As a lifelong basketball fan and the son of a college basketball star from the late forties, very rarely do I see an NBA story that carries a personal connection for me. But I'm happy to say, there's a story to tell.



















Earlier this week, the Detroit Pistons hired former Cleveland Cavalier assistant John Kuester as their head coach. As I saw Kuester's hiring being reported, I listened to various commentators routinely list the various stops throughout the course of his coaching career. He had been an assistant in the NBA with Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, New Jersey, Orlando, and most recently Cleveland since 1995. They also routinely mention his two college head coaching jobs at Boston University and George Washington. They don't mention what happened at George Washington that preceded the five year gap in Coach Kuester's resume. In the 1988-89 season he presided over one of the worst seasons in NCAA history, where his GW squad compiled a 1-27 record. As a sophomore at GW, at the time I was quite the basketball fan. I didn't miss a home game that season. I saw the entire train wreck unfold from start to finish. And Kuester was the catalyst.









I carry a very unique perspective on that particular season. I lived in a dorm with all of the players. I knew most of them personally and was very close friends with two players in particular, one being a team captain. But it didn't take an insider to see what went wrong in that historically horrific season. As things got bad for GW that season, the players slowly quit on Kuester. Then, worse than that, Kuester quit on his kids. Even through that, I never held Kuester in harsh judgement because the circumstances were exceedingly difficult as the avalanche started rolling down the hill. However, there is one thing I heard that I believe defined Coach Kuester during that miserable campaign.







One of the captains of that 1988-1989 team was junior Mike Jones. Mike was a 6'6" 210 lb. power forward who night in and night out was playing against much bigger opponents. The most notable being former Phoenix Sun first round draft pick (#7 overall) Tim Perry who played for Temple University. Mike was a physical player who always played with a ton of emotion. By the tail end of that season, Kuester had sucked all of the emotion out of him. The biggest indictment of Kuester I heard out of Mike's mouth came on the morning of the Dec. 10, 1988 home loss to Rutgers. Mike didn't even want to go to the gym that day because he knew they could beat Rutgers, but no else on the team believed Kuester could help them win. His players didn't see him as adding value.





A player doesn't have to love a coach to play well for him. A player has to believe that the coach is an asset. Why do the Orlando Magic players still appreciate Stan Van Gundy even though he's constantly berating them? Because they believe that Stan adds value towards their shared goal of winning. When players stop believing in a coach, most times its on the coach. And in college basketball, its always the coach's fault if the players stop believing in him. Kuester lost his kids early that season with no ability to get them back.





Part of why it went down that way could be explained in this next anecdote. My father, Burt Geltzeiler, grew up in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey. He was a college basketball player for Newark-Rutgers from 1945-1950. And from what I understand, he was a very good college basketball player, averaging 22 points per game in 1950 and was drafted by the Tri City Hawks (now the Atlanta Hawks) in the 7th round by Tri City general manager Red Auerbach, but I digress.





Before John Kuester coached the GW Colonials, their head coach was a Bobby Knight disciple named Gerry Gimelstob, who hailed from the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey. Gimelstob coached GW from 1981-1985. In the fall of 1983, my father received a phone call from Gerry's younger brother Barry Gimelstob. Even though Gerry and Barry were younger than my father, he knew them both from the neighborhood. As my dad would tell it to me, all of the best jewish athletes knew each other well. Barry had called my dad to assist in the recruiting of a Jewish basketball player in Philadelphia who hailed from Russia named Max Blank. Blank had been dubbed by scouts as "The Jewish Larry Bird". He was a 6'9" 240 lb power forward with a silky smooth jump shot and a tough demeanor that belied his ability. Barry would proceed to explain that Blank's high school coach, Hal Reinfeld, was giving the Gimelstobs a difficult time in allowing them access to recruit his player. Reinfeld was very protective of Blank. He had just come to this country from Russia as a senior in high school and in his one year in Philadelphia. He was first team All-City with former NBA player Jerome "Pooh" Richardson, among others.





After a few phone calls back and forth, Reinfeld told Gerry Gimelstob was that the only way Gimelstob could talk with Blank, was if Reinfeld got word that Gimelstob was a good guy. And the only guy Reinfeld knew from the Weequhaic was Reinfeld's old friend from the army, my father, Burt Geltzeiler. My father was very happy to oblige and called Reinfeld. As they say in show business, the rest is history. Blank and Gimelstob hit it off and Blank committed to play at GW.





Unfortuantely, this real life story does not have a Hollywood ending. In the Fall of 1984, Blank's freshman year, he blew out his knee playing in a tournament known as the Roundball Classic. In February 1985, Gimelstob was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette as saying that Blank's future is in doubt. The 1984-85 season would be Gimelstob's final one as GW's head basketball coach.





