True Blue Pistons

2009-01-20T14:41:00.000-05:00

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Curry: 2 more games to gauge lineup

2009-01-17T18:44:00.001-05:00

Self-evaluation is an everyday reality of professional sports. It hasn’t normally been a terribly agonizing process for the Pistons during the Joe Dumars era. But a four-game losing streak – their first in four years – tends to make it so.

Michael Curry stopped short of saying changes are in the offing – in fact, he specifically said there isn’t necessarily another lineup change coming – but he did broadly hint that if the Pistons don’t turn a corner in tonight’s game with New Orleans and Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. late afternoon tip with Memphis, all bets are off.

When Curry was asked about 90 minutes before the New Orleans game if he’s convinced the small lineup can defend and rebound well enough to give the Pistons a chance to be successful, he didn’t beat around the bush.

“I haven’t been totally convinced yet,” he said. “I think we’re good enough, whichever way we decide to play, but we haven’t played defense and rebounded the ball as well as I would have liked with that group.” And then …

“So we’re really looking at today and Monday to see how our performance is. I’m not saying after that we’ll make another decision, but I thought regardless of the lineup, I thought if we shared the ball a little more and took care of some fast-break opportunities … we’re not talking like we are now, because we would have beat Charlotte and we would have beat Indiana and a tossup how that game in Oklahoma City would have gone.

“We’ll see. We’ll look at everything.”

Everything, presumably, includes continuing with the small lineup or reverting back to a more conventional lineup with Tayshaun Prince at small forward and Rip Hamilton at shooting guard. Both were banged up in Friday night’s loss at Oklahoma City, Prince straining a groin and Hamilton hyperextending an elbow.

Curry said his hunch was that Prince would play tonight, though he remains a game-time decision, as does Hamilton.

Jason Maxiell hasn’t played in consecutive games and Curry said that frustrates him as much as it does Maxiell and again brought up the difficulties of managing the rotation while experimenting with the small lineup.

“One of the big reasons I struggle with playing the small lineup is that it’s tough to play more than three bigs when Tayshaun is a 35-minute-a-night guy and he starts at the four. So you consider him a starter at the big, you’re really playing four bigs – Tay, (Rasheed Wallace), Amir (Johnson) and (Antonio McDyess).

“You have to have (Maxiell or Kwame Brown not play), but in the midst of having to figure out how to win the game, you can’t play everybody.”

But who plays and who doesn’t – and in what combinations - in the coming weeks appears to hinge to a great degree on how the Pistons play over the next two games.

Stay tuned.

And check Pistons.com later tonight for my report on the Pistons-New Orleans game.

Questions and comments on Keith's posts can be submitted via the Pistons Mailbag. Click here to submit your question.

Small ball and a rush to judgment

2009-01-16T10:19:00.005-05:00

In this brutal economy, we all need a backup plan. I know what mine isn't: counselor. My attempt to ease the swelling panic sweeping Pistons Nation after the back-to-back losses to Charlotte and Indiana appears to have had the opposite effect.

In sum, the reaction has been this: Don't dare tell us things aren't that bad! Throw us our lifejackets! And ... for the love of God, please, no more small ball!

To wit, this missive from Rob of Detroit: "The Pistons lost the game to Indiana because the small lineup gave up 31 points in the first quarter and allowed the Pacers to set the tempo. They got things back under control later with the big lineup, but by then it was too late. The big lineup in the fourth quarter was great, holding Indiana to 19 points, but that was only enough to force overtime. Had the small lineup not given away 31 points in the first quarter, it would have been a double-digit victory in regulation."

Except ... that's not the way it happened, Rob. You could look it up, as they say. So I did.

The Pistons went small for the first 7:26 of that first quarter and gave up 19 points. That extrapolates to 30.67 for the full 12 minutes. So the small lineup essentially yielded the same rate of points as the big lineup. I wouldn't argue that either group played defense very well, but you can't say one was any better than the other.

(And let me anticipate your response: "If the small lineup hadn't set a tone by giving up those 19 points in 7:26, the big lineup would have had an easier time stopping the bleeding." I would argue that the tone the small lineup set that most contributed to giving up 31 first-quarter points was playing too fast on offense. The Pistons got caught up playing at the Pacers' pace. Does anyone think Amir Johnson's presence in the starting lineup was going to have any impact on the pace at which the Pistons played on offense? I don't recall Amir ever being responsible for establishing the offense's rhythm.)

But the third quarter is really telling. They went small for the first 9:02 and gave up 11 points - their best defensive stretch of the night - and, again, they did it with their small lineup on the floor the entire way. They went big for the final 2:58 and gave up 10. So if the big lineup had given the Pistons three minutes of defense to end the third quarter like the small lineup did for the nine minutes to start it, the Pistons would have won going away.

For the record, I’m with Michael Curry on this: The Pistons are a better defensive team with Amir Johnson in the lineup at the four. The question is are they a better team overall? No, check that. The question is do they have the potential to be better with Stuckey, Hamilton, Iverson and Prince all on the floor at the same time or not?

And here's all I'm saying: I think those four players are good enough individually that you have to let them prove it, one way or the other. That's all. If the question is who starts, Rip Hamilton or Amir Johnson, well, at this point of their careers, I think the benefit of the doubt goes to the three-time All-Star.

I think that's what Michael Curry ultimately decided, too. You don't have to read too far between the lines to guess that Curry's first instinct is to go big. He's consistently said the Pistons are a better defensive team with two bigs on the floor - especially when one of them is Johnson, who, when he isn't collecting fouls like some people collect stamps, in bunches, can be a serious difference-maker on defense. And Curry hung on in the NBA - did more than hung on, started for a 50-win team in Detroit - almost solely because of his ability to defend.

But there are compelling reasons why the Stuckey-Iverson-Hamilton-Prince lineup deserves a full and fair chance to prove its mettle.

It's clear to everyone - much more clear than the big-small debate - that the Pistons are a better team with Stuckey on the floor. So then it really comes down to which one of those three other perimter players you're going to remove from the starting lineup. Since it could hardly be argued that taking Prince out of the lineup would augur well for the Pistons' defense, the debate has centered on Hamilton and Iverson.

And all I've maintained is this: If those two guys aren't giving the Pistons the things that have made them All-Stars - a dead-solid Hall of Fame lock in Iverson's case - then they have no realistic shot at competing for an NBA title. And the surest way for them to give the Pistons what they've got is to keep them in the starting lineup - in the roles with which they're comfortable.

Now, time might prove that it doesn't work. Time and experience might steer Michael Curry in another direction, and the thought of bringing one or the other off the bench might need to be broached.

But isn't the most prudent course to try it this way first? Just like the first nine minutes of the third quarter isn't a big enough sample size to prove the small lineup is superior, neither are the two games the Pistons have played since Hamilton returned - clearly, still not on his game - close to conclusive.

That's all I'm saying. Where the evidence is that has so many Pistons fans so certain that they'd be best served by having an All-Star sitting on the bench to start games just isn't clear yet to me.

Questions and comments on Keith's posts can be submitted via the Pistons Mailbag. Click here to submit your question.

Pistons fans: Come down from that ledge!

2009-01-15T12:13:00.003-05:00

If there's one truth I've come to learn about the athletes held up as the fiercest competitors, it's this: It's not so much the spoils of winning that drive them as their contempt for losing.

Perhaps the same applies to fans, because in the three seasons that I've been interacting with Pistons fans, I've come to understand this: While wins over the Lakers or Celtics cause the few to extrapolate NBA titles in the Pistons' immediate future, losses to the Bobcats and Pacers - as the Pistons have endured on successive nights - cause the many to predict the utter collapse of the franchise.

Those losses, of course, just happened to coincide with the return of Rip Hamilton after eight games missed with a groin injury - during which the Pistons ran off the last five of a seven-game win streak - and, more noteworthy, a return to the small-ball lineup that has drawn the wrath of Pistons fans out of all proportion to its relevancy.

At the risk of being accused of applying lipstick to the proverbial pig, things just aren't that bad, people.

Let's start with the small-ball mushroom cloud. Small ball had almost nothing to do with the Charlotte and Indiana losses the past two nights. The Pistons lost both games due to offensive sputtering in the final minutes - and the Pistons were big exclusively down the stretch against Indiana and for all but one possession against Charlotte.

The execution wasn't very good against the Bobcats - the Pistons had four turnovers down the stretch in addition to missing their final eight shots - but it really wasn't an execution issue against Indiana.

If you want to quibble about the Indiana game, you could question who took the shots. Rasheed Wallace knocked down two 3-pointers in the first three minutes of the game, then didn't hit another one in 11 tries until his final attempt of the night, a meaningless triple after the outcome had been sealed in overtime. Yet Wallace took not one but two triples on the first possession of overtime. He's made enough big ones in his career - and even this year - that you live with it and trust his confidence.

My only issue with the Indiana loss was why Rodney Stuckey, who was pretty much unguardable all night, wasn't in attack mode in the final minutes of regulation.

But let's think about that one, too. Stuckey has been a starter for a month. On his wings he has two of the most prolific scorers of their generation, Allen Iverson and Rip Hamilton. His other options aren't bad either - Wallace, Tayshaun Prince and Antonio McDyess.

And he's supposed to take over tight games? You don't think it's prudent for a 22-year-old to sort of ease into the "I'm the guy with the ball in his hands on every possession with the game on the line" mode?

The Pistons have enough chemistry issues now - and by "chemistry issues" I'm not implying conflict or ego clashing, but the natural shaking-out process that occurs when players long set in roles are suddenly confronted with changing circumstances around them that force those roles to change. The last thing they need is Stuckey forcing his way to the front of a pack that's already pretty crowded at the front.

It'll happen on its own terms. Rodney Stuckey is destined to be that guy, but one month into his promotion to the starting lineup amid a cast of 30-something All-Stars is a little much.

Hamilton's status is another thing. He's shot 8 of 25 in his two games back, most of them the kind of shots I start recording as two points (or three) when I've seen enough to know it's a shot he likes. With Hamilton, 9 times out of 10 you can safely predict the outcome of a shot before it's begun its downward arc.

He's missed those shots consistently the past two nights. No better example than the one he missed after taking the inbounds pass with 3.9 seconds to play at Indiana. Hamilton's probably an 80 percent career shooter from that spot, 15 feet out on the left baseline.

You think that shot had anything to do with the fact the Pistons had their small-ball lineup on the floor? Or do you think it's more likely that it had something to do with missing eight games with a groin strain and, because he was 4 of 12 after three quarters and not quite right yet, hadn't played a second of the fourth quarter until that moment?

The Hamilton injury was a setback to the Pistons from this standpoint: It cost them eight games of getting-to-know-you time for him, Iverson, Stuckey and Prince as they figure out their perimeter mojo.

I don't know how it'll all shake out. I don't know if there are enough touches in a 48-minute game, especially at the pace the Pistons prefer to play, to get all those high-level perimeter players the amount of shots they require to get to their comfort zone.

There's an argument out there that either Hamilton or Iverson should come off the bench. I won't dismiss it as baseless. It does make some sense. But there is this to ponder. Hamilton, Iverson, Prince and Stuckey are no worse than four of the Pistons' six best players. They're going to have to share the court at times. Does it matter that much if it's the first six to eight minutes of the first and third quarters or the last six to eight of the second and fourth?

Those eight games Hamilton missed cost Michael Curry 10 percent of the season to figure it out. But the good news is there's still better than 50 percent of the season to go and the Pistons are doing better than treading water. Even with three straight losses, they're sitting one-half game out of the No. 4 playoff seed, which would mean home-court advantage in the first round. Given everything they've endured this season, plus the top-to-bottom improvement of the Eastern Conference, that's not so bad.

As Michael Curry said the other day, wondering how to make the pieces fit, there are worse problems to have than figuring out what to do with two All-Star shooting guards.

Questions and comments on Keith's posts can be submitted via the Pistons Mailbag. Click here to submit your question.

A galling loss on a night worth dismissing

2009-01-13T23:21:00.001-05:00

One-game samples are ineffective projection tools. Eight-minute samples are even worse.

Just when the story was going to be how the Pistons performed with their big lineup vs. their small lineup on the night Rip Hamilton returned after an eight-game injury sabbatical – more on that later – it became how they broke down in the last eight minutes, allowing Charlotte to close the game on a 9-0 run and steal a game the Pistons had no business losing.

It was a galling loss for an organization that prides itself on taking care of business and a regime – Michael Curry’s – that vowed to eliminate the types of emotional lapses that would flare up on the Pistons during the Flip Saunders era.

“They just started playing better than us – simple as that,” said Allen Iverson, eyes a little glassy, face a little stunned. “We got a 78-71 lead and couldn’t get it done. That’s just unacceptable.”

But it would be wrong to lump this one in with every other game the Pistons shouldn’t have lost in the past few years and extrapolate further that this team bears the same fatal flaw that predestined them to playoff shortcomings. In fact, this game didn’t fit the mold of most of the losses of the past few years that got filed away as inexplicable. In fact, this team remains a work in progress, learning to play close games without Chauncey Billups and struggling to achieve a new karmic balance while the transition to Rodney Stuckey plays out on a parallel path to the integration of Allen Iverson into the mix – and all on a night Hamilton came back to further tinker with the chemistry.

