The Pistons and Stan Van Gundy will no longer be working together. Detroit will immediately begin searching for a new coach and president of basketball operations, the team announced Monday.

The Detroit Pistons announced today that Stan Van Gundy will not return as the team's President of Basketball Operations and Head Coach. The search process for new basketball leadership, including a new head of Basketball Operations and a new Head Coach, will start immediately.

"We have decided that this change is necessary to take our basketball organization to the next level," said Pistons owner Tom Gores. "This was a very difficult decision and we did not come to it lightly. I am grateful to Stan for everything he's done for the Pistons and for the City of Detroit. He rebuilt the culture of our basketball team, re-instilled a winning attitude and work ethic, and took us to the playoffs two years ago. He went all-in from day one to positively impact this franchise and this community.

"But over the past two seasons our team has not progressed, and we decided that a change is necessary to regain our momentum," Mr. Gores said, emphasizing that Mr. Van Gundy, who has a year remaining on his contract, wanted to return.

This marks the end of a four-year period where Van Gundy was not only coach, but had full control over roster decisions. For a few years it was popular across the NBA to give accomplished coaches control of both team operations and coaching duties, but teams appear to be going in the opposite direction now. 

An earlier report said that team owner, Tom Gores, wanted to keep Van Gundy as coach, but he wanted to make changes to the front office. Van Gundy was reportedly resisting those changes.

Those front office changes likely involved Van Gundy having less control over roster decisions, or maybe a demotion all together. Whatever the reasoning, this leaves the Pistons in a spot where they have to make some important decisions in regards to their future.

The Pistons made a lot of moves under Van Gundy that made sense in the short-term. However, they don't have much potential or youth on the roster and they made a mid-season trade for Blake Griffin. Detroit will need to make new hires with its current roster in mind. In one sense, having a roster that is meant to win sooner than later might be appealing for some, but the lack of flexibility will be a hard sell for a lot of front office-types. 

One also has to wonder what this means for the future of Van Gundy. After his failure with the Pistons it wouldn't be a surprise to see him take a short sabbatical from coaching. He's implied in the past that the Pistons could be his last stop, and he's always had interests outside of basketball. This could very well be the end of Van Gundy's career as a coach.