Pistons introduce Frank as new head coach

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Lawrence Frank couldn't talk about Charlie Villanueva, Rodney Stuckey, Tracy McGrady and the other miscreants from last year's debacle of a Pistons season.

The new Detroit Pistons coach made his message clear anyway.

"We have to reclaim the Pistons culture," he said during Wednesday's press conference. "That's a culture of hard work."

Because of the rules imposed by the NBA during its lockout, Frank wasn't allowed to utter the name of a single player.

"This is going to be a little difficult because of the situation we are in," he said. "I can't talk in specifics or about the players, so I'll have to be a lot more vague than I normally try to be."

Instead, he talked about the legacy of the franchise, dating back to the "Bad Boys" era when Joe Dumars was the shooting guard, not the president.

"You look at the numbers — six straight years in the conference finals, playoffs in eight of the last 10 season and those three titles," he said, gesturing at the replica banners hanging in the practice facility. "There are only five teams in the NBA with three of those, and this is one of them. That's an honor."

At the moment, it is a tainted honor at best. When the NBA finally gets back to work, Frank will be left with the carcass of a roster that went 57-107 in two seasons under John Kuester, and made national headlines with last season's buffoonery.

The lowlight was the "Roundball Revolution", when seven players skipped a shootaround in Philadelphia, leaving Kuester to play that night's game with a one-man bench. Kuester feuded with Rip Hamilton for months, couldn't get Stuckey to go back into games and was openly criticized by everyone from McGrady to Austin Daye.

Fittingly, Kuester's last home game as Detroit's head coach won't be remembered for the final score, but for Tom Gores dancing to Journey and Villanueva being dragged away from the Cleveland locker room by the police.

Frank couldn't talk about any of that, but he said that he will start the next season without judging last year's actions.

"Everyone gets a clean slate," he said. "That's how it has to work. Your scrapbooks don't mean anything in this league."

He also knows that he's not going to earn anyone's respect with his less-than-imposing physique — his first line at the press conference was that he had forgotten his booster seat — or his record on the court. Frank never played organized basketball, even in high school.

"I was like a bad Hollywood actor — all I ever heard was 'cut, cut, cut, cut,'" he said. "My senior season, the coach put his arm around me and told me I had a ton of courage, but I was still cut."

Frank, though, has something Michael Curry and Kuester didn't have — coaching experience. He coached the Nets from 2003-09, taking them to the playoffs four times.

"Even before we started the process, I had a great deal of respect for Lawrence because of the battles we've had against him over the years," Dumars said. "That only increased as we went through the search process."

The Pistons took nearly two months to hire Frank, which Dumars said was due to the input of new owner Tom Gores.

"In the past, we've done this faster, but working with Tom and his people, they have a system for big hires, and we all considered this a very big hire," Dumars said. "We are desperate to find a long-term head coach, because we are very unhappy with the way the last few years have gone."

Far from being upset with the delay, Dumars is convinced it brought in the right coach.

"Because we took so much time over this, we got to know the candidates extremely well before we made our decision," he said. "In the past, we haven't gotten to know them until after they were hired."

So Frank is finally in place, and he has a strategy to get the franchise "back onto the right track."

Someday, he might even get a chance to use it.