Pistons lose loose ball, Stan Van Gundy loses tenuous grip on joy
With just over eight minutes remaining in the fourth quarter of a nip-and-tuck battle between the Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons, Boston big man Amir Johnson missed a short hook shot. In the ensuing scramble for the rebound, neither club could come up with possession before it went out of bounds; this led the officials to call for a jump ball.
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That seems to me like a pretty reasonable outcome, one scarcely worth gnashing one’s teeth or pounding one’s breast over … but then, I’m not Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy.
That outpouring of emotion — such angst, such sturm and drang, such commitment! — over a comparatively innocuous and forgettable possession is A) classic Sideline SVG and B) wasn’t Stan’s only camera-ready moment of the evening. Check out his response to Pistons reserve Anthony Tolliver leaving Celtics big man Kelly Olynyk all alone to fire a buzzer-beating 3-pointer at the end of the first quarter:
“I was really surprised because it was A.T., and the one thing with him is he’s usually dialed in,” Van Gundy said after the game, according to David Mayo of MLive.com. “He played 6 feet off of him and just let him walk into a rhythm three. I was not calm on that one.”
Again, you might ask yourself: why is Stan feeling such pain over seemingly small-potatoes single possessions over the course of the game? The answer: there are no small-potatoes possessions. Only small actors. And SVG ain’t one of them.
As it turned out, Stan was stressin’ over nothin’. After falling behind by as many as 13 points and entering the final frame trailing by nine, the Pistons stormed back in the closing stanza behind the dynamic duo of point guard Reggie Jackson and center Andre Drummond, tightened defense and timely shotmaking from veteran Anthony Tolliver and rookie Stanley Johnson to earn a 99-94 win that improved Detroit to 20-16, good for seventh place in an improved Eastern Conference.
So at first Stan was like:
But then, Stan was like:
… which, I mean, isn’t quite smiling, but is still an improvement!
And yet, of course, Van Gundy would prefer it if his team didn’t come out and give up 33-point first quarters, putting itself in the sort of holes that give him heartburn.
“We’ve had a lot of these type of games this year,” he said after the game, according to Ken Powtak of The Associated Press. “The problem with it is, as I just said to them, is we’ve done this so many times, I think we’re starting to fall into, ‘We don’t need to play until the fourth quarter,’ and that can be dangerous because these games can start to turn on you.”
Until his charges fully internalize that message, you can bet that SVG will continue to emphasize it by externalizing his anxiety about it … much to the delight of NBA camera operators and fans everywhere.
Hat-tip to SB Nation.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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