And yet, until the eight-minute mark of the fourth quarter, it was exactly the type of game Pistons followers could have expected. The first game back from any extended road trip is usually an aesthetic failure and this one certainly fit that description. But the Pistons, with a full crew for the first time in almost three weeks but still an assortment of bumps and bruises, were pretty much in control. They took a seven-point lead in the final few minutes before halftime and kept it right about there – widening it as far 10 points late in the third and still up by nine points after two Allen Iverson free throws with 7:43 to play.

Here’s what happened in the 14 possessions the Pistons had between Rasheed Wallace’s 3-pointer with 8:48 to play – their last basket of the night, in fact – to give them a 74-67 lead and the Hail Mary 3-pointer Allen Iverson left short when the Pistons got the ball back with 0.7 left following Raymond Felton’s 19-footer to give Charlotte its first lead since 35-33 midway through the third quarter: The Pistons missed seven shots, committed four turnovers and made only two of their four free throws.

“I thought after the first quarter – the second, third and fourth quarters – our defense was good,” Curry said. “I thought we got good shots. I thought we made some bad decisions, missed a couple of free throws and we just didn’t finish the game out – 78-71, just didn’t finish it out.”

It was as if they suddenly got thrown outdoors to play in Michigan’s sub-zero chill.

Some of that, uh, production came with both Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess on the floor and some of it came with Tayshaun Prince at power forward and the Pistons going small. The concern with the small lineup was defense. The assumption was it would give the Pistons plenty of pop.

But it wasn’t their defense that betrayed the Pistons down the stretch. It was their offensive execution. Felton scored 10 of Charlotte’s last 12 points – two 3-pointers and two long twos. Rodney Stuckey contested three of them. On another he got caught in a switch and couldn’t recover, but it was still an 18-footer in a four-point game with two minutes to play from a guy not known as a sizzling shooter.

Prince missed four shots, though one was less his fault than his teammates’ – he got caught with the ball and no time to shoot, so launched a prayer over Emeka Okafor that missed badly. Stuckey missed a short runner in the lane. Wallace missed a bank shot. Iverson clanked a jumper.

Stuckey and McDyess misfired on a pass along the baseline that would have yielded a good shot. Iverson got caught in traffic and threw a pass away. The Pistons were guilty of a 24-second infraction, the best evidence of how their offense failed to function down the stretch. And Wallace was called for an offensive foul – his sixth – with 29 seconds left and the score tied, an incredible call at that stage of the game when all he was doing was jostling with Okafor for position to establish himself to receive and entry pass and hadn’t gained any undue advantage.

Felton made all five of his shots in the quarter. His teammates were 2 of 12. Again, it wasn’t the defense. It was the offense, and the fourth quarter saw the Pistons best offensive players in the game exclusively, except for the first 2:58 when Jason Maxiell was in the game along with McDyess. Other than that, the Pistons who played the fourth were their six best offensive players – Hamilton, Prince, Wallace, Iverson, Stuckey and McDyess.

Ten points? Two of 13 shooting? Five turnovers? Those numbers are aberrational. The loss is galling, but it’s so far afield from anything else this team has put forward that it can’t be categorized as anything.

The numbers suggest the Pistons were better defensively with their big lineup on the floor. The Bobcats were 13 of 27 when the smaller lineup was together until the last few minutes, 15 of 43 against the big lineup. Then they made four of their last five, thanks to Felton.

But it’s a one-game sample. Project at your own risk. And be especially skeptical of anyone drawing conclusions from the final eight minutes on a night a team that remains a work in progress had any number of asterisks it could attach to a game it should best forget.

Questions and comments on Keith's posts can be submitted via the Pistons Mailbag. Click here to submit your question.

Small ball's future depends on D

2009-01-13T18:42:00.002-05:00

Rip Hamilton returns to the lineup tonight against Charlotte after missing eight straight games – and when I say “Rip Hamilton returns to the lineup,” that means the starting lineup. Thus ends two gripping weeks of speculation about who would sit when Hamilton came back – the guy who’s led the Pistons in scoring six straight seasons, or the guy with the third-highest scoring average in NBA history, Allen Iverson.

The answer: neither.

Here’s my takeaway impression after listening to Michael Curry talk about his decision to return to the small-ball lineup with Tayshaun Prince at power forward, Hamilton at small forward and Iverson and Rodney Stuckey in the backcourt: Curry’s giving this lineup a chance to prove itself as a unit and daring them to pick up their defense.

As long as the Pistons defend well and win despite being somewhat undersized at three positions defensively – and asking Rasheed Wallace to defend the other team’s top post scorer every night – small ball stays.

Lose a few, give up more than 100 points consistently, allow the opponent’s shooting percentage to start creeping north again after a solid month of deflationary trending, then all bets are off.

“The small group played pretty well (in its earlier run, before Hamilton missed the past eight games with a groin strain),” Curry said before Tuesday’s tipoff with the Bobcats. “We just weren’t as good defensively. I think we brought that to everyone’s attention. I think all of the players are aware of that. So whether we’re small or big, I think they understand the importance of the defensive end and where we need to be defensively.”

Curry remains adamant that the Pistons won’t be locked in to a small lineup. In fact, his goal is to play two big men 32 minutes a night and limit Prince’s minutes at power forward to maybe the first eight or so of each half.

Prince and Stuckey have had to carry too much of the load with Hamilton missing eight games and Wallace four as the Pistons were down to three reliable scorers – Prince, Stuckey and Iverson. So Prince and Stuckey will quit routinely playing 40-plus minutes. Will Bynum is getting another shot at rotation minutes. Hamilton will spend time at small forward - as he did often last year and planned to all along this season even before the Iverson trade.

Bynum won’t be on the floor at the same time as Iverson, though. Curry has concluded that Bynum and Iverson put the Pistons at too severe a size disadvantage.

“Whenever I sub Stuckey, I’ll probably at the same time sub Iverson,” Curry said. “When I bring Will Bynum in, I like Rip to be out there. It gives us more size. When I had Allen and Will Bynum out together, we haven’t had productive minutes.”

Amir Johnson’s spot in the rotation is secure, Curry said, adding that he’s “separated himself” from Jason Maxiell and Kwame Brown. Maxiell and Brown’s minutes will depend on the opponent, Brown getting a shot against teams with traditional big men and Maxiell otherwise.

The Pistons play a run of opponents over the next week – Charlotte, Indiana, Oklahoma City, Memphis and Toronto; New Orleans on Saturday could be a little more troublesome – that don’t figure to overwhelm them with size and power, so the small-ball lineup has a good chance to settle in and find itself defensively.

If the Pistons defend well and keep winning regularly, no problem. If they don’t get off to fast starts offensively with a lineup tilted toward offense and get beat up on the boards against such teams, then the situation will be revisited.

“Losing is not an option,” Curry said. “When you lose, you’re always evaluating and trying to see what you can do better.”

Questions and comments on Keith's posts can be submitted via the Pistons Mailbag. Click here to submit your question.

Rip's back, but no word yet on who sits

2009-01-12T14:27:00.002-05:00

Rip Hamilton returned to practice Monday, which means the starting lineup for Tuesday's game against Charlotte will be ... ummm, check back Tuesday.

"We'll see tomorrow who's able to play and we'll make a determination then," Michael Curry said after the Pistons' first practice at home of the new year following their return from a four-game West Coast trip.

Curry has given every indication that when all hands are on deck, his preference is to keep going forward with a traditional lineup of two big men and Tayshaun Prince at small forward. Further, he's gushed about what Rodney Stuckey means to both the offense and defense to start games, so moving Stuckey out of the starting lineup doesn't seem like a consideration.

Which means it comes down to either Rip Hamilton or Allen Iverson, two of the most prolific scorers of their generation, as candidates to come off of the bench. But Curry isn't going to show his hand - or even discuss what he has in mind with either player - until it's absolutely necessary to reach a decision.

"When it's time, we'll talk about it," he said. "The reality is you talk about something and all of a sudden, another guy is hurt. Then you're talking about a situation that doesn't really affect the team. You all write about it enough. They know it's out there. At the proper time, we'll sit down and explain the decision we make and why."

Hamilton last week told Pistons beat writer Chris McCosky of The Detroit News that there was only one option - when he was healthy, he's back in the starting lineup. Told by a reporter on Monday that neither Hamilton nor Iverson appeared open to coming off the bench - though Iverson hasn't commented one way or the other - Curry said, "I wouldn't expect them to like to come off the bench.

"Both of them have been starters in their careers. I wouldn't expect them to (like becoming a bench player), just like I wouldn't expect to have guys on this team that don't want to play a lot of minutes. But the reality is we have great guys on this team. They're all willing to do whatever it takes for this team to be successful. And whatever decisions we make, it's going to be because we think that's the best thing we need to do to get the most out of everybody on this team. Regardless if guys like it or not, they'll be OK because their No. 1 thing is they want to win."

Beyond bruising egos, the Pistons can't be certain how Iverson or Hamilton's production would be affected by changing roles. Iverson has talked about the adjustment required of him in having his minutes slightly reduced and not having the ball in his hands on virtually every possession, as he's done for virtually all of his first 12 seasons. Starting the game in warmups on the bench, it would seem, would be a greater adjustment for either player - one of whom has the third-highest scoring average in NBA history, the other the Pistons' leading scorer for each of his first six seasons with the team.

But Curry's first priority is to establish a defensive consistency, and he's convinced that the bigger lineup helps him achieve that. Over the past month, the Pistons' field-goal percentage defense has skyrocketed from in the low 20s among all NBA teams to eighth at .445. When Utah shot 53.5 percent against them on Saturday as they wrapped up their road trip, it marked the first time an opponent had hit half its shots against them in 14 games. In four of those games, teams shot less than 40 percent.

"We've seen from the data with our games that we know defensively, it's no secret, when we've got two bigs and Tay at the three spot, we're our best defensively," Curry said. "And at the end of the day, that's normally what's going to drive most of the decisions we make. What group is going to be the best defensively and how we can best utilize those other two guys at the two spot."

One immediate benefit to having Hamilton back will be getting Prince's minutes back in line. Before hitting the wall and being limited to 31 minutes as the Utah game got out of hand, Prince had played 40-plus minutes in eight straight games.

"The biggest thing is that when Rip comes back, we can find times to have Rip out on the court with either (Rodney) Stuckey or Will Bynum," Curry said. "We can take Tay off the court a little more."

Iverson, Stuckey and Walter Herrmann all were excused from Monday's practice. Stuckey was en route from Eastern Washington, which retired his No. 3 during ceremonies on Sunday. Iverson had family matters that required his attention. Herrmann was sent home before practice with flu symptoms.
Curry said Rasheed Wallace, who returned to play 23 minutes against Utah after missing the previous four games, went through practice on Monday and appeared to be OK. Wallace reported feeling pain in the foot that sidelined him late in the Utah game.

Questions and comments on Keith's posts can be submitted via the Pistons Mailbag. Click here to submit your question.

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Joe D and the art of asset management

2009-01-09T11:44:00.004-05:00

Building an NBA contender is the process of accumulating assets. What are assets in the salary-cap era? Draft choices. Young players on their rookie contracts. The absence of bloated contracts. Finding a quality veteran left standing on the outside looking in after all teams with salary-cap space and ownership willing to spend it have exhausted their resources.

The Pistons didn't have many assets at all when Joe Dumars took over. He built a 50-win team anyway. But Rick Carlisle's first team that ground out 50 wins with guys like Cliff Robinson and Michael Curry and Chucky Atkins in the starting lineup? They were fun and professional and gave you everything they had every night out, but everybody in basketball knew there wasn't much in the way of a championship nucleus to be found.

One year after that 2002 team overachieved its way - way overachieved its way - to the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs before losing to Boston in the second round, Joe Dumars started amassing the assets that would change the way people looked at the Pistons.

And that was a process that started with the free-agent signing of Chauncey Billups in July 2002. It's hard to believe now - as the Pistons prepare for tonight's game with Denver, the first meeting between the team and the man who gave them no worries at point guard for six years - but there was open debate about who the best free-agent point guard would be that summer: Billups, Travis Best or Jeff McInnis.

Best seemed the surest bet, actually. His ceiling wasn't very high, but he was a competent scorer and very good deep shooter and it seemed that, in tandem with Atkins, the Pistons would have solid point guard play. They wouldn't win that battle every night, but it wouldn't be an Achilles heel, either.

There was some sentiment, too, for McInnis, who came into North Carolina as part of a heralded three-man recruiting class with two other guys with deep Pistons ties - Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse, who was the resident shooting guard of the Pistons going into that fateful summer.

Billups? Well, no doubt he came into the league with the highest profile of the three. But that had been five years earlier as the No. 3 pick in the draft. If the All-Star game is in a player's future, it's pretty rare that the evidence hasn't been discovered within his first five years in the league. He might not have actually played in the All-Star game by then, but his candidacy for future games has usually been loudly announced.

