Long road to the top

“I was always comfortable with what I was doing,’’ Kuester said. “I would have been fine continuing to be an assistant coach. It’s a great life. You meet great people. But did I want to someday be a head coach? Absolutely.’’

And now he is.

Kuester has been given the somewhat daunting task of making the Detroit Pistons relevant again. The Pistons are either (a) rebuilding, which a lot of people think or (b) reconfiguring on the fly to return to the elite of the East, where they had resided for much of the decade, which is the company line.

Either way, it’s a challenge for Kuester, who began his NBA odyssey as a video coordinator in Boston under Chris Ford. (He also worked for and succeeded Rick Pitino at Boston University.)

There is some talent waiting for him in Detroit, with Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince, both of whom he knows from his one previous year with the Pistons, 2003-04, which resulted in an NBA title. Kuester also knows Ben Wallace from that year, and Big Ben is making a return to the place where he made his name (and fortune). There are new free agents in Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva and promising young-uns Rodney Stuckey and Jason Maxiell.

In other words, it’s not the Sacramento Kings or Minnesota Timberwolves.

“I just keep thinking, ‘How lucky am I?’ ’’ said Kuester. “I feel blessed to be in this situation, in a great environment, with a great organization that wants to compete for a championship. The Pistons are one of the premier organizations in the league. They’re accustomed to winning.’’

While Kuester undeniably had paid his coaching dues, his name rarely surfaced on any list of “hot assistants’’ who seemed destined to land a head job. He did say that Cavaliers general manager Danny Ferry told him over the winter that he might expect to attract some interest at the end of the season, “but I never gave it much thought,’’ he said.

And until Pistons hoops boss Joe Dumars called him, Kuester had never interviewed for a head job. He had never gotten so much as a call for an interview.

But after brainstorming with Dumars, he called his wife, Tricia, and told her he thought the interview had gone exceedingly well and that he felt he had a good shot at the job. And when Dumars called with the offer, “Well, of course, I was ecstatic,’’ said Kuester. “You never know with these things, how they’ll go. But I thought, ‘Wow!’ It has taken a while to sink in, and then you realize that you have so much on your plate and so little time.’’

Kuester had a brief NBA playing career (he played college ball at North Carolina) and, after a couple of college jobs, he started his nonplaying NBA days by joining the Celtics in 1990. He spent seven years with Boston, the last two as an assistant to M.L. Carr.

Then came a six-year stint as Larry Brown’s assistant in Philadelphia. He stayed with Brown for the 2003-04 season in Detroit, starting a stretch in which he spent one year in four places (Detroit, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Orlando) before moving to Cleveland, where he spent the last two years with Mike Brown.

Kuester has brought in NBA coaching vet Brian Hill to be his lead assistant. Kuester worked under Hill in Orlando during the 2006-07 season. He said he will also have Darrell Walker and Pat Sullivan as assistants. And he can draw on a wealth of experience, having worked for Larry Brown, Mike Brown, Maurice Cheeks, Lawrence Frank, Hill, and, of course, Carr.

“What’s neat about that group is that every one of them either played in, or coached in, an NBA Finals,’’ Kuester said.

Here’s something else that’s neat. When Kuester last passed through Detroit, he lived at a suites-style hotel in Oakland, Mich., not far from the Palace of Auburn Hills, while his family remained in Philadelphia. This time around, he splurged - and got an actual house.

He can’t wiggle out of this one

He never got into a game, spending the first six weeks as an inactive or nonplaying Memphis Grizzly before being bought out of his contract. No one picked him up.

There were a couple of well-publicized brushes with the authorities - an arrest in Miami in January and another in Las Vegas in July, the latter of which resulted in three felony charges of kiting checks worth $1 million. (The actual debt when he was arrested was more than $822,000, and there is a hearing next month to see if there is enough evidence to proceed.)

But there also was a much less-publicized setback for the former Celtic in March, when an arbitrator ruled that he owed his former agent, Mark Bartelstein, more than $450,000 in unpaid fees. Bartelstein sought the money after Walker came up short on paying his 4 percent agent commission, apparently upset at Bartelstein for not being able to get him a new, lucrative deal. (The last two years of Walker’s last contract were not guaranteed because of concern about his knees.)

Bartelstein filed a grievance to get his money and arbitrator George Nicolau ruled in the agent’s favor March 19. Nicolau ordered Walker to make the back payments to Bartelstein within 10 days, but it is unclear whether that has happened. When reached, Bartelstein didn’t want to comment on the matter.

Walker, who has played for five teams over a 12-year career, is a free agent.

Etc.

Peter May is a former Celtics and NBA writer for the Globe.