In a season full of surprise improvements Stan Van Gundy’s is most impressive

The Pistons were back and forth with the Miami Heat and Stan Van Gundy went with the line-up of Ish Smith, Langston Galloway, Luke Kennard, Tobias Harris and Anthony Tolliver.

Look at that line up again.

That was a lineup I don’t think anyone would have imagined SVG would ever have gone with in the past. And that lineup delivered. Big time.

Stan was, before this season, known for sticking with a 9-10 man rotation that only varied due to injury.

Stan’s obvious willingness since game one to use his full deck of cards has been as big a revelation as Andre Drummond’s new-found ability at the foul line.

And it’s not just his lineups that have impressed. It’s his move to more motion-based offense vs his tried and true reliance on the pick and roll. It’s his brilliant use of Drummond as a point center and fixture of the offense that is not Andre as a post up center but as a facilitator. It was his decision as a GM to jettison a mercurial shooting guard in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to welcome in the rock steady (if somewhat long-two happy) lock-down defender and absolute professional and undeniable locker room presence in Avery Bradley.

And bringing back Anthony Tolliver. And drafting Luke Kennard. And bringing in a many-times-looked-over center in Eric Moreland. And “overpaying” Langston Galloway. And, controversially, deciding Boban may have been a reach.

Stan is doing just about everything right. Even his postgame pressers where he says the team isn’t doing anything right. He’s at the center of all of it and he is rightly being talked about as a man in the running for coach of the year.

This season looked like it was falling apart before it even began and now the Detroit Pistons are 10-3, with the same record as the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets.

Who would’ve seen this coming. No one, no one but perhaps the mastermind who has tirelessly built this team.

Stan Van Gundy. Give it up. It’s getting close to time for coming up with a new name for this team. Bad Boys. Going to Work...now?

Build a Wall? Little Ceasars’ Pleasers? Help me...let fly in the comments below and above all bask in the beauty that is our commander-in-chief