It is not impossible for a team to change coaches once in a while.
Even tough the coach is great but the plays and the strategies are not working for the team, those strategies won’t work. However, if the team does not win, the head and the assisstant coaches are not the only ones to be blamed.
There are 31 Detroit Pistons Coaches since the team had entered the National Basketball Competition. Let us tackle some of the most famous and controversial Detroit Pistons Coaches.
During the early years of the team, the Detroit Coaches coaches come and go. Through the 1950’s to the 1860’s different coaches handled the team. Some of these Detroit Pistons Coaches are : Red Rocha, Dick McGuire, Charles Wolf, Dave DeBusschere, Donnis Butcher, Paul Seymour, Butch van Breda Kolff, Terry Dischinger and Earl Lloyd.
Carl Bennet –the first head coach
He was the first franchise’s head coach while in NBA. He was considered controversial because of all the games that he lead, 6 games to be exact, all of which are losses.
Ray Scott
Ray Scott first joined the Detroit Pistons in the 1960’s but not as a coach but as a basketball player. In 1972-1973 he became the head coach of the Detroit Pistons. As a coach, he led the team a 52-30 mark in 1973-1974 that earned him the NBA Coach of the Year honors. Under the supervision of Ray Scott, the Detroit Pistons returned in the Playoffs for the first time since 1968. Unfortunately, the team lost against the Chicago Bulls.
Chuck Daly—All Time Leader
Chuck Daly is the franchise’s all-time leader in regular-season games he coached 738, regular-season games and won 467 of it, he coached 113 playoff games and won 71 of it. He handled the so called “Bad Boys” of the Detroit Pistons. He led Detroit Pistons in the National Basketball Championships season 1988-1989 and 1989-1990 had a 14 year NBA coaching career and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Larry Brown
Larry Brown has been a college and professional basketball coach since 1975. During his first year in Pistons, he lead the Detroit Pistons in winning their third NBA Finals championship in 2004. He is the only coach in history to win both NCAA National Championship (Kansas Jayhawks,1988) and an NBA Championship (Detroit Pistons, 2004).
Flip Saunders—Longest Tenured Piston Coach
Flip Saunders was a former basketball player. He became a coach of Detroit Pistons on the 21st of July 2005 replacing Larry Brown. Under Saunders leadership the team set a new record for winning the regular season with the score of 64-18 record.
Upon entering the third season as the Pistons coach, Flip Saunders became the longest tenured Pistons coach after Chuck Daly who had coached the team for nine years (1983 -1992.)Saunders was fired by the management on the 3rd of June 2008 after the teams lost to Boston Celtics in the 2008 Eastern Conference Finals.
The president said that the reason why he was replaced was because they wanted to have a “new voice.”