To say the Pistons underwent roster upheaval in Stan Van Gundy’s first two years on the job is like saying Steph Curry and Klay Thompson give Golden State a pretty fair backcourt tandem.

The fact that only Andre Drummond and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope remain from the roster Van Gundy inherited in 2014 understates the scope of roster churning. Only four players who went through Van Gundy’s first training camp also went through his second – Drummond, Caldwell-Pope, Jodie Meeks and Cartier Martin, the latter cut before the 2015-16 season began.

Spencer Dinwiddie was on the roster in 2014-15 but injured until late in the preseason and Brandon Jennings was on the roster in 2015-16 but still rehabilitating his January 2015 Achilles tendon rupture.

Van Gundy’s third training camp, by contrast, will be one where they can breeze through the first few chapters and get to the meat of the textbook before mid-term exams.

The Pistons turned over one-third of the roster in Van Gundy’s third off-season, signing free agents Jon Leuer, Ish Smith and Boban Marjanovic and drafting Henry Ellenson and Michael Gbinije. Only Leuer and Smith are likely to open the season among the rotation. In an age of shorter contracts and greater player movement, adding five new players in one off-season is par for the course and likely below the league average.

Van Gundy’s Jeff Bower-led front office has proven repeatedly it won’t bypass the chance to upgrade the talent base for the benefit of continuity, but you can fully expect the revolving door to spin at a much slower rate from this point on. And Van Gundy expects the Pistons to benefit from the relative stability of a roster that returns all five starters plus key reserves Stanley Johnson and Aron Baynes.

He expects Tobias Harris, added at the February trade deadline, and Johnson to feel much more at home from the start this time around.

“A rookie going into the second year should have a lot better understanding,” Van Gundy said. “And Tobias, like Reggie (Jackson) the year before, only got a third of the year with us. You would expect those guys to really be able to make a jump and be more familiar with what’s going on. But then the group being together should help a great deal. We should be able to get up and running a little quicker and it should make it easier to acclimate the new guys. The hardest thing is when you start new with everybody is there’s no one to look to.”

This time around, when Van Gundy starts putting in offensive and defensive sets in those busy opening days of training camp, the players who’ve been in the system for at least parts of last season will have a familiarity that eases the transfer of knowledge to the uninitiated.

“So now Jon Leuer comes in, well, Tobias knows what’s going on. He can follow him a little bit. Boban Marjanovic comes in and he can follow Aron Baynes and Andre Drummond. And Ish Smith can follow Reggie Jackson. Your learning curve should be easier. It should be quicker, I think.”

Van Gundy sees value in something else, too – the shared journey the Pistons endured last season in fighting through virtually all 82 games for a playoff berth and then battling the eventual NBA champions hard in a first-round series with Cleveland.

“We’ve got history – both good and bad. The good of making improvement and getting in the playoffs and the bad of getting swept. All those things are good in that it’s a shared experience that brings our guys together. They see the possibility and the hope – and at the same time, they understand that where we got to and what we did isn’t good enough. Those are all good experiences that we share and we should be able to build on those.”