Terse Curry communicates with playing time

A week ago Michael Curry’s biggest concern was bench play leading to a second-quarter scoring deficit. Now his biggest concern is a bigger concern than the second quarter. It’s the first and fourth quarters – when his starters are supposed to (a) establish superiority and (b) close the deal.

They did neither on Sunday.

And some of them performed poorly enough at (a) in the only analysis that matters, Michael Curry’s, that the Pistons’ rookie coach didn’t give them the chance at (b).

Against a Portland starting lineup whose NBA experience in years equaled Rip Hamilton’s nine seasons – never mind Allen Iverson’s 12 and Rasheed Wallace’s 13 – the Pistons’ starters dug themselves holes twice that the bench dug them back out of before a mixed lineup flagged down the stretch.

Sunday remains their day of unrest – the Pistons are now 0-4 on the Lord’s day – and this one was a little more restless than most.

The fact Curry played Rodney Stuckey, Arron Afflalo and Amir Johnson either all or most of the fourth quarter while Rip Hamilton and Allen Iverson sat for long stretches of it and Tayshaun Prince for all of it will raise eyebrows. The more pertinent issue is if Prince’s reaction to Curry’s assessment of his play will raise red flags.

There’s no beating around the bush on this: Loss No. 6 of Michael Curry’s career had him more visibly upset than the first five combined. Curry was terse and in no mood for forgiveness after Portland’s 96-85 win at The Palace. A sampling:

• On Prince: “Tay didn’t play well tonight.”
  
• On the starters: “Our starters put us in a hole that we battled back from the entire night. We did battle back. There were times we had to give our guys who came off the bench a blow. This game is on our starters.”
  
• On wavering intensity: “As a coach, I shouldn’t have to search to find my energy. I coach the game. I can’t coach the energy. … You try to put guys out on the court that can get something done, and if they’re getting it done, you let them stay.”
  
  When Prince was told by reporters what Curry said of his play, he reacted as if he’d been stung by a bee.
  
  “Huh? Wow. I thought I was playing pretty good, if you ask me. … I was upset I came out in the first quarter, because I thought I started off the game well, trying to get guys into the flow. It’s always tough for me because I’m in a position where I’m put at the point guard position and I’m trying to make plays for (teammates). Sometimes I’m going to have a good night and sometimes it’s going to take me out of my rhythm.
  
  “I don’t know what’s going on. Hopefully, (coaches) could have said something after the game and let us know what was going on. They didn’t do it, so I don’t know.”
  
  Remember Curry’s first day as coach, when Joe Dumars introduced him as the successor to Flip Saunders – roundly criticized for not holding veteran players accountable – and somebody asked Curry how he’d go about motivating his team? And he said, “The way you get a motivated team is to sit the ones who aren’t motivated.”
  
  Make of numbers what you will, but the NBA keeps plus/minus ratings in its box scores – a simple measurement of the point differential when any individual player is in the game. When Curry brought Iverson back with 6:40 left and the Pistons trailing by three points, the Pistons were plus-20 with Stuckey on the floor and minus-20 with Iverson. Both players finished the game, both of their totals worsening by eight points.
  
  So Iverson finished minus-28. Prince was minus-23 in a season-low 22 minutes. All five starters were in the red and only Kwame Brown, who played 20 minutes, didn’t have a double-digit deficit. Four of the five reserves were in the black and Jason Maxiell, the only Zoo Crew member in the red, played only 10 minutes because of it. It was pretty clear that the Piston’s second unit outplayed the starters on Sunday, for whatever reason. And when Curry gave his reserves major minutes in the second half – if he gave them too many, it was only because they started to run out of gas – he was doing nothing more than living up to the creed he established his first day on the job.
  
  Coming on the heels of Iverson’s Thanksgiving practice no-show, the Curry-Prince interchange through the media made it easily the most traumatic week of Curry’s coaching career in its infancy.
  
  Prince is a good soldier who’s made a career of doing what was necessary for his team to win on a given night. When the Pistons swapped out a pure point guard, Chauncey Billups, in the Iverson deal, Prince willingly sublimated his game to help facilitate the offense. It’s understandable if he feels that no matter what happens in a game’s first three quarters, he’s earned the right to finish.
  
  Curry, for his part, wants to be true to the word he gave his players, especially the young ones who sacrificed their summers to him – that performance would be rewarded. Twice his starters dug holes for his bench on Sunday, twice his bench dug them back out. If one early-season loss was the cost of doing business that could pay off big for the Pistons down the road, Curry was willing to pay up front.
  
  Joe D said upon hiring Curry that communication was the most critical aspect of modern NBA coaching and that Curry would have a deft touch in that regard. He communicated Sunday with actions. The message was as unambiguous as Curry’s blunt cure for fielding a motivated team. The proper response is equally simple: If the starters play better the next time out, they’ll resume their customary role as finishers.

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