Not Billups, not by the summer of 2002. Not even close. He'd been injury prone and given up on by five teams, none of which saw fit to make him a starter, let alone invest long-term in him.

Joe D did. He gave Billups a full mid-level exception deal for five years. To this day, it is viewed as the best MLE contract signing any team has ever made. By the time the 2002-03 season had reached its midway point, it had become clear: Chauncey Billups was a huge asset, not just because he gave the Pistons very good play at a critical position, but because he gave them very good play at a critical position at an extremely favorable cost to the Pistons.

That's basketball in the salary-cap era. And that's also why Joe D had to trade him.

Oh, it didn't have to be two games into the season. It didn't have to be this season at all, necessarily. But he had to trade him, because suddenly Rodney Stuckey became a more valuable asset: a decade younger and far cheaper. Until Stuckey's rookie contract runs out, which will be after the 2010-11 season, the Pistons have a player emerging as an elite point guard at a price even more favorable than what Chauncey Billups cost the Pistons six seasons ago.

That's why agent Andy Miller called Joe D last summer and acknowledged the facts: We know Chauncey isn't going to finish his career in Detroit, so when you go to trade him - not if, but when - we'd appreciate it if you could try to get him home to Denver.

When last season ended, I was talking to Joe D about Stuckey's future. It was clear, based on the closing rush he had to his rookie season, that he would play a far larger role in 2008-09. I asked if there was room enough in the backcourt for three high-caliber guards. He laughed and said, yeah, if you're familiar with the history of this franchise, there surely is.

He was completely right, of course - at least on one level. There were minutes enough to go around for Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton and Rodney Stuckey. Just as there had been 20 years ago for three guys named Isiah, Joe and Vinnie. But in the salary-cap era, employing two difference-making point guards is an unaffordable luxury.

So Billups was traded for assets the Pistons could put to better use: Allen Iverson, a player whose ability to score no matter the circumstances has been proven for more than a decade; and one of the most coveted assets of all, salary-cap space.

The signing of Chauncey Billups once signalled the beginning of an accumulation of assets by Joe D that culminated in an NBA title. History will be the judge, but perhaps trading him signalled the beginning of another such era.

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A tough loss, and a point guard's growing pains

2009-01-08T12:17:00.003-05:00

The Pistons awoke in Denver on Thursday after what was likely a restless night for most of them, the nagging thoughts that always accompany a one-point loss making sleep elusive.

It is in such games as the loss to Portland on Wednesday when everyone has the game tape on an endless mental loop, agonizing over the one subtle moment amid a thousand that would have yielded a different outcome.

Rodney Stuckey probably had more to digest than anyone. Stepping on Nicolas Batum's foot when pivoting out of trouble in the first half, leading to a Rudy Fernandez breakaway dunk amid Portland's 8-0 run that chopped more than half of a 14-point lead away in less than two minutes. Dribbling stubbornly into a triple team and getting tied up by a 7-footer before losing the jump ball in a similar second-half turnover fest that fueled another Portland comeback from double digits. Charging into LaMarcus Aldridge at the basket instead of pulling up for a short jump shot and giving Portland another dose of momentum in its gathering comeback.

It's especially worth remembering, as the Pistons prepare for Friday night's game in Denver against the man who wrote their musical score for the past six years, that Chauncey Billups was 26 and a veteran of five full NBA seasons when he became Detroit's point guard to start the 2002-03 season. And, even at that, it was another good half-season before Joe Dumars felt certain that he'd found his point guard.

Rodney Stuckey is on the fast track to stardom, but sometimes the motor on even the fast track's belt needs fine tuning. Stuckey certainly wasn't awful against the Blazers: 13 points and seven assists are numbers the Pistons can win with on nights when one of Rip Hamilton or Rasheed Wallace is available to them, perhaps. But with both out, and so much of the offense dependent on Stuckey, Allen Iverson and Tayshaun Prince, the Pistons can't have two of the three combining to shoot 10 for 29 with 10 turnovers.

Flip Saunders wasn't always able to convey his insights in the most concise terms, but the man knew his basketball inside-out. And Saunders always insisted the keys to winning on the road were making your free throws and taking care of the basketball. The Pistons shot 9 of 16 at the line in Portland - and getting there only 16 times is another concern - and committed 14 turnovers, in itself not an egregious amount but critical in their timing and their perpetrators.

All of that, and the game still came down to four possessions in the final 80 seconds that all had to go against the Pistons to produce a loss. After Iverson made a beautiful play to set up Kwame Brown for a dunk - and Brown's solid play was one of the game's positive takeaways - the Pistons led 83-80.

Travis Outlaw then made a tough, spinning bank shot and made it while being blanketed by Tayshaun Prince, putting the pressure back on the Pistons. They executed admirably, handling Portland's trap that bedeviled them for much of the second half, and the possession produced an open 3-pointer for Prince from the side. It looked good but just rimmed out long with about 40 seconds left. But Antonio McDyess, gutting out another performance over a Gray's Anatomy assortment of injuries, willed his way to an offensive rebound to extend a critical possession.

Once again, the Pistons couldn't quibble much with the shot it yielded: Iverson in a trademark penetration of the lane. He launched himself backward instead of going straight up, and even though he's made a career of draining off-balance shots, he probably increased his degree of difficulty unneccesarily on this one. Still, it missed by a whisker, or the Pistons would have held a three-point lead with under 20 seconds left and reduced Portland's margin for error greatly.

Again, without Brandon Roy in the lineup, the Blazers went to Outlaw. This time, with Michael Curry having subbed in Arron Afflalo for Iverson at the timeout, the Pistons guarded Outlaw with Afflalo; Prince was guarding Rudy Fernandez. The Blazers cleared out for Outlaw and Afflalo, instead of forcing him right and into the lane where help could have arrived more quickly, allowed him to go left. It still proved a tough shot, Afflalo in his face and McDyess flashing at him in the last instant, but Outlaw drained it.

The Pistons still had eight seconds for the fourth and final critical possession. Once again, it was a shot they'd take 10 times out of 10 given the circumstances. Once again, it looked good when it left the shooter's hand. Once again, it rimmed away. Iverson got an elbow jump shot off cleanly, but on a night he shot 6 of 19, it wasn't in the cards.

If he had gone 7 of 19, the Pistons win. If they make 11 of 16 free throws, they win. If they turn it over 13 times instead of 14. ... They all had such thoughts, doubtlessly, on a tough night for sleep in Denver. Rodney Stuckey probably more than most.

They'll find a familiar face in Denver who can tell him all about the growing pains of an NBA All-Star point guard.

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Stuckey diverts focus from Billups-Iverson deal

2009-01-06T12:44:00.004-05:00

As if the three contenders remaining on their Western road swing weren't enough to rivet the Pistons' attention, each one comes with a compelling sidebar. Up first is Portland, where Rasheed Wallace returns to the place where he became synonymous with the vilified Jail Blazers, never mind that Wallace's transgressions were largely confined to accruing technical fouls in a time when his teammates were routinely landing on police blotters.

It ends with a trip to Utah, where the Pistons haven't won in their last five tries against a team they haven't beaten in their last seven meetings.

And in between is the most anticipated matchup of all - the Denver game on Friday, where the Pistons will meet up with their former point guard. We speak, of course, of Chucky Atkins.

Just kidding.

The Chauncey Billups Reunion Game will be tinged with emotion on both sides, but it won't even be close to qualifying as the final verdict on who got the better of the trade - or even if the trade was right for both sides.

A few weeks back, as the Pistons were groping to find themselves and Denver was riding high, there was a low murmur of unrest among Pistons fans tired of hearing about the many spinoff adjustments required in the transition from Billups to Allen Iverson. Those adjustments continue - sorry, but them's the facts - though the murmurs have been quieted by seven straight wins.

That streak, not so coincidentally, began the night Rodney Stuckey exploded for 40 points against Chicago, and its two most recent entries - wins over Sacramento and the Clippers despite the absences of Rip Hamilton and Wallace - were driven by Stuckey's 31-point scoring average.

Stuckey, appropriately, was named Eastern Conference Player of the Week on Monday for enabling the Pistons to win four games - all without Hamilton, most of three without Wallace. He won it, of course, largely for his offensive stats.

Less noticed - except by Joe Dumars, Michael Curry and their staffs - is Stuckey's impact on the defensive end. When Stuckey starts, the Pistons average 25.5 points a game in the first quarter and their opponents average 19.4. When he comes off the bench, the first-quarter numbers go the other way: 21.1-22.0.

So, in a nutshell, with Stuckey in the starting lineup, the Pistons come out of the first quarter 6.2 points ahead. With Stuckey mired on the bench, they come out of it almost a point behind.

We've talked about two main reasons for Joe D pulling off the Billups-Iverson trade: (1) the chance to be a more varied offensive team in the muck and grind of the playoffs, when half-court offenses have more difficulty executing; and (2) the chance to rebuild the team as soon as next summer because of the cap flexibility afforded Dumars by taking Iverson's expiring contract for Billups', which had three more years to run.

But all along there was a third reason, maybe the most compelling of all: The chance to give Rodney Stuckey the reins sooner than ever would have been possible with Billups still here.

It's worth wondering what the Pistons would be like today had the deal not been made. After all, if Iverson, Stuckey and Hamilton can share a backcourt - with Hamilton getting minutes at small forward, as well - then couldn't Billups, Stuckey and Hamilton have done the same thing?

Well, sure. Sort of. The minutes might have played out similarly. But as long as Billups was here, he was going to be the point guard. Yeah, when Billups and Stuckey shared the backcourt, as they frequently would have, they might have taken turns running the offense. But in crunch time? It was always going to be Billups with the ball in his hands, Billups making the call, Billups deciding when to stick with a play or break it off, Billups deciding it was his shot to take or not.

And that, inevitably, was going to slow Stuckey's development - maybe not as a player who could help the team right now, but as a point guard, and as the leader of the Pistons going forward.

The element of Billups' game that always stuck out most to me was his sense of when to push the pace and when to pull back, when to get others involved and when to force the issue himself. I figured that would take Stuckey a good long while to learn. But he's showing every sign that he's at ease with that aspect of being a point guard already, and making every scout who classified Stuckey as a shooting guard in predraft reports to his GM squirm uncomfortably.

And, again, we're focusing almost exclusively on the offensive end when, in fact, Curry's decision to put Stuckey in the starting lineup was driven equally by his desire to spark the defense. Curry has said repeatedly that Stuckey is his best perimeter defender on the ball. His speed is breathtaking and his lateral quickness and strength keep point guards from routinely getting to the spot from which they want to initiate offense.

Billups was a perfectly competent defender, of course. He would show up in the All-Defense voting every season. And he remains big and strong enough to defend most shooting guards. But he had trouble staying in front of quick point guards. That was no secret. When the Pistons played New Orleans last season, for instance, they had Hamilton guard Chris Paul. Stuckey, 10 years Billups' junior, won't need similar protection. But as someone who's even bigger than Billups, he's also capable of guarding shooting guards, which helps because of the matchup problems the slight Iverson sometimes faces.

Billups is probably the more efficient point guard as of today - no knock on Stuckey, because Billups has been among the NBA's most efficient point guards for the last five years or so. But Stuckey's 38- and 40-point games within the seven-game win streak suggest he's the more explosive player. And the numbers on what he's meant to the Pistons' defense don't lie.

So even though Friday's game was never going to be a referendum on Chauncey Billups vs. Allen Iverson, it turns out the focus on the trade all along probably should have been on what it meant for the Pistons in the era of Rodney Stuckey.

The Pistons, who've played shorthanded for their last five games and hope to get Wallace back, if not Hamilton, for Wednesday's game at Portland, probably see it as karmic justice that each of their three remaining opponents on this trip will be down an All-Star-caliber player: Portland won't have Brandon Roy (hamstring) back until Saturday at the earliest; Utah remains without Carlos Boozer (knee); and Denver lost Carmelo Anthony on Monday night to a broken hand. If Anthony's is similar in severity to Rodney Stuckey's a year ago, he'll miss about six weeks. More should be known today.
A little surprising that Denver thought so little of Cheikh Samb that the Nuggets essentially gave him to the Clippers on Monday. The move was done to enable Denver to get below the luxury-tax threshold, but George Karl said this: "We didn't see (Samb) having a chance here.'' Samb had averaged 12.4 points, 7.1 rebounds and 3.8 blocks in 10 games for Colorado of the D-League.

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A big week for playoff projections ahead

2009-01-05T12:35:00.003-05:00

The Pistons haven't played a truly meaningful regular-season game in April for the last two seasons, their playoff seed virtually locked in both years weeks before the regular season played out. This year? That's not very likely to be the case.

Which is just another reason why this week's West Coast games should keep you up past your bedtime. Not only are the Pistons looking at three teams all hoping to make noise themselves in the postseason - Portland on Wednesday, followed by a daunting back-to-back Friday and Saturday at Denver and Utah - they also need to be cognizant of the Eastern Conference standings.

