Pistons clear out - some, perhaps, for good?

Most of the Pistons showed up late Saturday morning at the team’s practice facility to clean out lockers, an infinitely easier task than cleansing their psyches, still smarting a little after getting drummed out of the conference finals for the third straight year with Friday’s Game 6 loss to the Boston Celtics.

As there was a year ago, when the Pistons lost four straight after taking a 2-0 lead over Cleveland in the conference finals, there will be intense speculation that Joe Dumars will undergo an overhaul of his creation, perhaps one involving one of his core veterans.

“I really don’t know,” said Chauncey Billups, who a year ago on the same day didn’t know if he’d be back with free agency pending. “We’ll see what happens. I enjoy playing here with these guys and I hope it stays the same, but you never know.”

The bottom of the roster is still more likely to change than the top of it, though, with Juan Dixon, Jarvis Hayes, Lindsey Hunter, Theo Ratliff and Walter Herrmann all headed for free agency. Hunter is expected to retire, although he gave a quick “I haven’t even thought about it yet” before pulling out of the parking lot. Ratliff, likewise, is considering retirement and said it would be a decision made in consultation with his family.

Dixon and Hayes are unrestricted free agents who might find greener pastures elsewhere. Of the two, Hayes is more likely to return, though his role was all but eliminated in the playoffs.

“Flip tightened up his bench,” Hayes said. “I just didn’t know it would be this tight. But we’ll see. I still like the situation here.”

Dixon is buried behind not only All-Star veterans Billups and Rip Hamilton, but also rookies Rodney Stuckey and Arron Afflalo.

The Pistons like Herrmann and probably would match whatever NBA offers he might bring back to them, but the real threat with Herrmann is an offer from a European team. With the value of the Euro soaring against the dollar and Herrmann’s production in past international competitions, he might fetch an international offer that would be too rich for the Pistons. Herrmann has already reportedly drawn interest from a team in Spain.

Beyond that, Dumars will prepare for the draft. The Pistons have the 29th and 59th picks. Next year they will have four picks – their own plus second-rounders from Toronto (Carlos Delfino trade) and Minnesota (Ronald Dupree).

The bottom of the first round is viewed increasingly unfavorably by teams – a guaranteed contract to a player similar to someone you could get a few spots later in the second round is one reason; the international prospects that used to be picked there and left overseas to blossom now favor staying overseas because they make several times more than the rookie salary scale will allow a late first-rounder to make in the NBA is another – so it’s possible the Pistons could either trade out of it or use some of their surplus second-rounders in combination with the No. 29 pick to move up if they target someone they like who might project to go in the late teens or early 20s.

The Pistons are likely to look for help in one of two areas in the draft: a young big man to groom in combination with Amir Johnson, Cheikh Samb and Jason Maxiell, since both Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess will be 34 by the time next season tips off; or an athletic small forward to compete for minutes with or behind Tayshaun Prince.

If Dumars explores the trade market, anything is possible. Wallace, because of his unique skill set and favorable contract status – one year left at a figure in keeping with his production – would be easy to move. But because Dumars has been prudent in his signings, no one would be problematic to move if he spots a creative way to make the team better.

Like Billups, the players that chose to speak to reporters Saturday expressed the hope that nothing dramatic would be done.

“The majority of the players will be back here next year,” Stuckey said. “Whatever Joe D does, it’s his decision.”

Stuckey said he, Afflalo, Johnson and Samb all expect to participate with the Pistons’ entry in the Las Vegas Summer League, which runs July 11-20. However many players the Pistons end up taking in the draft are also likely to be on the roster.

Who coaches them remains to be seen – in Las Vegas and beyond. There has been heavy media speculation that Flip Saunders, coming up on the last year of the four-year contract he signed before the 2005-06 season, won’t be back after taking the Pistons to three straight conference finals. Saunders left the practice facility without talking to reporters; following Friday night’s loss, he said he and Dumars would sit down at some point to discuss the future.

Speculation on a successor, if there should be one, has centered on assistant Michael Curry, brought in by Dumars last summer to serve on Saunders’ staff. Curry was a teammate of Dumars’ in the ’90s and it was Dumars who encouraged then-Pistons GM Rick Sund to sign Curry as a free agent in 1999 to help fill the leadership void created by Dumars’ retirement as a player. Curry has served as president of the NBA Players Association and has long been thought to be head coaching material.

Asked Saturday if he felt ready to be an NBA head coach after just one season as an assistant, Curry, who took on a mentoring role as a veteran player, said, “I’ve been on the bench as an assistant 15 years. For me, personally, it was an easy transition (to coaching). Until you (become a head coach), you don’t know how you’ll be judged or how you’ll grade out.”

Some of the questions facing Dumars will be answered even before the June 26 draft. Then comes the start of free agency July 1. Thanks to the December trade of Nazr Mohammed that had favorable salary-cap implications, the Pistons can and likely will use some or all of their mid-level exception to pursue a veteran free agent or two. With many teams pressed tight against or over the luxury-tax threshhold, the market should again be favorable for teams in a buying mode. And somewhere in all of that, Dumars will consider trade possibilities – with a greater likelihood than years past, perhaps, that a veteran instrumental to the six straight conference finals appearances will be on the table.

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Another curveball buckles Pistons' knees

Well, that figured. A series that didn’t make much sense kept throwing curveballs at us right to the end. When the Pistons took a 10-point lead on Rip Hamilton’s jumper to open the fourth quarter, they were golden, weren’t they?

