Stan Van Gundy does not get emotional over bricks and steel.
However, the Detroit Pistons president and coach has much admiration for the late Bill Davidson who built The Palace of Auburn Hills. Once a gleaming example of what NBA arenas could be like. Twenty-nine years later little wear and tear is visible.
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Still on Monday the Pistons will play their final game at The Palace.
Next season they will join the Detroit Red Wings as new tenants of Little Caesar’s Arena in Detroit after spending 39 seasons in Oakland County – 10 at the Silverdome (1978-1988) and 29 at The Palace starting with the 1988-89 season.
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The Pistons will still use their practice facility on the grounds of The Palace for a few more years until the new one in Detroit is finished, but the games will be back in Detroit.
Van Gundy is a short-timer with the Pistons, just wrapping up his third season but he understands the attachment of the Pistons fans.
“The crowds are always really good. We played a playoff series here in each spot (when he was head coach in Miami and Orlando). I think this is a great building and has been a great place to play for the Pistons,” Van Gundy said this week. “I think there are a lot of fans with a lot of really, really good memories here and coming down to the last game it’s pretty meaningful.”
Twenty-nine seasons, three NBA championships and making the Eastern Conference Finals six straight years beginning in 2003.
Fans? They had a few. From Jan. 19, 2004, to Feb. 4, 2009 the Pistons sold out 254 straight games at The Palace. They also had another stretch of 245 straight sell-outs.
Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer, Chauncey Billups, Dennis Rodman, Richard “Rip” Hamilton, Ben Wallace, Adrian Dantley, Rick Mahorn, Rasheed Wallace and Vinnie Johnson – the fans have seen them all in their prime.
Hall of Famer Chuck Daly was the coach when the Pistons arrived in 1988 and 13 others were in and out of the coach’s seat before Van Gundy was hired three years ago.
“I think to the people this is sentimental too, I think that is more it, the memories of the games in here and hopefully a real appreciation for a guy that had a lot of foresight in building this building,” Van Gundy said. “It’s the people that should be at the basis of any sentimentality. I mean it’s bricks and steel and stuff, so you don’t cry over that, but certainly there have been good memories in this building for people and very good memories of the guy who had the foresight to build it.”
Certainly the building, sitting on 61.1 acres, has been good to the Pistons and the community. It’s not just home to the Pistons, but averages 200 events per year.
“The guy I think about all the time when I am in here, and we’re coming down to the stretch and seeing him on the end line sitting there is Ethan Davidson. This is big to him. With Bill Davidson in the Hall of Fame and this building being so far ahead of its time and still one of the nicest buildings in the league among the oldest. I mean I think it’s a great tribute to Bill Davidson and the foresight he had,” Van Gundy said. “All the (NBA) buildings that have come after had been influenced by this building, so you’ve got to give him a lot of credit.”
Van Gundy, of course, is familiar with NBA arenas across the country and thinks The Palace still stands up.
“His foresight was incredible, nobody had put suites anywhere in buildings except at the very top – the hockey suites that you could look down on, they weren’t very good for basketball,” Van Gundy said. “Nobody had done that – he started it. Now you wouldn’t think of putting up a building that doesn’t have that. So he was way, way ahead of his time that’s one of the reasons he’s in the Hall of Fame and deservedly so.”
For the home team, the building stands up. The Pistons locker room has been moved and renovated often during the years.
However, visitors aren’t so enamored with the incredibly small visiting locker room.
“If you’re a visitor – because the NBA has instituted rules along the way on size of visitors locker rooms and things like – that that the older buildings don’t match up to,” Van Gundy said.
“As far as a home team you have everything you need. In terms of a building we could have played here for as long as we needed to. You get in a older building and there’s upkeep and all those things,” Van Gundy said.
“I think it was more of a great desire to be downtown. The building has served the Pistons organization extremely well. For people who have been here the whole time there should be a sense of pride in what Bill Davidson did, he started something here that has served the NBA very well.”
Indeed he did.