It might seem a little early to be scoreboard watching, but when the calendar turns to January the standings take on greater significance. Over the next two weeks, most teams will have hit the halfway point of their schedules. So even though the Pistons are only five games back of Boston and Cleveland in the loss column, if the Celtics and Cavs keep up their first-half pace they'll only lose about 14 or 15 games all season.

That means the Pistons would have to go something like 48-2 in their final 50 to finish ahead of them. Even the three-game edge Orlando has on the Pistons in the loss column is a significant cushion this far along in the season. Barring injury, teams that have established winning percentages of .750 or better for almost half a season aren't likely to suddenly start losing games in bunches.

The good news for the Pistons is that their seven-game win streak has begun to open some distance between them and the teams chasing them, too. They've pulled even in the loss column with Atlanta. If they can say the same thing after this week plays out, they'll have gained a real edge over the Hawks.

Of the nine contenders for the West's eight playoff spots - nine West teams have between five and 15 losses; the other six have between 23 and 30 losses - both Atlanta and the Pistons still have six to play on the road. By the end of this week, the Pistons will have only three left. Atlanta comes back from the All-Star break in late February with a five-game, nine-day Western road trip that includes games with the Lakers, Portland, Utah and Denver. Ouch.

By the time that trip is over, and the calendar turns to March, the Pistons should have a better idea where they stand. The one team behind them that could make a run is Miami, three games back in the loss column but playing well with recent wins over Cleveland and the Lakers.

If Boston, Cleveland and Orlando maintain their current paces and go off as the 1-2-3 seeds in the East, then the Pistons, Atlanta and Miami will be in a dogfight for the final home-court seed in first-round matchups.

And the Pistons still have six games to play against them - all four with Miami and two more with Atlanta, against whom they were scheduled just three times this season. It's to Atlanta's advantage that the Pistons only get them at The Palace once, Feb. 11 - the last game before the All-Star break, a game coaches often dread because players are looking forward to a long weekend getaway flight.

How the Pistons fare in those six games might determine whether or not they get home-court advantage in the first round. It could even come down to the season's final game when the Pistons play at Miami on April 15 - tax day.

Taking care of business this week, of course, will put the Pistons in a much more favorable position - both for their chances at sneaking into the top three or, at least, solidifying their odds at landing the No. 4 seed ahead of Atlanta and Miami.

Business would be easier to manage for the Pistons if they can get Rasheed Wallace and Rip Hamilton back for the Portland game. Their relatively close calls with Western doormats Sacramento and the LA Clippers the past two games put an undue scoring burden on Rodney Stuckey, Allen Iverson and Tayshaun Prince. Even getting one or the other back will distribute the scoring burden a little more evenly and give Michael Curry a little rotation flexibility to shorten the minutes of those three.

It doesn't hurt that Portland will be without Brandon Roy, nursing a hamstring injury, and Utah All-Star Carlos Boozer is scheduled to undergo minor surgery to clean up debris in a knee injury that's lingered far longer than expected. In Roy's two-plus NBA seasons, he's missed 36 games. The Blazers are 11-25 when he's out, 82-80 when he plays.

Then it's on to Denver, where the competitive juices of both sides will be aboil - the Pistons to show Chauncey Billups they can move on without him, Billups eager to show them what he's still capable of doing. And, finally, Utah, where the Pistons - playing their third contender in four nights - will be trying to end two streaks: a seven-game losing streak to the Jazz, most recently a double-overtime loss Dec. 19 at The Palace; and a five-game losing streak in Utah, their last win coming on Nov. 6, 2002.

Walter Sharpe knocked off a little rust in his first two NBA D-League games over the weekend as Fort Wayne split a pair with Iowa. On Saturday night, Sharpe scored 10 points, shooting 3 of 10, grabbed four rebounds and had two steals in 24 minutes. In foul trouble on Sunday, he played 20 minutes and scored nine points, shooting 3 of 6, with three rebounds. Alex Acker was better, playing 38 and 42 minutes and scoring 20 and 22. They'll take part in two more games Tuesday and Wednesday at the D-League Showcase in Orem, Utah, before rejoining the Pistons for their Friday game in Denver.

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In adversity comes opportunity for Pistons

2009-01-02T13:54:00.003-05:00

When Rasheed Wallace limped off The Palace floor two minutes into the second quarter of their New Year's eve win over New Jersey, the Pistons led by two points. So they know they can play without Wallace, without Antonio McDyess and without Rip Hamilton.

They'd just rather not be forced to prove it.

But that looks like it's going to be the case again tonight, when the struggling Sacramento Kings come to town. The Pistons have declared Wallace and Hamilton both unfit, which isn't a surprise. When Hamilton revealed before Wednesday's game that his groin is slightly torn, not just strained, getting him back any time before the West Coast trip starts on Sunday seemed unduly optimistic. And given that Wallace said the foot injury has been bothering him for a while, and wasn't just incurred when he blocked Yi Jianlian's layup try, something more than a 48-hour recovery seemed in order.

McDyess could probably use another week to allow his bruised ribs to heal, too. If you've ever taken a hard shot to the ribs, you know how painful it can be to raise your arm, never mind banging with NBA power forwards - and God forbid a sneeze sneaks up on you.

Not that there's ever a good time to incur injuries, but now - with a momentum born of confidence and familiarity starting to build - seems a particularly lousy stretch, especially with a Western Conference death march ahead of them. After Sunday's warmup act against the Clippers, the Pistons close with a brutal three game stretch in four nights: Portland, Denver, Utah.

Coaches are conditioned to line up with whoever shows up in uniform, though, and knowing the fighter that Michael Curry is, he's going to look at this as an opportunity and sell it that way to his team.

An opportunity for Allen Iverson to shoulder more of the scoring load and speed the process of him feeling more comfortable taking over for longer stretches. An opportunity for Rodney Stuckey's growth as the point guard and de facto leader to accelerate. An opportunity for Amir Johnson, Jason Maxiell and Kwame Brown to prove themselves to their teammates as more than situational players. An opportunity for Arron Afflalo to cement the spot in the rotation he's recently earned. And an opportunity for Will Bynum and Walter Herrmann, who've both proven in glimpses that they belong, to carve out a niche.

Curry has shown he's willing to think unconventionally, something rare enough in veteran coaches, let alone a first-timer. So even though he might have only nine able bodies for tonight's game if McDyess can't go - Walter Sharpe and Alex Acker were assigned to the Fort Wayne Mad Ants on Friday morning - he'll freely tinker with lineup combinations until he finds something that works.

It doesn't hurt any that the Kings likely will be without second-year 7-footer Spencer Hawes, who's missed the last two days of practice with an abdominal strain. That makes the Kings even more of a finesse team. Outside of veteran center Brad Miller, the big men are slender ex-Piston Mikki Moore and rookie Jason Thompson.

So Curry could go small against the Kings frequently, with Prince or Herrmann at power forward and Afflalo at small forward with Bynum giving Stuckey the three or four minutes of rest each half he might require and Iverson, as he's often said he prefers, playing all 48.

The Pistons carry a five-game winning streak into the Kings game. You never like tinkering with your lineup when the results keep coming back positive. But necessity dictates otherwise. The Pistons, from Michael Curry to Will Bynum, have an 8 o'clock tipoff with opportunity.

The Pistons had said all along that they liked having Sharpe with them because of his sleep disorder, narcolepsy, that was only diagnosed about a year ago. The fact they're sending him to Fort Wayne indicates that they feel Sharpe can shoulder the responsibility of being more or less on his own in a new environment. Because he played only 18 games in his final three years of college - largely due to academic issues resulting from his disorder - the chance to soak up some game experience should greatly benefit Sharpe.

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Big-game wins give transition a foothold

2008-12-31T14:10:00.002-05:00

It might not be a substitute for the consistency sought by Michael Curry - or any coach, for that matter - but with their win over Orlando earlier this week, the Pistons must have more big-game wins than any NBA team so far this season.

They beat the Lakers in LA after they'd started the season 7-0 and winning by two touchdowns a game. They beat Cleveland after the Cavs had opened 9-2 and were on an eight-game winning streak. They beat San Antonio on the road with the Spurs at full strength after treading water for the first month without Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. And, finally, they beat Orlando with the Magic at 24-4 in their last 28 games after a 0-2 start and on a seven-game winning streak.

For every good win, of course, there's a bad loss - the 26-point pounding a 2-9 Minnesota team administered at The Palace, the bloodbath at Madison Square Garden on a Sunday afternoon, the squandered leads against struggling Philly and Washington teams.

Again, consistency is the hallmark of great teams, not equal doses of delirious highs and crushing lows. But the delirious highs at least tell everyone that matters - from Joe Dumars to Michael Curry to his players to Pistons opponents - that the Pistons still have the greatness gene somewhere within them.

"It shows we're capable of competing against elite teams in this league," Michael Curry said before the New Year's Eve matinee with New Jersey. "To be an elite team, you have to do it consistently. For the most part, we've played with that kind of consistency. We're oh-and-six on Sundays. If you go .500 on Sundays, more people right now would probably be considering us right up there as well. But we've got to earn that."

The transition from the Billups to the Iverson eras caused enough dislocation to explain some of their mercurial nature, but Curry raises a good point. It really goes beyond just swapping out Billups for Iverson. Even if Billups had remained, the fact so many new players were being asked to shoulder greater responsibility probably was going to yield some degree of unevenness in the Pistons' play.

"We know we have the talent and are capable of getting there," Curry said. "Some of our young guys are growing right in front of our eyes. Their contributions in big games have been well-documented and that's part of it."

Beyond that, even, there's the fact that Curry was in the midst of changing the offense even with Billups to put the ball in others' hands more often, Tayshaun Prince particularly.

"Some of our veteran guys have played in different roles," he said. "I don't know how many games in the past we went down the stretch and Tayshaun touches the ball four out of seven possessions. It's different for him, as well."

Throw out one three-game stretch - blown 15- and 17-point leads to Philly and Washington sandwiched around the Knicks debacle - and the Pistons would be 21-8 heading into the Nets game instead of 18-11. In the big picture, their big-game wins have been sprinkled throughout the schedule, while their troubling losses have been more concentrated.

That bad stretch came more than three weeks ago. The Pistons haven't played poorly since then. The transition - a phase Pistons fans feared would become a tunnel to nowhere - now has a foothold.

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Power forward taxes Tayshaun

2008-12-30T15:35:00.002-05:00

Tayshaun Prince is Michael Curry's ultimate good soldier, versatile enough to play four positions and amenable enough to agree to play all of them. The strained groin that's kept Rip Hamilton out the previous two games - and almost certainly will have him in street clothes again for Wednesday's New Year's Eve matinee with New Jersey - has returned Prince to his most familiar spot, small forward, after a run of small-ball lineup games in which he logged heavy minutes at power forward.

Given the glut of marquee small forwards in the Eastern Conference - LeBron James, Paul Pierce, Hedo Turkoglu, Luol Deng, Andre Igoudala, Richard Jefferson, et al - you'd think Prince might have welcomed the break.

But his body tells him otherwise.

He means this not as red meat for LeBron James, but, in fact, guarding him for 40 minutes doesn't grind on Tayshaun Prince physically as much as guarding his notoriously non-scoring teammate, Ben Wallace.

"It's not even close," he said of the difference to his body between guarding a small forward for 40 minutes or playing 40 minutes at power forward. "There's so many more things the big men have to do. Boxing out, your guy setting screens, fighting through screens and also bigs setting pick and rolls and you've got to help the guard and get back to the big and try to box him out. The little things. (Playing small forward) is not so much wear and tear on you as far as body contact. There's a lot of perimeter-oriented stuff. The only thing you worry about at the three is pick and rolls.

"At the end of the day, no matter what, you're going to be tired. But playing the four, or playing against Utah and going double overtime against Mehmet (Okur), those types of games, when you wake up the next day, you're going to feel it as opposed to guarding a strong three man. You just pretty much have to keep him in front of you and make them take jump shots. He's not crashing the boards every time so you have to box him out. When you're at the four, you have to do those types of things."

Prince suspects Hamilton, too, would begin to feel the difference if he spends significant chunks of games defending small forwards who try to post him up to take advantage of Hamilton's slight frame. Curry said he's mindful that it's not just the minutes Prince plays - and he's averaged 40 over the past 10 games, a stretch that began with the lineup switch - but how many minutes he plays relative to the time he spends at power forward.

"There's a lot of wear and tear to bang," Curry said. "It's tough to play 82 games on that low block. Tay gives up a lot of weight when he gets down there, so we have to pick and choose how often we put him there and what matchups we put him in down there. But he's done a good job for us - an excellent job, actually."

Given the defensive success the Pistons have had without Hamilton - a double-digit win at Milwaukee, holding the Bucks to 30 percent shooting to break their three-game win streak; and Monday's win over Orlando to beat the NBA's hottest team, holding the Magic to 40 percent and 19 points under their average - it might portend a return to the more traditional lineup with Prince spending more time at small forward.

