Stan Van Gundy is enjoying life.

In the spring, he took his wife, Kim, on a European vacation, their first as a couple.

Last month, Kim gifted him with birthday tickets to the Fox Theater where they grooved to the sounds of Gladys Knight and the O’Jays.

The next day, he played fetch with family dogs, Opie and Eastwood, in the backyard of his lakefront home in Clarkston, Michigan. Later, he was a picture of comfort inside as the dogs slumbered, worn out from playing on the warm August day.

It’s clear the former Detroit Pistons coach doesn’t have to work another day the rest of his life. A comfortable retirement where he works at his leisure awaits – if he wants it.

But with his May firing still fresh, he’s not sure he wants comfort.

He thinks he might want to coach again.

With NBA training camps opening this week, he knows there’s nothing out there to replace his competitive itch.

His wife sees a profession that brings misery, and it’s clear she is ready for him to retire from coaching, a career that started as an assistant at Vermont in 1981.

The situation leaves Van Gundy, 59, at a crossroads. He can see a path forward, he just doesn’t know which path to take.

“I don’t care who you are, what job you are in, when you’ve worked at something for a long time and tried to become good at it and everything else, it’s not easy to walk away — particularly when it’s not on your own terms,” Stan Van Gundy said last month. “Kim’s major thing is that I’m not happy (during seasons). You don’t need to do it so why are you going to do something that doesn’t make you happy.

“If I’m not happy, it’s hard for the people around me to be happy.”

‘When we were healthy, we were good’

When Van Gundy took over the Pistons in May 2014, he and general manager Jeff Bower inherited one of the league’s worst rosters — one littered with players out of the NBA four years later.

They went to work to upgrade the talent level, culminating in the franchise landing power forward Blake Griffin in a blockbuster trade with the Los Angeles Clippers in January.

Van Gundy enjoyed a good working relationship with owner Tom Gores, who thought giving personnel control to the head coach was a solid organizational model. Gores admittedly pushed the front office to seek Griffin-type talent.

There wasn’t enough winning under Van Gundy with the only postseason appearance coming in 2016, which ended with a four-game sweep against the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Injuries to point guard Reggie Jackson in consecutive seasons wrecked other potential playoff runs.

But with good health and an open Eastern Conference postseason picture with LeBron James leaving the Cavs for the Los Angeles Lakers, the Pistons could make a jump to the playoffs this season.

And Van Gundy could have led the charge. Instead, he was replaced by Dwayne Casey.

Van Gundy points to last season’s 19-14 record before Jackson went down with a severe right ankle sprain as a reason he could have succeeded. The team finished strong when Jackson returned.

“We showed last year – early and late – when we were healthy, we were good,” Van Gundy said. “I understand injuries are a part of it and we didn’t overcome injuries as well as other teams and I get all of that.

“When we started, the roster wasn’t very good and didn’t have a lot of assets and we were able to get to where our top people were pretty good and when healthy, we were good, but we didn’t have the depth to overcome key injuries.”

Expensive contracts to free-agent role players like Jon Leuer and Langston Galloway led to a bloated salary structure. According to hoopshype.com, the Pistons have the ninth-highest payroll in the NBA entering this season.

Blake Griffin's contract, which could pay him nearly $142 million over the four next seasons, played a role in the expansive payroll. And yet, of the top 10 payrolls in the NBA, only the Pistons and Memphis Grizzlies (ranked 10th) missed the playoffs last season.

There were draft mistakes — the latest coming in 2017 when the Pistons bypassed star rookie Donovan Mitchell to select Luke Kennard.

And Van Gundy’s coaching style has been known to grate on his players.

'I'm not bitter'

Even with good health from Jackson, Gores may have decided to go in another direction.

Gores weighed those factors, taking nearly a month before deciding to part ways with Van Gundy with one season remaining on his five-year, $35 million contract.

“It was tough – one of the tougher ones I’ve made in a lot of years,” Gores told the Free Press in June. “It was emotional because Stan’s a good man.

“We didn’t win enough, but he got a commitment to winning. As much as we didn’t win, that was me, too. It’s not just on Stan. I respect him greatly. I respect his family.”

Van Gundy harbors no ill will.

The firing was more palatable than his final days with the Orlando Magic in 2012.

All a coach can ask is to be treated fairly.

“This ended better,” Van Gundy said. “Tom told me directly. I never spoke to the owners down there when it happened. There’s always going to be things you don’t like.

“I wish we would have been given another year, but I’m not bitter. Tom has to do what he thinks is right for the organization and he treated me well.”

Would Van Gundy change anything?

He admits he learned lessons that could help him the future.

But he stops there.

“It’s hard to talk about things you’ve learned and what you would do differently without saying something that comes across as negative about someone else and I don’t want to do that,” Van Gundy said. “I don’t want to be that guy.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt I’d be better if I did it again and that’s one of the pulls. You want to see if you can do it better.”

‘It just can’t be replicated’

On this day in August, Stan Van Gundy is gregarious; his customary wit is present.

But he turns into a different person during the season.

Kim Van Gundy has seen it for 30-plus years.

