Detroit Pistons’ Stan Van Gundy: Greg Monroe, Andre Drummond an ‘ideal pairing’
As soon as former Miami Heat and Orlando Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy was named president and head coach of the Detroit Pistons, the future of several Pistons’ players, namely power forward Greg Monroe, has come into question.
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However, Van Gundy has continued to praise Monroe and has not indicated that he plans to get rid of the soon-to-be restricted free agent.
“I think it is an ideal pairing,” Van Gundy told Pistons.com. “If I look at just the film I’ve watched now and looking at the numbers, you would say that Greg and Andre together were great offensively. That was a great combination on the offensive end of the floor, especially when the three guys around them were shooters – more conventional perimeter types. That worked very, very well. Now, it didn’t work very well defensively. I think it puts a lot of responsibility on Greg Monroe to have to guard out on the perimeter.
“But I think there are things we can do in terms of schemes and things that would make it a little easier on Greg to make that unit better defensively and then take advantage of the offensive end of the floor.
“In the things we’ve studied – when you look at our three frontline guys, there’s your strength – but when you study it, when you play two of those three guys together, the Pistons were a very good team, at least last year. When you played all three of them together, they really struggled.”
Monroe averaged 15.2 points and 9.3 rebounds per game last season while Drummond went for 13.5 points and 13.2 rebounds per game.