‘How lucky am I?’

A recent article in the Boston Globe shed some interesting light on new Pistons head coach John Kuester. The piece is littered with quotes, and the overwhelming feeling was that he was completely comfortable being an assistant coach, and didn’t truly believe he would ever be named an NBA head coach.

“I was always comfortable with what I was doing,” Kuester said. “I would have been fine continuing to be an assistant coach. It’s a great life. You meet great people.”

“I just keep thinking, ‘How lucky am I?’”

“You never know with these things, how they’ll go. But I thought, ‘Wow!’ It has taken a while to sink in, and then you realize you have so much on your plate and so little time.”

Among the other items I found out of the ordinary was that Kuester had never even interviewed for a head coaching position before he met with Joe Dumars this summer. Apparently he nailed it. Immediately afterwards he called his wife, Tricia, to tell her that he felt he had a good chance of getting the job.

Kuester does indeed have a lot on his plate. He will need to call upon all the things that he learned while coaching under Larry Brown, Mike Brown, Maurice Cheeks, Lawrence Frank, Brian Hill, and M.L. Carr to get the Pistons into the playoffs this season. If he fails to meet the expectations that Dumars has for this team, he could face a similar one-and-done fate as the man he is replacing, Michael Curry.

Among the things on his to-do list:

• Teach Rodney Stuckey how to play point guard on both ends of the court.
• Create a happy place where both Richard Hamilton and Ben Gordon can co-exist.
• Determine if any of his rookie forwards need to be part of his every-night rotation and what their roles should be.
• Coax Charlie Villanueva to play defense against opposing power forwards.
• Determine an effective way to use his underwhelming trio of centers.
• Find plenty of minutes for fifth-year forward Jason Maxiell.

A 45-win season seems like Kuester’s ceiling, but even matching Curry’s 39 wins from a year ago may be difficult. If he falls under 35 wins, Kuester’s one shot at being an NBA head coach may be a brief one (assuming the Pistons do not become one of those teams “playing” for better draft lottery odds).

Tags: John Kuester