Sullivan: 'I would have run to Detroit'

Pat Sullivan grew up in New Jersey and was working there, with another year on his contract as an assistant coach on Lawrence Frank’s staff with the Nets, when Joe Dumars changed coaches in June. Sullivan’s family is still nearby. One of his two brothers was really nearby – he was living with him. So you would guess that Sullivan faced a tortured decision when the Pistons offered him the chance to sign on under Michael Curry.

Not so much.

“It was really, really easy,” Sullivan told me this week. “Joe called me and started to talk and I said, ‘Joe, if this is what I think it is, would you call (Nets president) Rod Thorn and Lawrence Frank out of respect to New Jersey.’ He said, ‘You got it.’ I hung up the phone, he called them, I called him back and I said, ‘Joe, when do you want me there?’ That was it. Three phone conversations. It took no more than 10 minutes. I would have run to Detroit. That’s how much love I have for this organization.”

Sullivan spent the 2003-04 and 2004-05 seasons in Detroit as an assistant to Larry Brown, who shares Sullivan’s University of North Carolina roots. When Brown left the Pistons to go to the Knicks, Sullivan landed in his native New Jersey and spent the last three seasons with the Nets.

Sullivan played under the legendary Dean Smith at North Carolina and during his five years in Chapel Hill, including a redshirt season, the Tar Heels went to three Final Fours, including 1993 when Carolina beat Michigan – the infamous Chris Webber timeout game. As an assistant at Carolina, Sullivan went to three more Final Fours before leaving after a regime change to spend three seasons at North Carolina-Wilmington prior to sticking his toe in NBA waters with the Pistons.

What struck him about the atmosphere in Detroit, unlike anything else he’s experienced outside of Chapel Hill, is that the Pistons’ close-knit environment was “the closest thing to North Carolina basketball I’ve ever been around,” as he told Dumars.

“I was excited to come back here,” he said. “I know sometimes when you say ‘Detroit,’ people back East don’t understand. But I love being downtown. I have nothing but great things to say about the state, the city and the franchise. For me, it was a no-brainer to come back here.”

Sullivan barely knew Curry on a personal level before signing on for his second tour of duty with the Pistons. But Curry was aware of Sullivan from his two years spent with the NBA, especially his second season when Curry worked under Stu Jackson in NBA Operations and was based in New York.

“I wasn’t here in Detroit when Pat was here,” Curry told me last month, “but I knew people here spoke well of him and I saw him so much when I was New York going to games in Jersey.”

Curry watched Sullivan work with Nets reserves in the hours before tipoff, saw his diligence and teaching ability.

“Those were the things I was looking for when I put together a staff,” Curry said. “I wanted guys who had tremendous respect around the league and guys who were gym rats that were going to work really hard.”

In the nearly two months they’ve had together since Sullivan’s return, Sullivan is even more certain now that coming back was the right move.

“I had great respect for him as a player and what he did for the union,” Sullivan said, referencing Curry’s stint as president of the NBA players association. “I didn’t know him that well, but Joe talked to him about me from my past here. He’s very, very organized, he’s very disciplined, he’s very hard working. You can see the qualities he had as a player to make it into this league and be successful. It’s the same qualities I see in him as a head coach.

“He’s very diligent. He’s in there working. We’re always talking about things and he’s very receptive to ideas, which is a neat thing in a first-time head coach. He doesn’t have any insecurities. He doesn’t have a huge ego. If he thinks that’s the right way to do things, he’s going to do it and I have a lot of respect for him because of that.”

Check back over the next few days when I’ll give you Sullivan’s impressions of many of the young Pistons he worked with in the Las Vegas Summer League.

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