He might feel fulfilled as a coach, but she knows it doesn’t always make him happy. He prowls the sidelines, quick to anger over player mistakes.

That anger carries over to postgame media sessions, which are good for internet headlines, but not so good for Stan Van Gundy.

Kim sees the emotional toll and wonders why he keeps at it.

“I kind of understand him wanting to rewrite the end of the story and not have it end his way, but I don’t know if it’s worth another five or whatever years of misery for him,” she said. “And it could very well end miserably again.”

Kim admits to a little selfish thinking, although she is entitled to it.

“My whole life has been basically doing everything at home and supporting his coaching,” Kim said.” I gave up my career for his coaching. I stayed home with the kids, so they’d have a parent raising them.

“We’ve never traveled because it’s always been basketball, basketball, basketball. I kind of feel like when is it going to be our time?”

Stan Van Gundy’s father, Bill, was a college coach.

His younger brother, Jeff, coached the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets and has seen his fame grow as an analyst for ESPN/ABC for the past decade.

Basketball always has been at the forefront of Stan Van Gundy’s life.

That’s part of why it’s so tough to walk away.

“If we were another two years down the road and things had gone well, I think I could have walked away,” Van Gundy said. “Coming off the last two years, we didn’t make the playoffs and not being given the chance to go on, you get fired. You want to write a different story. That’s the pull, but I’m not sitting here today wishing I was in the office today or I was on the court today, but it’s just coaching in general. There’s still a tug, but we’ll see what happens.”

Jeff Van Gundy understands.

Although he has found purpose analyzing basketball, he still feels the tug. He was able to scratch that itch by coaching USA basketball at the FIBA AmeriCup in 2017 and then currently at FIBA World Cup qualifying.

But can his brother find something outside basketball?

It’s tough because Stan Van Gundy — if he never returns to coaching — will likely find nothing to top the feeling he had when he led the Magic to an upset of James and the Cavs in the 2009 Eastern Conference finals.

Or that feeling when the Pistons clinched a playoff berth in 2016 — Gores’ only berth — and he walked down the bench to congratulate every player and assistant coach.

Nothing can replace it.

“You see the agony part of losing and the very small slivers of joy that the winning brings,” Jeff Van Gundy explained over the phone Friday afternoon. “It’s hard to understand why people coach — unless you coach.

“Those 5 minutes after a great road win, those can’t be duplicated at any part of your life. There is going to be no high like that. There is no comradery that you feel like you felt when you were on a coaching staff of a team that you respected and liked. It just can’t be replicated.”

‘Transition is hard as a coach’

Stan Van Gundy probably was guilty of poor word choice when he said, "I'm really lost right now," during a guest appearance on a basketball podcast in August.

It created the impression that he was wallowing around the house in a state of depression.

That’s far from the case.

He admits it sounded sad, but it’s more accurate to say he is torn.

He is clear on one thing — he has no interest in having personnel control. If he returns, it strictly would be to coach.

The last year weighed on him, as nearly the entire front office and coaching staff faced expiring contracts.

Some front-office members were retained by the new front office under the direction of senior adviser Ed Stefanski, but others weren’t. New coach Dwayne Casey hired an entirely new coaching staff.

“The hard part for me is because it didn’t end well for me, it ended poorly for some other people that had minimal — if any — fault whatsoever and I felt that,” Van Gundy said. “I don’t really want to have that level of responsibility for that number of people again.

“I think it’s a good model, but I wouldn’t want to do it again. I would just want to coach.”

There were four coaching hires after Van Gundy was let go, but he said he didn’t pursue any jobs. A year off to reflect is probably a good thing. He plans to spend that time to contemplate his next step.

“That would have been a mistake to just jump back in that quickly,” Van Gundy said. “As much as I have that pull, jumping right back in would not have been good for me.”

What’s next?

The couple decided to remain in Michigan for the summer. They’ve grown to like the area, although they plan to move back to Florida, where they maintain a home in the Orlando area, before the temperatures start to drop.

Stan Van Gundy has committed to a weekly appearance on Dan Le Batard’s

ESPN Radio show.

He will do volunteer work with the coaching staff at Stetson University, where Kim sits on the Board of Trustees and daughters Alison and Kelley are students.

He has spoken with two colleges in the Orlando area about possibly teaching sports management courses.

Van Gundy knows the trend is younger coaches, though Casey, 61, is two years older than Van Gundy.

Before the Pistons, Van Gundy-coached teams reached the playoffs seven out of seven seasons with the Magic and Miami Heat.

And while he admits the coaching pull may go away after a year, he wants to find something that gives him joy.

Jeff Van Gundy has simple advice for his brother: Change is OK.

“See if there’s something that fulfills you,” Jeff Van Gundy said. “He wouldn’t be working now for monetary gain or to be able to take care of his family. He’s been very successful that way so you now you have to figure out what you want to do.

“Just like for players, transition is hard as a coach. I still go through it. That part will be challenging, and it always will remain challenging, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be happy.”

Follow Vince Ellis on Twitter @vincent_ellis56.