The Pistons thoroughly enjoyed their week in Las Vegas training with UFC fighters, but Stan Van Gundy is in no danger of losing any to a career switch.
“It made me realize how much I love my career,” Reggie Jackson grinned after his Tuesday workout at the Pistons practice facility. “Just their endurance. I don’t understand how they’re boxing all day with their gloves, their shoulders on fire – I know mine were. I had to fight to mentally keep my arms up.”
The primary motivation behind the trip – which included 12 Pistons players plus several members of their training and support staffs – was team bonding leading into training camp, which opens in three weeks. It was an idea that came from the players, led by the new young leadership core of Jackson, Andre Drummond and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
On that score, Jackson said the trip was “amazing.”
“We hung out and went out to have some dinners, but just being around each other, working out, seeing how hard everybody works,” he said. “We all tried to hold each other accountable, so I think that was a great experience for us and hopefully it leads to success for the season for us.”
“It was great – it was a lot of fun,” Anthony Tolliver said. “We had some great team sessions in there, really got to know each other a little bit more in a different environment. Here on the court and in the weight room is what we’ve seen of each other pretty much the whole time since we’ve been together, but getting in a different environment and learning something about work ethics, not giving up, about a lot of different things, tells a lot about your character. It was very beneficial. It’s also a great workout.”
Both players nominated Aron Baynes as the Pistons player with the best chance to make a career as a mixed martial arts combatant.
“He was the most comfortable out there,” Tolliver said. “He’s done some Muay Thai training before, he said. I feel like he would be the one who would make the transition the best. He just enjoyed himself. The rest of us were a little hesitant the first couple of days, but from the very first workout he was out there excited, ready to go and wanting to punch somebody.”
“Aron has that mental makeup where he’s a little bit different,” Jackson said of Baynes, born in New Zealand and raised in Australia. “An old teammate was from New Zealand, Steven Adams. I’m sure he would make the transition well. Their genetic makeup is just a little bit different than ours. Aron loved being out there every second that he could. He was more excited than anybody.”
Pistons equipment manager John Coumoundouros, who has two professional MMA fights under his best, went with another player.
“Kentavious (Caldwell-Pope), hands down,” he said. “His speed and quickness, athleticism – he’d be the one. The other guys, on sheer size, no one would want to face off against them. But he was really impressive.”
Coumoundouros predicted Pistons players who went into the week with a little trepidation over the unknown would come away finding it an enjoyable experience and he was proven right.
“They all enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun,” he said. “What made it the most fun is we had a lot of competition-based training. Our guys would go against each other in two drills. A drill we call sprawling – touch the other person’s foot and not let them touch yours – and another drill where we put a towel in the back of your shorts and the other person had to grab the towel. It’s all about body control and moving around the ball and keeping the other guy away from you.”
And he saw a group of players – many of whom met for the first time after an off-season of heavy roster churning – form quick bonds.
“Completely unbelievable,” he said. “The guys were able to get together outside of training to get to know each other during the training. That was the best part of it.”