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Pistons owner Tom Gores on Stan Van Gundy: 'I have absolute confidence in Stan'

Tom Gores and Stan Van Gundy. (Getty Images)
Tom Gores and Stan Van Gundy. (Getty Images)

If it were any other NBA year, we’d laugh this off.

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This is 2016-17, though. No coaches have been fired, and all the general managers made it to the league’s halfway point. It’s as if that when a team owner says he has your back, you can truly believe it. A vote of confidence, “absolute confidence” in Detroit Pistons head coach and president Stan Van Gundy in this case, is an actual vote of confidence this time around. It isn’t the prelude to a firing.

So confirmed Pistons owner Tom Gores this weekend, after a three-hour meeting with the coach/prez that he made his first official coach/prez hire, all the way back in 2014:

“I have absolute confidence in Stan,” Gores said. “We are having a hard time — and Stan and I are very real about that — but we also know we have a great group of guys and we believe they’ll work through this.”

Why all the cheery corroboration? Because things are less than ideal in Pistonland.

(Nobody calls it “Pistonland.”)

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The team stands at 19-24, following the end of its nasty Western road trip, prior to sparking things back up again on Wednesday at home against Atlanta. The squad is ghastly offensively and teetering on falling out of the top ten defensively; not the ideal mark for a team that has leaned heavily on two-way signings and acquisitions under not only Van Gundy and general manager, but predecessor Joe Dumars.

The team has wrung in 2017 by continuing the almost-unconscionable defensive slide that marked the end of 2016. A team meeting (“my ass”) didn’t fix things, nor did the return to health of Pistons point man Reggie Jackson.

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Detroit is ranked 10th in the East, 2.5 games in back of the No. 8 Charlotte Hornets for the final playoff spot. A miss would send Detroit right back to the low lottery mess it inherited in 2014 with Van Gundy, a second postseason whiff in three attempts by the basketball el jefe, in the third season of a five-year deal.

The overall el jefe, however, is brightening it up in public. From Rod Beard at the Detroit News:

“We’ve got a bump in the road and that’s what success is about — you have to work through it. It’s all about having rough times and your ability to work through,” Gores said. “I never worry about Stan because he wants to win; he’s the hardest worker I’ve ever seen in my life. I believe in him as a man and I believe in him as a strong person.”

Gores and Van Gundy had a face-to-face meeting that lasted almost three hours on Saturday, after which Gores felt comfortable with where the team stands — and where they can go in the remainder of the season.

“I think we’re going to make a run. I like our guys,” Gores said. “We’re going to make a run.”

The time to start would be now. Or, yesterday, as the Pistons looked formidable if not choppy in its win over the Lakers. Seven of the last nine Pistons games have taken place away from Auburn Hills, but the franchise will play two-thirds of its games at home between now and March, in what will act as the final year of the building that presided over a Pistons title in 1990 as well as 2004.

Before the Pistons move back to Detroit, though, they’d like some return. Its two brightest players (Andre Drummond and the emerging Kentavious Caldwell-Pope) were not drafted by Van Gundy, but Dumars, and while the team was stuck in an impossible rebuilding situation (kinda crummy in terms of draft position, incumbent talent and payroll flexibility, not bad enough to clear a clear path toward tanking), that fact hasn’t been lost on Pistons fans.

The team’s payroll – THE THIRD-HIGHEST IN THE NBA – also likely shouts at Tom Gores. However, the owner went on record in his consideration of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, 2017 restricted free agent and potential $20 Million Guy:

“I know Kentavious well. He is a hard worker, he’s reliable and he’s improving every day,” Gores said. “He should be a Piston — that’s just the bottom line. He has what it takes to be a Piston. He was a shy kid when I met him and he’s become a leader.”

The Pistons, between Van Gundy, Bower, Gores, KCP and Reggie Jackson, seem well-stocked with leaders unafraid to go on record. All they’d like now is a few more wins.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!