Steve Clifford, by acclamation, turned in one of the NBA's best coaching jobs a season ago, taking the moribund Charlotte Bobcats – before they again became the Hornets – to the playoffs with a 43-39 record.
Today he's lugging around the same 10-game losing streak that burdens his longtime friend and mentor, Stan Van Gundy.
"I've talked to him, but we certainly don't have wisdom to offer each other," Van Gundy said after Pistons practice Friday afternoon. "Neither one of us has figured it out. In a moment of trying to get out of myself a little bit, I called him the other day, concerned about him. You get so caught up in yourself and what's going on sometimes that you forget about the rest of the world."
At least they can commiserate. Van Gundy talks frequently with his brother Jeff and he's heard from him and others as the Pistons have gone three weeks since their last win – Nov. 14 at Oklahoma City. But ...
"Here's the thing. I get words of wisdom and counsel from a lot of people, but quite honestly not very many of them have ever been through this. You're sort of on your own on this."
If there's any comfort to be taken, it's found in the practice gym, where Van Gundy again Friday saw a team that continues to staunchly battle the demons that arise from within when a team endures stretches of nothing but failure.
"I thought our guys today were – as they have been – good in practice. Their effort was up. They concentration was great. We're still having trouble getting the ball in the basket. That's got to change. In games, we have lapses, there's no question, and we can't get away with the lapses because our margin for error is nil. But we haven't quit on a game yet. I give them a lot of credit for that. For all of them, this isn't what anybody hopes for; this isn't what anybody expected. We're 3 and 16 and 10 in a row. They gave great effort the other night at Boston and they came in here today and gave a great effort."
He's tweaking the offense, but without much in the way of practice time available realizes it's just as critical to try refining the things that are working reasonably well. One of the handicaps facing Van Gundy is the stark reality that, up and down his roster, most players are not playing to individual expectations.
"I've never been through that," he said. "Brandon (Jennings) was actually playing at a career-best level until the last two and since he got that thumb injury (that forced him to miss three games). Greg's (Monroe) played pretty close to expectations. He had three bad games (in a row) but of the (17) he's played, he's played to expectations. And everybody else has pretty well struggled."
More recently, he says, "our perimeter players have trended the other way, but our big guys have been up. Again, you're dealing right now with so much mental stuff that's as tough as anything you're dealing with physically."
To help the offense – and to help ease the pressure Van Gundy senses his players are feeling – he spent a chunk of Friday's practice stressing the desire to play with more flow offensively and not call plays from the bench as often.
"The next few games, you'll see us hopefully not call as many plays and just come down the court unpredictably with sets and movement and screens, which I think will help us out," Kyle Singler said.
"We've got to play at a better tempo. We've got to move the ball better, create better shots for each and then they've got to make them," Van Gundy said. "We're not maybe getting as many good shots as we should, but we're still getting plenty of makeable shots that we're not getting in the basket. That's going to change at some point. My experience has been it just takes one or two games and then the weight falls off everybody's shoulders and the ball starts going down."
"There are times we're getting wide-open shots and we're not making those. We can definitely shoot a better field-goal percentage," Singler said. "I'm sure if we win ballgames, there's just a better rhythm, there's a better flow, the dynamic of the game, the dynamic of the team just dramatically changes. We just need a spark. We need a flame to get us going in the right direction."