When the New York Knicks played in Detroit on Tuesday night, many thought of it as just one regular season game, but not for Pistons‘ head coach Stan Van Gundy.
On the other side of court was his former player, Brandon Jennings, who he gave credit for saving their team's 2014-2015 season.
That year was a tough one for the Pistons as they started their campaign with a 5-23 record and made a stunning move when they waived their biggest signing from a season ago, Josh Smith, to save some cap room and cut-down losses. What followed was totally unexpected as they played .500 basketball with Jennings leading the way, until he was forced to miss the remainder of the season due to a ruptured achilles heel.
Van Gundy recalled his experience from that year and explained what the 27-year-old point guard did and only had good words to say about him.
Per Matthew B. Mowery of The Oakland Press:
“He saved our season two years ago. I mean, absolutely saved it. We were 5-23 and headed nowhere. Things were going very, very badly and we made a couple of roster moves, but he just took over. He played probably the best stretch of basketball over 10 or 12 games that I have ever had anybody play — and I’ve had good players — and probably the best 10 to 12 games of his career.”
“He was fantastic, turned our season around, and got us headed back towards competitiveness.”
Now that both parties have already moved on, the 57-year-old bench tactician wishes nothing but the best for Jennings and hopes he can resurrect his career in New York and be the best player that he can become. Van Gundy also said he will never forget what Jennings did for him and said coaching him was a fun experience.
“I’ll never forget what he did. He saved my sanity, on top of everything else. I couldn’t have gone many more weeks with the way we were going. and it really became fun to coach that team. It had been probably the worst coaching experience I’d had to that point, and Brandon’s energy was a huge part of getting it turned around, so it was fun to go out there for me.
“On a personal level, I owed him a lot.”
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