Curry, as he did after the Orlando win, again at practice on Tuesday talked about the defensive efficiency of the lineup with Stuckey at point guard and two big men in the game.

"I'm not sure how many games this year we've had Stuckey starting at the one and we've had two bigs on the court and Tay starting at the three," he said. "We've been pretty good. Our defense is how well we defend the ball, first and foremost, and Stuckey is our best guard at defending the ball. Then it comes to the bigs - how they defend the pick and roll and protect the basket. Having two bigs, you're at your best at defending. Even when you do make mistakes, you've got the other one helping clean up at the basket. And Tay is our most versatile defender.

"Those four are the key. And then, whoever we have in at that two-guard spot - sometimes it's been Rip, (Allen Iverson), (Arron) Afflalo - we've been pretty good defensively. When we've had those other combinations, we're not nearly as good and that's what we've got to get better at."

Hamilton received treatment and worked with strength coach Arnie Kander, but did not participate in Tuesday's practice. Antonio McDyess, who took a hard shot to the ribs in Monday's game and had X-rays taken afterward, went through practice and then received treatment. He's expected to play agaisnt New Jersey.

Magic win stirs talk of potential lineup switch

2008-12-29T23:22:00.002-05:00

Rip: Rhymes with Pipp.

Back in a time before the Yankees would spend a half-billion dollars every winter to rebuild their baseball team, they would develop their own superstars. One of them was some guy named Gehrig, who subbed one day for the incumbent first baseman – Wally Pipp – and never went back to the bench. Ever since, nearly a century later, it’s still referred to as getting Pipp-ed when somebody sits because of injury and doesn’t get his job back.

The idea that Hamilton, the Pistons’ leading scorer for each of his six seasons in Detroit and a three-time All-Star, is in any danger of losing his place in the franchise’s pantheon is, of course, ludicrous.

But his place in the starting lineup?

Well … check back tomorrow, or next week, or next month. But Michael Curry at least gave broad suggestions after Monday’s very nice win over Orlando – which came in on a seven-game win streak – with Hamilton in street clothes that he and Joe Dumars have thought about starting two big men again and saving the small lineup for situation-driven moments.

“We’ve looked at our lineup at different times and thought about different guys possibly coming off the bench,” Curry said when asked if Hamilton, who missed his second straight game with a groin strain, would be used in a super-sub role upon his return. “But we haven’t made the decision on that. That’s kind of a tough decision.

“But you look at teams that have done it and it’s pretty effective. The Lakers with Lamar Odom, it’s pretty effective for them. (Andrei) Kirilenko in Utah has been really effective and the same thing with (Manu) Ginobili in San Antonio. It can be effective, and whether it’s any of our perimeter guys, one of them coming off the bench, maybe we have to look at it. But we’ll just cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Amir Johnson gave the Pistons 19 active minutes as the replacement starter, grabbing seven rebounds and blocking two shots, and Curry was right to again point out that with Johnson, the stats reveal maybe half of his net worth. Jason Maxiell was good in his 16 minutes, too, scoring a couple of nice baskets inside and racking up another spectacular blocked dunk attempt.

Antonio McDyess was the player of the game, playing the second and fourth quarters and scoring nine of his 11 points, grabbing half his eight rebounds and handing out three of his five assists in the critical fourth when the Pistons played lock-down defense, holding Orlando to 30 percent shooting.

Orlando shot just 40 percent for the game, well under its .459 average, and was held 19 points under its per-game scoring average – and all that despite superb 3-point shooting from Rashard Lewis and Dwight Howard’s destructive third quarter, when he got inside and made tough shots, scoring 13 of his 18 points.

And that begs the question: Are the Pistons better offensively by a significant enough margin with their small lineup to offset the edge they quite clearly get defensively by going big?

“I think the big lineup makes us better defensively,” Curry said, “and at the end of the day, we’re going to have to make sure we’re good enough defensively. We know we can go to the small lineup if we have to. If we’re playing a team in the playoffs and we have to play small a lot, we feel comfortable going to the small lineup. We’ve played it a lot.

“We’ll be able to play both of them throughout the year and decide game by game what the best lineup is for us to give us the best chance to win that game.”

And that begs another question, a really big one: If Curry decides going big is the best long-term solution, who sits?

He’s gushed about what Rodney Stuckey does for both the offense and the defense as the point guard. It probably won’t be Stuckey. That leaves Iverson or Hamilton. More than bruising an ego, the question that bears asking is should they expect that either of those two can be the same irrepressible scoring force – the thing that most clearly defines their NBA value – coming off the bench, a role neither has experienced?

“You find a way,” Iverson said about the dilemma. “You find a way. That’s what it’s all about. There’s going to be adversity at times. The thing is just getting through it. He’s an All-Star. You’ve got to get him back in the lineup. I think we’re better with him in the lineup, but that just says we have two weapons. We can go big and we can go little. I don’t think it will be a problem. Our whole thing is just concentrating on playing defense, keeping a team to 20 points and under for every quarter and keep focusing on that and I think we’ll be fine.”

Curry said one other thing that would argue for a return to the bigger lineup when he was asked about the all-around game Rasheed Wallace played with 16 points, six boards, three blocks and a defensive presence that was largely responsible for limiting Howard to one first-half point.

“Sheed was excellent,” Curry said. “When Sheed has struggled defensively, it’s without that protection, that other big out on the court, and it leaves him out to protect the paint and be up on pick and rolls. He just seems to be more energized. His defensive level seems to pick up when he has another big out there to kind of help protect him.”

There’s no easy answer for Curry. Hamilton has to play 35 minutes a night. As much as the Pistons need the defense and rebounding they get from using a steady diet of their deep stable of big men, they need the coldblooded scoring Hamilton provides, too. But you could look at it another way, too. Maybe there’s no wrong answer here for the Pistons. Maybe in the quest to find out which lineup works better, the big or the small, the Pistons will wind up, as Allen Iverson suggests, with two distinctly different looks that can pull their fat from the fire on alternating nights.

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Amir grabs another chance by the horns

2008-12-27T10:58:00.003-05:00

It looked like Amir Johnson cracked his own glass ceiling almost two years ago now, his second NBA season, when he went down to the D-League and dominated, flirting with triple-doubles consistently.

It looked like he was poised to grab a spot in the Pistons' rotation in the summer of 2007, when he hit restricted free agency and immediately drew the attention of several well-stocked NBA teams, none more prominent than the San Antonio Spurs, fresh off of their third title in five seasons, eventually re-signing with the Pistons for three years at a price that raised eyebrows for someone who'd appeared in all of 11 games in his first two seasons.

It looked for all the world that he had arrived midway through last season, when Flip Saunders threw him into the fray one night in Philadelphia and kept coming back to him in subsequent games with Johnson always stuffing a stat sheet out of all proportion to his minutes played.

And it really looked like the education of Amir Johnson was complete when Michael Curry scanned his roster over the summer, considered his options and decided what Johnson had to offer - the uncanny speed and athleticism - was the perfect additive to a veteran starting group that sometimes needed a kick-start, not to mention a way to return Antonio McDyess to the second unit where he'd anchor the scoring and not get caught in Rasheed Wallace's shadow so much offensively.

But something always shoved Amir back past the middle, if not fully to the end, of the Pistons' bench. A penchant for fouling in bunches, the signing of Theo Ratliff, the trade for Allen Iverson. Always there was a need to tweak the lineup, and always it was Amir who was first in line to be tweaked.

So all parties, Amir Johnson included, would be well-advised to take his Friday night performance against Oklahoma City for what it was - a bright second-half cameo that might well have spared the Pistons from a perplexing loss to the NBA's least successful team - rather than a sign of things to come.

Actually, Amir is probably the last one who needs that reminder. He's managed to keep an upbeat perspective through all the ins and outs, remarkably so, really. Young players who do everything they're asked and perform up to and beyond expectations when called upon understandably are quick to frustrate and backslide when their roles are diminished for reasons outside their influence.

But after playing precious little since the Dec. 7 debacle in New York - when the Pistons dug a huge early hole for themselves at Madison Square Garden and lost to the Knicks - Johnson was ready when called upon against OKC. On a night the Pistons were palpably lethargic - predictably so, after taking two logy days off for Christmas - Johnson lit a fuse when he bounded into the game in the second half.

So even on a night Allen Iverson was every bit the fourth-quarter Answer, Curry was moved to say, "I thought as great as Allen was, the player of the game was Amir Johnson, by far. While he was in the game, we were able to get stops."

"It's all about staying ready," Johnson said with his typical earnestness after the game. "Just staying after practice and shooting around. I was just ready whenever the coach was going to call my name. When I got in, all I could think about was playing hard and help our team get stops."

Curry can't always count on Johnson playing error-free or flawlessly, but he can count on his 21-year-old - and that bears keeping in mind, too; Johnson is still younger than many players who'll be discussed as lottery picks next June - to be appreciative of every opportunity to play.

"He knew I was ready," Johnson said of Curry. "I always stay focused in practice, and stay after and get shots in. When a coach sees that he is going to know that you're ready. So you have to do the little stuff and always stay after practice, so that the coach will always have faith in you."

A young player showered with the accolades Johnson has elicited might have grown disaffected by this point, looking for an out, to an organization that, in his mind, would have recognized his greatness by now and carved out a role for him without having to earn it every day.

The Pistons have always been struck by Johnson's passion for the game, dating to the day they brought him in for his predraft workout in 2005 and he was in the gym at 8 a.m. - 5 a.m. to his California body clock - dunking. Big guys are rarely described as gym rats. Johnson fits.

One of these days, he'll seize an opportunity like he has so many times in the past - and won't let go. Maybe that day happened Friday night in an otherwise unremarkable win.

It's still a little early to start seriously considering the ramifications, but the disappointing seasons they're experiencing in both Minnesota and Toronto could pay dividends for the Pistons come draft day. The Pistons own both teams' second-rounders - Minnesota's for the trade of Ronald Dupree, Toronto's (and a 2011 second-rounder, as well) for the Carlos Delfino deal - as well as their own first- and second-rounders. As of today, Minnesota's pick would be the second in the second round and Toronto's would be the 10th, giving the Pistons three picks in the top 40.

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In draft do-over, no way Pistons get Stuckey

2008-12-24T09:47:00.004-05:00

Michael Curry is giving the Pistons two full days off. Really, truly, fully off. No travel. No strength and conditioning work. No watching videotape. No shooting free throws. Off. Feet up and laid back. Some of them are heading out of town to family. Some are bringing family home to them.

Rodney Stuckey's in the latter camp. The crew from Seattle has arrived. And mom's doing the Christmas cooking. Which is only right. Because Stuckey did his cooking Tuesday night with heaping portions for 22,076 appreciatively hungry guests.

The kid scored 40 points and the Pistons needed practically every one of them to hold off the Chicago Bulls, still too talented to explain a sub-.500 record for the second straight season, on a night Allen Iverson limped off three minutes into the third quarter and never returned.

Which got me to thinking: How many of the 14 teams picking ahead of the Pistons in the 2007 draft are still kicking themselves over the events of that night?

Let's put it another way: Stuckey has shown enough to be considered a future All-Star at the position that has emerged in the last half-decade as the most critical to success, point guard, that there can't be even one team among the 14 who doesn't look at their guy and wonder if the team might be better off with Stuckey instead.

Even Portland and Oklahoma City (then Seattle), which went 1-2 in the draft and got the two players everyone was certain were the cream of a rich draft crop, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant.

It's tough to fully evaluate either player so far for very different reasons, Oden because he hasn't been able to show enough yet - due to first injury and then rust and Portland's depth - and Durant because, on a bad team, he's had too much responsibility thrust on him too soon.

Oden plays 22 minutes a game this year, after missing all of his rookie season with an injured knee, and has unspectacular numbers: 7.7 points and 7.3 rebounds. He shows in brilliant flashes why many still see dominance in his future, but it's fair to say there isn't anything close to unanimity on predictions of greatness for Oden any longer. And there are real concerns about his durability, going back to the broken wrist at Ohio State and lingering doubts about his back's tolerance for wear and tear.

Durant's numbers are everything anyone could have expected: He's averaging 23.3 points and shooting 46 percent overall and 47 percent from the 3-point arc. He's going to contend for scoring titles before long. But it's impossible to gauge yet if he'll ever contend for MVPs or really help a team win games. OKC has won three games all season. The Thunder hope they got their point guard of the future in the 2008 lottery with Russell Westbrook, who physically is close to Stuckey.

It's fair to say OKC chose wisely with Durant and wouldn't swap him for Stuckey today. It's also fair to say a point guard as dynamic as Stuckey would have won more than three games so far for the Thunder.

After those two, all bets are off.

Atlanta picked third and grabbed a winner in Al Horford, who could be a 15 and 10 guy for the next decade - and maybe more than that. He's a latter-day Buck Williams. But he doesn't have Stuckey's ceiling. Nobody could knock Atlanta for picking Horford No. 3. But check back. We'll knock Atlanta plenty in a minute.

