McDyess: 'Things are going to come along'

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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