Lawrence Frank interviews 31 candidates for assistant coach

With nothing but time on his hands, new Detroit Pistons head coach Lawrence Frank has already interviewed 31 candidates to join his coaching staff. From Keith Langlois: 

He’s talked to 31 coaches and says the process is close to completion, though he still won’t put a timetable on the unveiling of the new staff. He wants to get it right and he’s mindful of the chemistry that will result, so one commitment might affect the ensuing offer to the next candidate. What he didn’t want, he decided, was a staff filled with coaches cut from the same cloth.

"I want our staff to embrace our core values, but I want different backgrounds," he told me Thursday. "I don’t want five of one guy. So you’re going to see a staff of different backgrounds, different experiences and then we bring it all together. If you have five of the same type of guy, to me that’s not effective."

Frank later reiterated his desire for a staff with diverse backgrounds and experiences: 

"I want people of high character, compassionate, can teach the game, lifelong learners, but I want different backgrounds," Frank said. "I know who I am. I know my strengths and weaknesses. I want to compensate for them."

The biggest knock on Frank is that he never played the game -- not in the pros, not in college, not even in high school. Reading between the lines, I'm guessing he's seeking to "compensate" for his lack of experience with at least one former player.

Might that include Bill Laimbeer or Patrick Ewing, two candidates Frank beat out for the head coaching job? We'll have to wait and see. The addition of Laimbeer would obviously give this team some buzz, and adding Ewing would certainly make the franchise cornerstone happy. 

I'm also curious to see if Frank decides to keep any members of John Kuester's staff. When Brian Hill was head coach of the Grizzlies, he gave Frank his first NBA job as an assistant in 1997. Pat Sullivan, meanwhile, spent three years on Frank's bench in New Jersey earlier this decade.