Now it really gets gruesome. Memphis went No. 4 and took Mike Conley, an undersized point guard, one year after hitting nicely with a late first-round undersized point guard, Kyle Lowry. In 2008, Memphis wound up with O.J. Mayo, and many think his best position will eventually be point guard. Can you imagine what the future in Memphis would look like with a big backcourt of Stuckey and Mayo, interchangeable at the 1 and 2, with Rudy Gay on the wing?

Seattle went fifth, courtesy of shipping Ray Allen to Boston, and tookJeff Green. He looks solid, not great. A clear win for Stuckey. Yeah, the Thunder could have had both Durant and Stuckey. The three wins would be tripled, at least.

Milwaukee was next with the selection of Yi Jianlian, and all the ensuing international diplomacy it took to appease him and his Chinese official handlers for steering him to a small market light on Asian influence must double the Bucks' pain now at the enormity of the gaffe. Ex-Pistons vice president John Hammond must look at the Bucks and wonder what they'd be with Rodney Stuckey at the point. Of course, if Larry Harris had taken Stuckey instead of Yi, he'd still be the GM and Hammond might still be at Joe Dumars' right hand with the Pistons.

Minnesota had the seventh pick and took Horford's teammate at two-time defending NCAA champ Florida, Corey Brewer. Coming off a hugely disappointing rookie season and now a torn ACL, Brewer's NBA future is, at best, murky. In the 2006 draft, Minnesota took Brandon Roy and shipped him to Portland for Randy Foye. The T-wolves could today have a backcourt of Stuckey and Roy. Yikes.

Golden State swapped Jason Richardson to Charlotte for the eighth pick and took Brandan Wright after one season at North Carolina. Some still think Wright could be a big-time player. But Stuckey? If the Warriors had taken him, they'd have been shopping Baron Davis in trade a year ago - instead of getting blindsided by his departure in free agency - and could have a Western Conference contender today instead of another lottery team.

Chicago went ninth and took Joakim Noah, who projects as nothing more than a semi-useful role player at this point, sort of a poor man's Anderson Varejao. If the Bulls had taken Stuckey, they could have either used the No. 1 pick they stumbled into in the 2008 draft - though Stuckey might have been enough to move last year's Bulls out of the lottery - on Michael Beasley or gone ahead with the selection of Derrick Rose and fielded one of the most athletic backcourts in the league.

(A word about that: The Pistons were one of the few teams who viewed Stuckey as a point guard, which in large measure explains why he fell to 15. But Stuckey is really an old-fashioned guard, capable of playing either spot with equal aplomb, and the thought of he and Rose, say, or he and Mayo together isn't at all far-fetched.)

Sacramento had the 10th pick and grabbed Spencer Hawes, a 7-footer with one year at Washington under his belt. Hawes has the tools to be an effective offensive player. There will be a market for his skills for a very long time. But nobody will be building a franchise around him.

Here comes the killer: With the 11th pick, and with a roster that at the time included the likes of Tyronn Lue and Speedy Claxton at point guard, the Atlanta Hawks addressed a need they could have solved two years prior but instead passed on both Chris Paul and Deron Williams to select Marvin Williams by taking ... Acie Law. They wound up trading for Mike Bibby midway through last season. Law is barely in the rotation for a young team that would be talked about as the Eastern Conference's version of Portland if Atlanta had taken Stuckey No. 11.

Philadelphia went 12th and took a player who was very much on the Pistons' radar, Georgia Tech freshman Thaddeus Young. If they do the draft over, Young definitely goes in the top five. There are probably some GMs who would take Young over Stuckey today. But the consensus? Have to believe it's Stuckey.

New Orleans had the 13th pick and grabbed Kansas sophomore Julian Wright, a freakishly good athlete who is one semi-reliable jump shot away from being an impact player. But right now, his future isn't nearly as clear as Stuckey's appears. And, again, the thought of a Stuckey-Paul backcourt ... whew!

The LA Clippers had the 14th pick and, as far as the Pistons were concerned, neither the Clips nor the Pistons could go wrong by this point. The Pistons loved Al Thornton. In fact, a month or so before the draft, he was the guy they hoped might fall to them. But they didn't think it would happen, and they zeroed in on Stuckey, and by draft day, Stuckey was the one they were hoping would fall. Thornton has been a very, very good player for the Clips, a relentless presence with a scorer's mentality, just as Joe Dumars imagined.

But the Pistons are as happy Rodney Stuckey parachuted to them at 15 as at least a dozen teams ahead of them are crestfallen they didn't have the foresight to see a dynamic NBA point guard when they scouted the high-scoring kid from Eastern Washington.

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All losses aren't created equal

2008-12-22T14:11:00.003-05:00

For Joe Dumars, the easy way out would have been to stand pat after a training camp and preseason that exhibited largely positive signs, never mind the 2-0 start to the regular season, before he pulled the trigger on the Chauncey Billups-Allen Iverson trade.

For Michael Curry, the easy way out would have been to stay conventional with his starting lineup, bringing Rodney Stuckey off of the bench and keeping Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince in their comfort zones at shooting guard and small forward.

I don't know what the Pistons' record would be if the trade hadn't been executed or the lineup switch enacted, but chances are it would be somewhere north of the 14-11 they woke up with Monday after two tough losses to two good teams over the weekend, the double-overtime game with Utah on Friday and the derailed comeback at Atlanta on Sunday.

The hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing currently common among Pistons Nation isn't unexpected. This is a fan base now conditioned to 50-win seasons and playoff runs that don't conclude until the kids have been let out of school for the summer.

And that's the point behind the moves - Joe D's trade and Michael Curry's lineup switch. They'd very much like to continue those traditions. If that means taking a step back in November and December to better prepare for the running start they'll need to make a charge at Boston and Cleveland come spring, so be it.

As Dumars told me a few weeks ago, losing games he thinks the Pistons should still be winning - adjustments or not - disappoints him, but it's hypocrisy to pass judgment on this team for wins and losses in December when the standard for judging them during all those other 50-win seasons was the final chapter, not all the beautifully constructed ones that came before it.

In that light, you can look at the Utah and Atlanta losses and say "step back" - in fact, Tayshaun Prince and Rip Hamilton called it that Monday - but many of the components that made up those losses counted as steps forward.

"The Utah game was a tough game to lose," Hamilton said. "They played great; we played great, but they ended up getting the win. Atlanta, we slipped a little bit. We took a couple of steps back."

"Definitely some positives out of the games," Prince said, "but we did take a step back."

These losses are frustrating for them, too, probably to a greater degree than they are for Dumars and Curry. Players aren't conditioned to look at the big picture. For so long, the Pistons' familiar starters have had well-defined roles and knew not only what was expected of them, but what they could expect out of the guy next to them. All that's been changed. It's as if these players who know the game so well are relearning it on the fly. And that's disorienting, and frustrating, in itself.

But wins help them see the legitimacy of the logic behind the change. The bursts of offensive potency they've often exhibited over the last few weeks can be galvanzing. Even those last two tough losses, I'd argue, are going to be seen in retrospect as positive steps in that regard. Hamilton wasn't exaggerating when he said both teams played great in the double-OT thriller. The Pistons came out of that game bitterly disappointed, of course, and flat-out exhausted and set up for the thankless task of playing another hot team on the road barely 36 hours later, but also a little exhilirated to see the possibilities their revamped roster allow them.

"We had some good moments in those games," Curry said after Monday's practice. "The Utah game ... one shot and we win it. It was a game Stuckey didn't play really well. Stuckey bounced back against Atlanta, a team that's only lost twice at home, 10-2 going into that game. Stuckey had a great bounce-back game and we held them to 42 percent shooting. I thought it was a really good game for us other than the fact we didn't defend Mike Bibby very well."

That's the way it is with struggling teams, of course, or teams, as Dumars characterized the Pistons, that are trying to find themselves: There's usually one thing that trips losing - and it's almost always something different than it was the game before. That's where the Pistons are at right now: plug one hole in the dike, another one pops open.

But the leaks aren't gushing any more, only trickling. And they're getting repaired with more dispatch every time.

"We're getting better," Curry said. "That's the positive thing. As we look at the tape, we're getting better and we've shown signs. But we're not there yet."

Which is OK when the finish line hangs over June.

The Pistons see another old friend when Chicago comes to town: Lindsey Hunter.

"Very weird. Strange," Hamilton said of the thought of seeing Hunter in Bulls red. "We've been having a lot of battles with Chicago, and now to see him on the other side of the fence. To see him in a Chicago uniform is going to feel very odd."

The Pistons' small lineup won't be in much danger of being overpowered by the Bulls, who lack a dominant post presence and could be without both Drew Gooden (sprained ankle) and Tyrus Thomas (concussion). In Chicago's win on Saturday over Utah - the Jazz, too, felt the effects of the double-overtime game - the Bulls often went with four perimeter players around second-year 7-footer Aaron Gray, and sometimes with five perimeter players.
Since going to the small lineup six games ago, the Pistons have been outrebounded by almost seven per game. That's a fairly alarming number if it continues, and Curry isn't conceding the rebounding battle, but he hopes to close the gap and expects to make up for it in other areas.

"That's one of the things we knew going small we'd give up," he said. "They're probably going to beat us on the boards a little more because of that. But we've started games better. We've been efficient scoring with that small group. We've just got to get better defensively with that group and I think we'll be OK. We definitely still want to use our bigs more. In a perfect world, I woud love to play 16 to 20 minutes small" - the first eight to 10 minutes of each half - "and play the other minutes big."

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Amid the ruins, a bright ember glows

2008-12-20T00:03:00.001-05:00

The Pistons moved beyond moral victories very early in the Joe Dumars reconstruction, so nobody was in a mood to celebrate the 120-114 double-overtime loss to Utah on a night four of Michael Curry’s best players ended the game with the same perspective as he had – from the bench, watching, tagged with six fouls apiece.

That makes seven straight losses to the Jazz, which at least makes the notion of taking a stake to drive through their collective heart on the trip to Utah for this season’s rematch tempting.

But in the ashes of this smoldering defeat, you don’t need an arson expert to detect the signs of an offense about to combust and a team inching closer to the vision Dumars had when he pulled off the Chauncey Billups-Allen Iverson deal two games into the season.

“I would rather both of us not score at all and get a win than have good games like that in a loss,” Allen Iverson said after establishing a personal best as a Piston with 38 points on a night Rip Hamilton tossed in 30, the first time two Pistons crested 30 since Hamilton and Billups did it in March 2003. “But it keeps you positive and lets you know we can get it done and we can be effective, both of us, in one single game.”

Remember when the prevailing wisdom was that these two couldn’t play together, couldn’t share the ball, couldn’t strike the balance necessary for the Pistons to realize the on-paper potential of combining two of their generation’s most irrepressible scorers?

Well, scratch that.

You could nitpick a lot about this game to find the one play that would have enabled the Pistons to win it in regulation, or in the first overtime, before the zebras sidelined three more of them – Hamilton, Rodney Stuckey and Antonio McDyess early in the second overtime – after Rasheed Wallace had been banished in the first overtime. But the losing side can do that in every game.

The inescapable truth about this game was that it took a great performance from Utah on a night the Pistons would have beaten pretty much all comers. It was that good. Who’d have guessed that on dollar hot dog night, the best bargain would turn out to be the basketball? No matter what a seat cost at The Palace for Friday night’s pulsating double-overtime thriller, it represented Black Friday value.

If they could have captured the heat this one generated, they wouldn’t have had to bother with plowing the parking lot for the foot of snow that got dumped on Detroit earlier in the day – it would have melted in a flash. Presciently enough, the souvenir giveaway was a snowbrush. Michael Curry might have used his to sweep away the disappointment that clung to him unmistakably, yet Curry vacillated between hurt and hope, clearly believing that many things he saw from his team on a night that showcased the NBA at its best will translate into the future he believes will validate them all.

“I’m pleased with what our guys did,” he said. “We made some mistakes, but overall I thought our guys tried to play to their strengths and played unselfish and continued to attack.”

With the first real test of the small lineup since Curry swapped out Kwame Brown for Rodney Stuckey in the starting lineup, the Pistons played one of the NBA’s top rebounding and toughest teams to a virtual draw on the boards – Utah won 50-47 despite Wallace and McDyess both fouling out – and held the Jazz to 40 points in the paint, five under their average despite the 10 extra minutes.

And let’s make this clear: Deron Williams and ex-Piston Mehmet Okur were sensational, and if they had been merely exceptionally good, the Pistons would have walked into the Currier & Ives night winners. Williams knocked down 11 of 18 shots despite mostly stout defense played on him all night, and his turnaround jumper that twisted Stuckey into the ground with 2.3 seconds left in regulation would have won it if not for Hamilton’s coldblooded 17-footer to tie with four-tenths of a second left.

Williams finished with 29 points and eight assists, Okur with 26 and 12 boards. Paul Millsap, standing in for the 16th straight game for the injured Carlos Boozer, kept his remarkable streak of double-doubles alive at 14 – though he needed both overtimes to do it – as he scored added 24 points and 13 rebounds.

