Coaching is a little like riding the world's biggest, most thrilling roller coaster to Stan Van Gundy. When it stops, you decide, "Wow, that was fun." But while it's ongoing, you're hanging on with both hands in abject terror.
"I've had seasons of 59 wins, three of those, and I never enjoy it," he said. "You're always looking to the next game as a coach in absolute fear of what could happen."
And next up for the Pistons is a guy who might inspire more absolute fear than anyone going right now. Or at least to a coach whose next game is against New Orleans and rising star Anthony Davis.
"There's a lot of great players in this league. I don't think anybody to this point of the season has had as good a year as Anthony Davis," Van Gundy said. "So right now, just for the first half of 2014-15, I think he's been in the best player in the NBA."
It's not been a great season for New Orleans. The Pelicans come to The Palace 18-19, though that's still a better record than the suddenly sizzling Pistons, who are 14-24 after a 9-1 streak has stunningly reversed the nightmarish 5-23 start. The Pelicans have lost three of four, including Monday at Boston, after making an off-season move for Omer Asik to pair with Davis that they thought would make them a Western Conference contender.
But whatever the team's struggles, Davis has played like an MVP candidate, averaging 24.1 points, 10.9 rebounds and nearly three blocked shots a game to lead the league by a wide margin in the latter category. Adding Asik allowed New Orleans to reduce Davis' minutes at center and to exploit the versatility of his offensive arsenal, which includes a face-up jump shot he first developed as a high school guard before sprouting 8 inches one summer and thrusting him onto the national stage.
"The guy can score inside and out. His jump shot is incredible and there's not much you can do to affect it – he's long, he's got a high release," Van Gundy said. "You've got to take away the easy ones he gets. You've got to take away the long shots. You've got to try to keep him of the offensive glass. And you're going to have to make good decisions going to the basket because he's there to block everything."
The Pelicans don't have a ton of depth, but they present a radically different look when they take Asik out of the game and bring in Ryan Anderson, an elite shooter at power forward known well to Van Gundy from their days together in Orlando. While Asik is in the game, at least, Van Gundy will have ample opportunity to pair Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe, who usually play together for about 15 minutes a game since the waiving of Josh Smith that coincided with the start of the 9-1 run.
"It's tough to get them a lot of time together, but a lot of that is who you're playing against," Van Gundy said earlier this week. "Most teams are spreading the floor out when they go to the bench. Greg can do it. Greg can get out and cover those people, but it's harder for him."
Drummond and Davis probably won't match up against each other when both teams are employing their bigger lineups. They were teammates – and the two youngest players, Drummond five months younger than Davis, who'll be 22 in March – on the gold medal-winning Team USA roster for its World Cup last summer.
"He's a great player," Drummond said. "There's nothing more to be said. He's an excellent player. How far he's come, the buzz that's around him now, the way he's been playing – pretty much putting up 30 a night, is really a testament to his staff down there and his work ethic. My draft peer and a close friend of mine, too, so I always watch his success and root him on."
New Orleans came tantalizingly close to landing both Davis and Drummond in that 2012 draft. They won the lottery when Davis was the clear-cut No. 1 pick and regarded even then as a franchise-altering talent after leading Kentucky to the national championship as a freshman. But the then-Hornets also had the No. 10 pick that year and as the draft began to unfold, Drummond – who going into his freshman season at UConn was considered a possibility to challenge Davis for the top spot – slid all the way to the Pistons at nine. One pick later, New Orleans selected Austin Rivers, traded this week to his father's Los Angeles Clippers in a three-way deal that landed Jeff Green in Memphis.
A Davis-Drummond frontcourt together in New Orleans? Now that would have given Stan Van Gundy something truly terrifying to consider.