John Kuester reflects on his time with Pistons

The Los Angeles Lakers are coming to town to take on the Pistons on Tuesday night and, thus, that means the return of John Koostis Kuester, who is again an assistant for Mike Brown. This will mark Kuester's first appearance at the Palace since he was leading team #buffoonery.

Kuester's first trip back to Auburn Hills can only mean inquiries about his short and treacherous two-year stint as the Pistons head coach, a time Kuester has not publicly discussed since being fired in June. I'm guessing we'll see plenty of quotes from Kuester pop up over the next 24-36 hours, but Ramona Shelburne at ESPN LA gets us started:

"I have no complaints. No complaints at all. I wish we had won more games. I wish some things could have been different. But you're dealt a certain hand, and now we go ahead and move on," Kuester told ESPNLosAngeles.com as he prepared to travel to Detroit as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers coaching staff.

"The bottom line, this is a game where you've got to win and if things don't work out the way you want them to, then obviously they make changes. But I am very appreciative to the fact that I got an opportunity. The people of Detroit were great. I wish them nothing but the best."

One thing that was always apparent during Kuester's time in Detroit is that he's a nice guy. Those are nice comments. And, as expected, you won't see him slinging any flaming bags of feces on the doorsteps of the players who embarrassed him and the Pistons organization in Kuester's hometown of Philadelphia last year:

"It's interesting because I've known a number of those guys for a long time," Kuester said, referring to the fact that he was an assistant on Larry Brown's staff in Detroit in 2004, when they beat the Lakers in the NBA Finals. There were three holdovers from that team to the one he coached from 2009-11: Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince and Ben Wallace.

"One person I will bring up is Rip Hamilton," Kuester said. "Rip and I have a very good relationship. We had a conversation where we came to an understanding. I felt very comfortable at the end of the conversation."

While he declined to say what they spoke about, Kuester added:

"Sometimes, in all situations, it's not always what's being done on the floor. There's a lot of things that are outside that are either pulling a player to go in a different direction or feeling uncomfortable or whatever. "

Kuester's most telling -- still very reserved -- quote was about Karen Davidson, after prefacing it by saying she couldn't have treated him any nicer:

"It's like anything in life, if your heart is not in your work, then you're not going to be successful. A lot of times I think we were in the middle of a lot of situations."

The whole article can be found here (H/T MFMP and C$), and it is worth a few minutes of your time.