Kuester's first season as coach at GW was 1985-86. I arrived there as a freshman. One of the first weekends my parents came to Washington DC to visit me coincided with fall basketball practice. So, of course, my dad wanted to go down to the gym and check out the player he had a hand in recruiting. We watched practice from the catwalk on the 2nd deck. I'll never forget my father's reaction when he saw Blank lumbering around in his big bulky knee brace. He looked at me with a blank stare (no pun intended) and said, "Thats him??? Max was a shadow of the player he had heard about. But something struck both of us about Blank that day. No matter how hard it was for him to move, he never stopped working.



When the season started and I saw Max on the court, he actually looked a little better. He still didn't move well because of the knee, but he was a good shooter, an instinctive rebounder and a physical player. He certainly was an asset on the court. The following season, Kuester's 1-27 masterpiece, he used Max less and less. Mike Jones and I used to discuss it all the time. Mike grew up in Willingboro, New Jersey, just over the Walt Whitman bridge from Philadelphia where Max played high school ball. Mike knew of Max in high school and always raved to me how good he was before he blew the knee out. Mike also told me that all of the guys on the team felt that Max could help the cause if Kuester played him more. And Mike liked Max. Most of all Mike considerd him a good guy and it takes one to know one.



I got the opportunity towards the tail end of the 1988-89 season to talk with Max one night. Max had dated a girl that I previously dated. I was out one night at our local watering hole, The Exchange, with Mike. Max was in the bar that night and Mike decided that he was going to have a little fun with Max and I by comparing our notes on this girl we both dated. He called Max over to us at the bar and started in. Max and I both got a big laugh out of it and then I told Max who my dad was and asked him if he remembered him. Max did remember him and the two of us hit it off. Max told me that night that he had accepted the fact relatively early that the knee injury would derail his NBA dreams. He also lamented the fact that Gerry Gimelstob was no longer his coach, because he felt like Gimelstob cared about him. Despite the knee injury he felt like he could have been a productive college player. He told me he felt like Kuester treated him "like trash." Max felt like Kuester disposed of him and disregarded him because he was not one of Kuester's guys and no longer had the ability to help Kuester advance. Later on, Mike confirmed to me that all of the guys liked Max a lot and felt very badly for the way Kuester treated him. Max had only been in the U.S. one year when he enrolled at GW. He was still learning the language. Kuester wanted nothing to do with helping him socially or academically. Kuester didn't believe in Max and in return, his players didn't believe in him. Is this a coach you would want to lead your NBA franchise?



My story comes from a slanted perspective. I knew some of Kuester's players well and liked them. And they didn't respect Kuester in the slightest. In the interest of fairness, Kuester always had a big fan in Larry Brown. Kuester was a key assistant with him in Philadlephia and on Brown's 2003-2004 Detroit Pistons championship team. Brown and Kuester are both members of the North Carolina Tar Heel fraternity. And it is certainly conceivable and reasonable for a man to grow into his craft over the course of 20 years. But I do not think that one can argue the point that his leadership skills in his last head coaching job, 20 years ago, were pretty much nonexistent. And his people skills weren't much better.

The man who hired Kuester last week, Pistons GM Joe Dumars is a highly respected executive in the NBA. He gets credit for putting together the only championship team we have seen in the last 30 years that was devoid of a superstar, that being the Pistons 2003-2004 team. However he has presided over two of the largest blunders we have seen in the last decade. In the 2003 draft, he selected the infamous Darko Milicic with the #2 pick, leaving franchise players like Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade on the board. And last season, he shipped out Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson in a cost cutting move ( a trade I liked by the way) which propelled Denver to the Western Conference finals and secured Detriot's position as the #8 seed and cannon fodder for the Cavaliers in the first round. Before all is said and done, I think this Kuester hire will be an unmitigated disaster for the Pistons. It won't be all Kuester's fault. Dumars has assembled a roster of one dimensional selfish players. New free agent signings Ben Gordon and Charlie Villaneuva are liabilities. Villaneuva is a weak defensive player who doesn't rebound. And Gordon is a chucker who doesn't defend. They have no quality big players and a point guard in Rodney Stuckey who Dumars seems to think is a lot better than he is. It will be a perfect group for Kuester. Doug Collins and Avery Johnson both turned down the job before it was offered to Kuester. Yes, it was about money (Detroit is presently paying 3 coaches), but I can't help but think that if the right team was assembled, one Johnson or Collins would have taken the job for the money offered.

My last point on Kuester is about the job he did as Cleveland's lead assistant last season. Thise of you who regularly read this space, know that I was very critical of the way the Cavs ran their offense in the Eastern Conference finals against Orlando. Their offense was very scattered with no thought of tempo control whatsoever and because of that, among other things, the Orlando Magic took care of them rather easily. Cleveland coach Mike Brown handled the defense. The offense was handled by one, John Kuester. Good luck Detroit. You're going to need it.

Back next week with opinions and such on the free agent signing period. Giddyap. Y'all be cool.