Okur and Millsap combined for nine points in the second overtime when the Pistons had to go with Jason Maxiell and Walter Herrmann as their big man combination. The Pistons were whistled for 34 fouls to Utah’s 21 and the Jazz shot 17 more foul shots.

The Pistons had a shot to win at the end of the first overtime, but Stuckey missed an open triple from a few feet beyond the spot where Hamilton had drained his shot to force overtime. It was Iverson’s play to make, but Utah knew that as well as anyone and was determined to make someone else beat them.

“I wanted to take it,” Iverson said, “but I looked at the way the defense was playing, I knew everyone on their team knew I was going to try to take the shot. They packed in so much, that’s how Rodney got the look he got. Out of 100 shots, I’ll take that one 100 times.”

Ten days ago, when the Pistons were dealing with the rare franchise-disorienting three-game losing streak, Joe D said he saw a team trying to find itself. Get big leads, lose them. Get down big, come roaring back.

They were this close to winning their fourth straight game on Friday night, and would have with a little less heroics from Williams or Okur, a little more favorable whistle, a little better bounce here or there. No one’s calling off the search party just yet, but the bread crumbs are getting a little closer together.

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Stuckey ready for a measuring-stick game

2008-12-18T14:28:00.003-05:00

In tempering expectations for Rodney Stuckey, coming off of his tour de force stand-in performance for Chauncey Billups in last spring's playoffs and even after Billups' return against Boston in the conference finals, Michael Curry often pointed out in the preseason that Stuckey had yet to play a full season - remember, he missed the first 25 games of his rookie year with a hand injury.

Stuckey is still four games shy of the full 82-game load. But his ascencion to Curry's starting lineup has warped the timeline on his transformation to stardom. And if it needed any further nudging, Stuckey's 79th NBA game - Friday night against Utah - should help.

Because Utah means Deron Williams is coming to town, and if there is anyone among the NBA's cadre of blossoming star point guards Stuckey most resembles, it's probably Williams. Both are blessed with plus size (Williams is listed at 6-foot-3, 210 pounds; Stuckey at 6-foot-5, 207) for the position, but what really elevates them to a different plane is that they're also stronger and quicker than pretty much everyone they come across.

Except, perhaps, each other.

"Size-wise, the fact they're both aggressive drivers, very quick despite having good size, I think they are similar in build and in some ways in the way they attack the game," Curry said. "Deron is tough. He's emerging as one of the elite point guards in this league. It's a good matchup for Stuckey. It's a guy he can pick things up from as well as a good challenge for him. Knowing Stuckey the way we do, he loves to meet those challenges."

If he meets that challenge the way he's addressed that of becoming a young starting point guard surrounded by four able scorers, the Pistons have a shot at snapping their six-game losing streak to the closest thing they have to a nemesis in today's NBA. In the four games since Curry shuffled the lineup and brought Stuckey into the mix, he's averaged 15.5 points and 10 assists while shooting 62 percent. There are only two point guards in the NBA averaging double figures in assists - Chris Paul and Williams.

"I'm a good passer," Stuckey said after Thursday's practice, one night after his nine-point, four-assist fourth quarter enabled the Pistons to break open a close game and win going away over Washington. "When I see my guys open, I'll give 'em the ball."

The Pistons are 5-1 this season with Stuckey as their starting point guard - he started two games early after Billups was traded and before Iverson was cleared to join the team - with their only loss coming at Washington in the first game after the lineup switch. He's mindful, as the starter, of the scorers surrounding him and the need for everyone to get touches so they stay plugged in. To that end, his year serving as Billups' apprentice has paid dividends, for Billups was masterful at controlling the tempo of a game and making sure his teammates got scoring chances to keep defenses honest.

"Just watching him the past year, that's one thing he's always done well - just getting everyone involved and setting up the offense and creating for his teammates and then getting his stuff off," Stuckey said. "Just watching him, that's something that I learned from him. Whatever the defense gives me, I'm just playing off of them. When I see an opening, I take it."

Stuckey's success hasn't really surprised Curry, who said he expects his new point guard to average "at least eight" assists, but he's been pleased at how seamlessly he's taken to the role of orchestrating a game and understanding its rhythms.

"We play at a faster pace," with Stuckey in the game, Curry said. "He's able to push the ball, but what I like more than anything is he pushes the ball and then he recognizes when we need to walk it up and run a set and do something in the half-court. He's being very disciplined in the way he's attacking the game."

Stuckey will be challenged by Williams at both ends, especially in the way he has proven a worthy successor to longtime Jazz point guard John Stockton at manipulating defenses with his ability to work the pick and roll. But Curry has been as impressed with Stuckey's impact on the Pistons' defense as on their offense.

"I thought from the (2007) Summer League, he did some things defensively that were really good and I always thought as he got in better shape and was able to stay down in a stance longer, because of his quick feet and his strong chest area, he could bump guys and keep guys in front of him."

And for as much as Curry has tried to manage expectations for Stuckey, he can't help himself sometimes as he projects the future, adding up all the elements of Stuckey's game - his playmaking ability, his rapidly expanding shooting range, his defensive presence and his mental approach and toughness.

"He's so unselfish, it's amazing the amount of points he scored in college," Curry said. "When you have a guy like that, that's the makeup for a guy who has a chance to be really special in this league. A guy who has the ability to score and defend and he's unselfish and he's self-motivated in what he wants to do and be as a player."

Almost one full season into what Curry expects to be a career that could have his jersey hanging in The Palace rafters, the evolution of Rodney Stuckey will take another step when Utah and Deron Williams come to town.

Allen Iverson told Arnie Kander after suffering a knee-to-knee blow in Wednesday's win that he expected it "to be on fire" when he arose Thursday. But Iverson went through practice as usual and is good to go against the Jazz.
Utah's Carlos Boozer had hoped to be back this week after missing time with a strained left quadriceps tendon, but he had a setback Wednesday during a workout and was scheduled for an MRI Thursday. He's now missed 15 games. Boozer made some headlines Wednesday when he told ESPN.com that he intends to opt out of his contract following the season. The Pistons will be one of a handful of teams with the cap space it would take to land a player of Boozer's stature. Among the others are Memphis, Oklahoma City and Portland, although if Darius Miles plays 10 games with Memphis - which just signed him - then he goes back on Portland's cap at close to $10 million, eliminating the Blazers from pursuit.
In Boozer's absence, third-year player Paul Millsap has put up an amazing 13 consecutive double-doubles, including a 32-point, 10-rebound performance at Boston this week. Millsap was drafted in the second round in 2006 and, as such, will be a restricted free agent after the season, giving Utah protection at the position should it lose Boozer.

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Iverson finds the spotlight - and shares it

2008-12-17T23:08:00.001-05:00

Arron Afflalo picked up his third foul seven minutes before halftime and went to the bench. Rodney Stuckey followed two minutes later, also saddled with three fouls. Rip Hamilton’s shot had already shown signs of betrayal by then. Rasheed Wallace had yet to find the bottom of the net.

Allen Iverson has spent most of his first six weeks as a Piston trying not to step on toes, but all of a sudden there weren’t that many toes in the pool. So for about three wildly entertaining minutes, he did what he’d done for his first 12 remarkable NBA seasons: strap an entire NBA franchise to his wiry little frame and drag everyone along for the ride.

He wound up with 28 points – just one more than he’s averaged over his career, but just two off of his best in his 19th game since the trade that transformed the Pistons.

“I’ve never been on a team where you start five guys and the coach calls plays for all five guys,” Iverson said, his eyes wide with the wonder of it still. “That says a lot about our offensive ability. But it’s different for me and it’s just something I have to get used to – something I’m willing to get used to because I just see the big picture.”

It’s still fair to argue the merits of the trade, whether Iverson’s explosiveness vs. Chauncey Billups’ steady hand will push the Pistons over the hump or push them out of their comfort zone, but about that last thing – Iverson’s willingness to subvert the scorer in his soul for the betterment of the team – there really are no doubters.

Even on a night he scored 28 and supplied plenty of highlight-reel fodder, his night was every bit as memorable for the simple as the spectacular.

Let’s start with the spectacular, late in the second half with the Pistons nursing a three-point lead.

It began with Iverson darting from left to right, his favorite flight path that starts on the left wing and swoops across the lane toward the basket on the other side of the rim, faking a pass to Antonio McDyess that froze the Washington defense while Iverson continued, unmolested, for a layup between trees JaVale McGee and Antawn Jamison.

The next minute he was in transition, in the middle of the floor, the ball in his hands, McDyess cutting to the basket from the right wing, Iverson taking the ball with his right hand behind his back – again, making everyone in the building think it was coming out the other side, a pass to his left – but stopping it there by bringing his left hand around his back, too, then redirecting it to his right, to McDyess, for an easy layup.

If you can’t picture it, don’t worry. “SportsCenter” will be playing it all day.

In those final minutes before halftime, he put up six points and spoon-fed McDyess another two, fueling a spurt that saw the Pistons score 25 percent of their first-half points in about half that percentage of the minutes.

Some of it is just settling in, feeling enough like one of the guys finally that he’s told himself it’s OK to be Allen Iverson even when it’s Rip Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace running with him, not Kevin Ollie and Samuel Dalembert. But most of it is the ease he feels now playing off of the ball with Rodney Stuckey on a freight train to stardom at point guard.

“Lineup change,” Michael Curry answered immediately when I asked him which was the bigger influence in the more-at-ease Iverson we’ve seen over the last week, the 19-game experience or the lineup change. “When you look back at it, he hadn’t strictly run the point in some years. It’s been a long, long time since he did that and we were asking him to do that when he first got here. So he never was able to get going into games a lot of times. Just by having Stuckey out there, it relieves him of that.”

Which brings us to the simple.

Iverson had 20 points by the midway mark of the third quarter, then spent the next few minutes resting to get ready for the fourth. The Pistons led by only three after three. Iverson had to be hearing the little voice in his head telling him it was now his time, his place to take over.

But Stuckey, who had played a little unevenly to that point, got it going early, hitting a 20-footer and getting to the foul line twice for six quick points.

So a few possessions later, Iverson fed Stuckey, posting up against Juan Dixon, against whom he owns an overwhelming physical advantage. But Washington double-teamed and Stuckey kicked it back out to Iverson, whose every instinct at that point must have screamed at him to attack the basket while Washington’s defense was on the move. But he stayed with it, dumping the ball back in the post to Stuckey, who this time lowered his left shoulder, got inside the lane, drawing three Wizards defenders with him, and found Tayshaun Prince for a dunk and a seven-point lead.

Later still, he hit McDyess for another layup – and, ironically enough, McDyess, a part of the trade that netted Iverson, has quickly developed a very nice chemistry with him – and an eight-point lead, then drove baseline and found Prince for a wide-open jumper to stretch it to 10.

Stuckey wound up with another bulging stat line: 18 points, 11 assists and only two turnovers, nine of his points and four of his assists coming in the fourth quarter, Iverson perfectly content to dance into the spotlight when called upon, and slide one-half step to the side when it shone brightest upon Stuckey’s shoulders.

“I’m definitely getting comfortable,” he said. “I understand my role. I understand when it’s going to be time for me to try to dominate games and when it’s going to be time for me to sit back and let somebody else do it. Over time, it’s going to get better and better.”

Makes you wonder where they’ll be in another 19 games.

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Lineup change had as much to do with defense

2008-12-16T13:52:00.003-05:00

Even coaches who save their X-and-O doodling time for offense understand this much: When your defense is stifling, points come easier at the other end. Flip Saunders was regarded as one of the NBA's most clever offensive coaches, but he consistently maintained that the offense functioned more efficiently if you weren't always reduced to taking the ball out of the net on the other end.

Michael Curry made his chops as an NBA player at the defensive end, so you don't have to guess how he feels about the relationship's balance.

And it was with defense in mind as much as offense that led Curry to reshuffle his starting lineup and insert Rodney Stuckey at point guard, despite the analysis that has focused on Stuckey's influence as a point guard helping Allen Iverson and Rip Hamilton find a common ground to launch their individual successes within the team framework.

"I thought Rodney would be great in the starting lineup, first of all from a defensive standpoint," Curry said. "He's our best defender on the ball and to be a really good defensive team, you have to be really good at defending the ball. ... We're starting to turn the corner and become a better defensive team."

The Pistons have some alarming defensive stats on their resume through the first quarter of the season - they rank 22nd in field-goal percentage defense - but Curry has been encouraged by what he's seen since the lineup change. And part of the motivation for the amped-up defensive intensity might be the impact players see it can have on their impact to get easy points the other way.

"Guys are starting to realize as long as we defend really well, offensively we're going to be fine," Curry said. "If we defend, we're going to score. What happens is when you're not defending well and you get into all half-court sets, everybody is trying to see if it's their turn to score. When we get into defending, we get out in transition, we get more possessions in the game and having Stuckey out there has opened it up for Allen and Rip to get going offensively. When we get more possessions, when we get stops and get out and run, all the guys are getting their reps and touches."

