Pistons to turn attention toward Cavs assistant Kuester

While no final decision has yet been made, Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach John Kuester is the leading candidate for the Detroit Pistons head coaching job, according to sources, and is expected to get the job officially as soon as Wednesday.

Kuester is familiar to the Pistons, and president of basketball operations Joe Dumars, having served on Larry Brown's staff in Detroit in 2004 when the Pistons won the NBA championship. He has established himself as one of the league's better offensive teachers, most recently spending the last two years in Cleveland helping develop the Cavaliers' halfcourt offense into a more diversified attack -- even though the Cavs still get the ball to LeBron James as much as possible.

He has been an NBA assistant for more than a decade, with coaching stops in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Orlando and Boston as well as Detroit and Cleveland. He came to the NBA from the college ranks, where he was an assistant for Rick Pitino at Boston University before succeeding him as head coach. He also was the head coach at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. for five years before going to the Celtics in 1990.

Kuester was one of three coaches that the Pistons had selected as finalists last week, after Dumars fired Michael Curry after just one season. But TNT analyst Doug Collins announced he was not interested in the job last week, and discussions with former Mavericks head coach Avery Johnson broke down over money and years, with the talks ending Tuesday morning. Detroit then turned to Kuester and Celtics assistant Tom Thibodeau, but the Pistons quickly coalesced around Kuester.

"Nice man, don't know much about him as a coach," Collins wrote in a text message to the Associated Press on Tuesday. "Really quality guy/gentleman."

Kuester will be the fifth head coach hired by Dumars since he took over as team president in 2000. He has hired some of the league's premier coaches during that time, including Brown, Rick Carlisle and Flip Saunders, but none of them has lasted more than three seasons.

The Pistons are clearly in a rebuilding mode, revamping their team from a veteran-laden one to a franchise counting on players in their mid-20s.

Detroit is expected to sign free agents Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva to five-year contracts Wednesday, essentially plugging them in for Chauncey Billups and Rasheed Wallace.

Gordon is 26 and Villanueva turns 25 next month, potentially entering the prime of their careers, after Billups and Wallace were at their best when Detroit won the NBA title five years ago.

Kuester will have an interesting choice to make if the roster remains intact.

While the 6-foot-11 Villanueva can easily slip into the depleted frontcourt, the 6-3, 200-pound Gordon does not seem to have a spot because he's a natural shooting guard as is Richard Hamilton.

Gordon was voted the NBA's top reserve in 2005 and if he accepts that role again, the Pistons would have an intriguing three-guard rotation with him, Hamilton and 23-year-old Rodney Stuckey.

Gordon or Hamilton may have a problem with coming off the bench, though, and Detroit's next coach could have to deal with poor chemistry just as Curry did.

Before the Pistons endured misery last season, they won the 2004 NBA title under Brown and came within a win of repeating with him in the middle of a six-year streak of advancing to at least the Eastern Conference finals.

The 54-year-old Kuester played for the Dean Smith-led Tar Heels. He was drafted in the third round of the 1977 NBA draft by the Kansas City Kings and played for them, Denver and Indiana during his three-season career in the league.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.