold.

“We underestimate what it takes for a coach or a player to move. We think they just get a new contract and that’s it. They have a couple of young kids. It was a very big decision. They’ve been hunkered down in Toronto for seven years. I didn’t have to sell her really. It was more she’s a key adviser to Dwane. It was a great gut check. She was taking a gut check.”

Let’s go back to your decision to fire Stan. You speak of him in very respectful tones that can be rare when it comes time for change. How difficult was that decision?

"It was tough — one of the tougher ones I’ve made in a lot of years. It was emotional because Stan’s a good man. He’s not only a good man, he was a hard-working guy. He also made progress for us. We lost momentum at the end. When he came in the first few years, he created some discipline around here. Remember when we bought the team? It was a strike year and then everything was in disarray (after former Pistons owner Bill Davidson died in 2009). It was in a lot bigger disarray than we even knew at the time. Stan helped correct a lot of that. We didn’t win enough, but he got a commitment to winning. He’s just a hard-working, dedicated person. As much as we didn’t win, that was me, too. We didn’t win, either. It’s not just on Stan. I respect him greatly. I respect his family.”

You were very deliberate in making the decision.

“Stan and I took a couple weeks and we met. It was clear that we had lost momentum and we had some front-office dynamics that I think complicated things. Because of all that, it just pointed to let’s make a change. It was the right thing for both of us, but I don’t take away what he helped us establish — or him as a person — at all.”

Van Gundy’s four seasons represent the most stable period for the franchise since Chuck Daly and Jack McCloskey ran the team during the Bad Boys era.

“Exactly. He established some basics. If you don’t get the basics right, you aren’t going to make any progress. He really established some basics and I appreciate him for that. Hopefully we’re successful and he’ll be part of having helped us bridge over.”

Do you think giving Van Gundy personnel control in 2014 — as well as his coaching duties in — was a mistake in hindsight?

“It’s a very hard job. My opinion hasn’t changed — I think the coach still has to have visibility and some influence on what’s going on, but it’s not the day-to-day job. I think it makes a lot of sense for the coach to understand some of the vision and what the coach needs so that we’re not doing it blindly. But the day-to-day job is hard on one person.”

It appears with a mostly set roster in the near term, you are taking this time to experiment a little with your front office structure. A veteran presence in senior adviser Ed Stefanski with input from Pistons vice chairman Arn Tellem, who is a former player agent, and trying to add young, upcoming talent. Where did that idea come from? A little out-of-the-box thinking?

“When I started Platinum (Equity), I combined the young, hungry research-oriented people with experienced people. That’s really a model I do like. … It’s good to have some these people that are up and coming, but at the same time you need experience. … The combination of that, I do think is very powerful.”

Platinum is the model?

“Everybody thinks that I’m successful. Of course, I am, but the fact is I stuck to a model and adjusting constantly. It wasn’t until just probably six, seven years later that it all started to come together. I made some mistakes on the way, but I survived and I had this ability to recruit and make people believe — to bring the best people on board. It was really what I was able to do at Platinum.”

(Gores recalls the struggles when he first started Platinum.)

“I started the business in 1995 and it wasn’t until 2003, 2004 when things started to escalate. We were doing all the foundation work. … Today, you see how successful Platinum is and that’s true, but the first X years it was just grinding, it was some mistakes, but staying true to the things you believe in was very important. We’re now one of the biggest businesses in our field. I feel like this is very similar. We’ve gone through bumps. Even when you look at hiring Stan. We brought a great man to Detroit. I don’t call that a mistake, I call that a bridge — a bridge to another place. We needed that bridge to get to greatness.”

(Gores asks for patience.)

“It’s interesting how you get to places. I was thinking about Platinum today because we’re getting all these amazing things. We have one of the top — if not the top momentum in the world of what we do, but it took time. A lot of people judge where we are in our business today vs. where we are with the Pistons, but they’re in completely different life cycles. We’re going through the same process. In those first years, we were just grinding through, learning, but believing in our passion, believing in the dream of it. There was a point in time when we were called just bottom fishers. Now we’re buying some the biggest companies in the world.

(Gores acknowledges the absentee-owner criticism.)

“I know sometimes Detroit judges me like I’m not there, but I don’t think anybody’s put more work anywhere in the league than I have this month or in general. We don’t have to prove it there by being at games, but we’re bringing great people to Detroit. At the end of the day, the work will show for itself. Whether that’s a year from now, two years or five years, it will show for itself.”

(Gores takes blame for not communicating his story.)

“We’ve probably done a bad job on our side. We don’t fight that stuff because we’re so busy doing our job. It’s probably me, too, because I figure if you get so busy justifying your job, then you can’t do your job. I’ve always run things that way — whether it’s Platinum or anything else.”

(Gores uses Casey as an example of the talent he has lured.)

“Dwane is a great example. This guy doesn’t have to do this now. He believed in Detroit, the passion and the trueness. When you say did we have to sell? We sold our truth. We sold what we believe in. Nobody comes over just by being sold, they got to believe in you so I’m pretty excited about this.”

I was going to bring up the criticism, but you beat me to it. Does it bother you when you see that stuff on social media?

“I don’t look at the social media.”

You’re not on Twitter?

“No, no Twitter. You can’t help it because a friend will show it to you. ‘Hey, you’re working so hard and they don’t think you are.’ Well, I am working hard, but you got to win. I’m supposed to bring results. I don’t get out on social media, but I have friends that love me.”

It bothers them?

“It bothers them because they know how hard I’m working to make it right. What I’m doing for the community and how much I care. But the thing is sports, if you don’t win, you got to win. We have to go after that.”

Is the criticism a proximity and visibility issue, in your opinion?

"It could be, but I’m a results person. I think that’s what the fans want. I believe in the test of time. Just keep doing the right thing. With Dwane this is just another example. We brought Arn in. We get people to change their lives for us in Detroit. We got Stan. We make people believe and that’s good for the city of Detroit so we are doing our job on that basis.”

(Gores adds that a deliberate pace can be best.)

“We can’t make decisions based on perception or reaction. … We need to make the right call. There’s a lot at stake here. We made progress with the first couple of years with Stan, but we lost our momentum. We have a pretty good roster — forget the cap and everything. We have something good to start with so we really need to make the right call now. We needed to go through a thorough process.”

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