The ascencion of Stuckey to starter was motivated by what he would mean to that unit's and the team's success, but it's also been a boon to Stuckey's play. That hasn't surprised Curry for any number of reasons:

He saw the success Stuckey had as a starter in the playoffs last year for an injured Chauncey Billups and again in the two games early this season when the Iverson-Billups trade left the Pistons without either one.

"I just think he's comfortable starting," Curry said. "I've always thought that. Maybe he never came off the bench before he came here, but he's always appeared to me to be very comfortable when he's started."

"When Chaunce first got traded," Hamilton said, "the two games he started, he was awesome. He played great both games and we got two wins. Nothing he does right now surprises me. I expect that of him. I don't expect him to come out and play like a second-year player."

Playing with four bona fide scoring threats has spread the floor for Stuckey and put his penetration skills back in play.

"I don't think he felt any pressure to score even when he was coming off of the bench," Curry said. "I just think the game opens up for him. When you didn't have (Antonio McDyess) out there with that second group when he was coming off the bench, the floor just shrunk for him and he was forced to shoot all jumpers. No one wants to make a living shooting all Js. We've been confident in his jump shot and we love his ability to get to the basket. So now he can pick and choose a lot better."

It fits Stuckey's aggressive nature to be out there to start games and appears to be accelerating his emergence as a take-charge leader.

"I think his demeanor is what helps separate him from a lot of players and a big part of why he's going to become a great player in this league," Curry said. "His demeanor fits right along with his ability and desire to work hard and be great."

Curry knew some things might suffer at first, the record included, as he went about implementing any number of changes this season, everything from the inclusion of more young players in the rotation to altering the playbook to demanding more in the way of physical conditioning early in the season. He wasn't figuring on a dramatic early-season trade compounding the magnitude of change. But the payoff, he believes, will be a more resilient and deeper team over time. Rodney Stuckey is helping him shrink the time frame.

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Thumbs up in early returns on lineup switch

2008-12-15T13:45:00.004-05:00

The sample size is still too small to draw ironclad conclusions about the genius of inserting Rodney Stuckey in the Pistons' starting lineup, but so far, so good. Through three games, the numbers of Stuckey, Rip Hamilton and Allen Iverson suggest the Pistons are on the verge of becoming the dynamic offensive team Joe Dumars envisioned when he pulled the Iverson-Chauncey Billups blockbuster two games into the season.

Hamilton is averaging 25 points and shooting 54 percent in those three games, up from 16.3 and 43 percent prior to the lineup switch. Iverson's scoring average is virtually the same pre- and post-switch, but his efficiency is up significantly. A 39 percent shooter before Stuckey joined the lineup, Iverson is shooting 50 percent over the last three games and had a 12-assist performance in one game. And his 20-point game at Charlotte on Saturday was his highest-scoring game in his last 11.

Stuckey, too, has seen his numbers jump to 14.7 points and 9.7 assists while shooting a remarkable 68 percent.

The win-win to the move is that while it has appeared to have liberating effects on Hamilton and Iverson and allowed them to flourish by playing off of Stuckey and even Tayshaun Prince in his unique role as a playmaking power forward, it has emboldened Stuckey to be the take-charge leader that's easier to achieve as a starter than a sixth man.

Without the burden of being a point guard needed for his scoring punch on a second unit not dripping with scorers, Stuckey hasn't had to force scoring chances out of highly contested shots at the rim, instead probing those openings more judiciously. And with every game, Stuckey flashes eye-catching bullet passes that must make NBA scouts who viewed him as strictly a shooting guard cringe.

"With Stuckey at the point, it frees up Allen and Rip from having to initiate the offense a lot of times," Michael Curry said after Monday's practice. "We want them to be able to initiate sets at times, but not all the time and maybe not all the time at the beginning. Stuck does a great job of running sets, putting guys in position to score and I also like Stuckey starting out on the ball defensively."

In the first quarters of the three games since Stuckey became a starter, the Pistons have held teams to 17.7 points a game and have led after one quarter by an average of 10.7 points.

Tayshaun Prince's numbers have gone the other way - he's averaging 6.7 points and shooting 34 percent, compared to 15.1 and 45 percent pre-switch - but his shot attempts per game haven't been affected much (11.9-10.7) and it's more likely a bad shooting weekend (7 of 19 against Indiana and Charlotte) more than anything.

As Curry said after Prince's 3 of 12 against Indiana, in which Prince had a number of open jump shots rim out, "Tay had great looks tonight. If Tay has those looks tomorrow, he'll go 8 for 12 or 9 for 12." He didn't, but nobody is concerned about Prince - at least not coach or player. Prince, in fact, seems to be embracing the added responsibilities of being the de facto point guard at times when Stuckey is out of the game and moving to power forward to start halves.

"I'm at the point right now where whatever can get us on a winning streak here, we're going to keep it that way," he said. "Me being at the four has been creating things for Rip, for Stuckey and for Allen. So if that's going to work, we're going to stick with it."

When Curry considered the lineup switch, he did it fully believing it would benefit all three guards offensively. Defensively, he knew Wallace was fully capable of guarding at either interior position. He liked having Stuckey on the ball and moving Iverson off of it. And he saw enough of Hamilton defending small forwards last season to be confident of that matchup. The one that had him a little concerned was Prince guarding bigger, stronger power forwards.

"Sometimes bigger and heavier guys, they will cause Tay a problem," Curry said. But in those games - perhaps one like this Friday's with Utah, if Carlos Boozer is back from his thigh injury by then - "our first sub will be another big and bump Tay back to the three." And even if moving Prince to power forward lessens his opportunities to post up against smaller threes, with "some of those bigger guys, Tay is able to (isolate) from the elbow or get into pick and rolls. So I like what he can do because of that, plus I think at the four Tay really rebounds the ball well for us."

To finish most games, Curry sees Prince more often at his more customary small forward position with Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess up front to put scoring pressure at both spots on the opposition. In the backcourt? Interesting answer: "It's a hell of a dilemma, but I cherish it that at the end of games, you're looking at three for the two perimeter guys - Rip, Stuckey and AI, whoever is rolling."

It's a measure of the confidence Curry has in Stuckey, and the belief that to be the team Curry feels they can become it will pay to accelerate the second-year point guard's development, that Stuckey is a candidate to finish games over either the player who's led the Pistons in scoring for six straight seasons or the player with the third-highest scoring average in NBA history.

"We're going to have a good guy sometimes sit out the last six minutes of the fourth quarter or the whole fourth quarter sometimes," Curry said. "That's just how it's going to be. It doesn't mean that guy isn't playing well. It just means that we've got a really deep team, especially in certain areas. On the perimeter we're really deep. If teams are big, we're going to need Dice and Sheed out there. If Dice isn't out there, we'll just go with our starting lineup and finish games like that."

He's right. Not a bad dilemma.

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The art of building a basketball team

2008-12-12T16:35:00.004-05:00

On the art-science continuum, basketball is way over there on the left, the art end. Basketball is the most elusive of sports to quantify numerically. Oh, sure, you can crank out field-goal percentages and points in the paint and various and sundry other numerical categories, but none seem very accurate predictors.

Putting a winning team together, too, is much more a function of gut feel than statistical analysis. I thought about that after talking with Joe Dumars the other day and getting his perspective on evaluating the Pistons since he traded Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson.

There's no way to tell for sure, but chances are the Pistons would not have hit the NBA quarter-pole flirting with .500 had Joe D stuck to the status quo. They might not be abreast of Boston and Cleveland in leading the charge atop the Eastern Conference, but chances are they would have won at least twice as many as they'd lost.

But Dumars said something that struck me: "I watch how we play more than anything else. There have been times we've been winning games and I don't like the way we've played and there are times we've hit some struggles and I say, I like the direction we're heading. Right now, it's probably neither for me. Right now, it's watching a team trying to find itself. Get down big, can come back. Get up big, can lose a lead. That's a team trying to find itself and that's what we're working through right now."

Last year's Pistons - and the year before that, and the year before that, and ... - never had to search far to find themselves. Dumars could have stood pat with this team and been virtually assured of at least a top-four seed in the Eastern Conference yet again. The Billups-Wallace-Hamilton-Prince nucleus - even if not quite as durable and irrepressible as it had been two or three years ago - still gave the Pistons a puncher's chance of winning it all because a blossoming young nucleus behind them could seal whatever fissures were threatened.

But then this intriguing proposal comes along: Denver offers Allen Iverson, one of the most mercurial scorers in NBA history. Dumars weighs the pluses and minuses. Surely he realized the trade carried the risk of lesser than what has become the customary success here at Six Championship Drive. Surely he grasped that the breathtaking talents of Iverson, if folded adroitly into the recipe here, could yield a product with a higher potential for changing the address yet again.

On top of that, the cherry for Dumars was the chance to dramatically alter the mix next season with the increased payroll flexibility that shedding the long-term commitment to Billups entailed. If he chooses, Joe D will have the Pistons at or near the front of the line for two very desirable free agents next July with the $22 million he'll have available to him under the salary cap.

But let's set that aside for the moment and focus on this year and the unpredictability of plugging star personnel into stable lineups. The biggest free-agent move of last summer was Philadelphia adding Elton Brand to a team that closed the regular season in a rush and made the No. 2 seed Pistons sweat in the first round. It looked like a near-perfect match: Brand, a drop-dead post scorer, on a team that otherwise struggled to find half-court offense but was proficient in nearly every other area.

In Philadelphia, despite the benefit of an off-season and a training camp to integrate Brand, they're struggling more mightily than the Pistons to find themselves. Go figure.

In baseball, if you have trouble scoring runs, you go get yourself a few bats - a couple of guys with high on-base percentages, a slugger or two with triple-digit RBI histories. In football, if you can't stop the run, you direct your draft and free-agent resources to landing a 320-pound nose tackle and a linebacker with a forward gear.

In basketball, the equations are never that linear. The link between offense and defense is inexorable and complex. Trying to solve a weakness often undermines a strength. A trade might upgrade the talent yet degrade the product.

Joe D said something else: It might take all 82 games for the Pistons to figure this thing out. And he'll be watching, looking for signs the rest of us probably won't see, invisible to the masses way down on the art end of the team-building continuum.

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McDyess: 'Things are going to come along'

2008-12-11T14:40:00.003-05:00

The month away did Antonio McDyess good, mentally and physically.

"I feel good now, I must say," McDyess said Thursday after breaking a hard sweat for his second day of practice in his second tour of duty with the Pistons. "I haven't played this well in practice since I was a rookie, it seems like. That vacation was great. It was lovely. Hopefully, down the stretch, it pays off."

While he sat home counting the pages as they flew off of the calendar toward the 30-day minimum he needed to be idle before the Pistons could re-sign him, McDyess caught as many Pistons games as possible on TV. And he saw them through a different lens.

"It was tough to see those guys struggle the way they did against teams I felt like they could have won the game against," he said. "I look up and see us lose to Minnesota, Philly, New Jersey - normally, they couldn't even stay in the gym with us. It was sad to watch that happen to these guys when they're trying to make adjustments and get a win. Not that the effort isn't there - it's just things not clicking the way they normally do."

The dislocation was especially jarring to him when he returned for Tuesday's game at Washington, without having had the benefit of a practice under his belt, saw the Pistons - his Pistons - take a 17-point lead and then ... pffft! It disappeared.

"Sometimes, we kind of put our heads down because we aren't used to losing games like we have or getting down on ourselves. It's like a shock to us. Looking at it from that first game in Washington when I came back, it was just a shock and everyone kind of put their head down and it seemed like it was over. We've just got to get ourselves going. We can't let that bother us. We've got to to out and play a different game, knowing it's a different team."

Getting McDyess back makes them a little less different, of course, and McDyess brings with him an inherent stability that should further serve to put the Pistons back on course.

"Antonio McDyess brings a very mature, calming effect to our team," Joe Dumars told me in part II of the Q&A I did with him that will be posted on Pistons.com on Friday. "This is beyond just basketball. Always the voice of reason. Always the guy that's never going to do things off of pure emotion. The guy that from a coaching standpoint you can trust to battle every day and you know that he's not going to get sidetracked with anything. ... It's a really good feeling to have him back in uniform and with us."

McDyess has been through 12 previous NBA seasons and knows all about comebacks, including from three devastating knee injuries. When he urges patience and perspective, it's worth heeding the message.

"We're early in the season and we've got a chance to just bounce back," he said. "The first 20 games haven't looked so good for us, but we've got a chance to bounce back. ... It was a huge trade. Playing with Chauncey for so many years, being so used to each other and then making a big trade like that, it's going to take time. It's just not going to happen overnight. We've got a long season and things are going to come along slowly."

Michael Curry made his chops in the NBA as a fearless defender who took on the opposition's top-scoring wing nightly. So I asked him what he thought about Carmelo Anthony going off for a record-tying 33 points in one quarter Wednesday against Minnesota.

"Wow," he said. "How many free throws did he take? I would have had to put him at the line a lot of times. Carmelo is an explosive scorer. I'm sure once he starts going, his teammates really start feeding him the ball. These guys can really get going and you have to lock in to them. If they start knocking down threes and getting to the free-throw line, that's tough."

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