They weren’t going to squander a 10-point lead with the chance to get back to Boston riding on it. Not at home. Not after running uphill from the middle of the first quarter to the middle of the third, staying close only because Hamilton – hyperextended right elbow and all – and Chauncey Billups kept dropping bombs on Boston.

Really, you could feel it turn midway through the third quarter when Tayshaun Prince – after a one-point first half – hit his third basket of the quarter, a 3-pointer, to give the Pistons a 56-54 lead that seemed to liberate the Pistons and energize the crowd, in turn sending 120 volts through the guys in red, white and blue. By the time the quarter had ended, the Pistons had put up 31 points, only six less than they’d scored in the first half, and it looked like they’d be carried to the finish line on the vapors of high karma.

But barely three minutes after Hamilton’s jumper gave the Pistons that 10-point lead, there was Paul Pierce at the free-throw line tying it back up.

From Hamilton’s jump shot to the layup Boston conceded to Chauncey Billups with seconds remaining and the game safely protected by a nine-point lead, the Pistons had 18 possessions. The first six produced nothing – three turnovers, three missed shots. The next two ended with Jason Maxiell baskets, each one giving the Pistons a two-point lead, the last one swallowed up by a three-point play from Pierce to give Boston the lead for good at 75-74.

The next two possessions ended with a Rasheed Wallace turnover – Rasheed’s final numbers: 2 of 12, four pints, three turnovers – and a Wallace miss. Then he scored and then he missed a triple. A Billups 3-point play at 2:24 cut Boston’s lead – which had ballooned to seven – to three.

The next possession effectively ended the Pistons’ season. When Rajon Rondo missed a jump shot, Tayshaun Prince secured the rebound and stood near the Boston foul line while the nine other players raced downcourt. Or at least that’s what Prince thought. James Posey was playing possum behind him and to his right. And then he sprung the trap, stripping Prince of the basketball with 1:40 left. Instead of scoring at the other end to cut Boston’s lead to one or two, the Pistons fouled Pierce and put him at the line for two free throws to give Boston a six-point cushion with 1:35 to go.

Game, set and match.

That was the fifth turnover in 14 possessions. The last four in the 18-possession stretch resulted in missed triples from Billups, Wallace and Hamilton and a missed Hamilton 2-pointer. Eighteen possessions: five turnovers, 4 of 14 with the season on the line, nine points.

“We had some good looks, whether it was we ran out of juice in the fourth or whatever, because we played at such an energy level to get back in the game. We got up 70-60 and within a short span the lead was cut and they had built some momentum. It just got to a point where we couldn’t make a big shot.”

From Hamilton’s jump shot to Rondo’s 20-footer from the right wing – a dagger that gave Boston a seven-point lead with 2:34 to play – the Celtics had 13 possessions. They made 8 of 9 shots, 6 of 7 free throws and committed one turnover for 25 points.

And so the Pistons exit quietly into what might be a disquieting summer. Joe Dumars resisted public and media pressure – not that he pays a whit of attention to that – to break up the team last season, but a third straight season that ends in Game 6 of the conference finals might convince him the time is right for more dramatic action. After all, he doesn’t have two first-round picks at his disposal this year, just one – the 29th choice, which almost surely will offer no immediate help.

It took exactly two questions into Flip Saunders’ postgame press conference for someone to ask him what he thought of his future with the Pistons.

“That’s not a good question to answer right now,” he said, though with speculation swirling about his job security even as the Pistons were advancing through the playoffs, he didn’t appear especially surprised to hear it. “Just thinking about just playing the game and the loss. I’m sure that’s something Joe and I will sit down and evaluate.”

For most franchises, a season that ends in the conference finals would be cause for celebration. For this one, where the conference finals have for six years now signaled the start of the real season, it’s cause for introspection. That’s a process that will start for Joe Dumars even before the Lakers and Celtics tip off the NBA Finals next week, hogging the stage the Pistons still see as their domain.

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Flip shrugs off any hint of disharmony

Much was made of Lindsey Hunter’s comments to ESPN on Thursday in which he characterized Rip Hamilton’s Game 5 postgame comments to Rasheed Wallace regarding his hug of Kevin Garnett after the 106-102 loss as inappropriate fraternization.

The Pistons all kind of rolled their eyes at the suggestion that it spoke to locker room dysfunction or disharmony and Flip Saunders reiterated as much about 90 minutes before Friday night’s tipoff of Game 6.

“It was more in jest than anything else,” Saunders said. “Kind of like, You can hug a little bit, but don’t forget about hitting – about getting in the post and doing those things. But that’s the way this team is – they can talk about things. Our league has become that. So many of these guys grow up playing AAU basketball and become so close, that’s how it’s become.”

Hamilton, Saunders said, is a game-time decision but he fully expects the decision to be positive.

“Right now I would anticipate he’s going to start. I’m sure he’ll have a little bit of soreness and we’ll have to wait and see how it is when he starts playing. Most guys, I’d worry a little bit. Him, when it comes to shooting, he’ll find a way to get it off.”

Saunders said Rasheed Wallace – fined $25,000 for a postgame rant at Game 5 officials Kenny Mauer and Mike Callahan after picking up his sixth technical foul, one shy of the number that draws an automatic one-game suspension – is well aware of his situation.

“He’s had a lot of people talk to him,” Saunders said. “He knows where he’s at. He’s tried to watch himself. He’s got to walk the fine line, knowing he has to play with emotion but can’t get carried away.”

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Rip: 'I'm ready to roll'

Rip Hamilton expected a little parental concern and commiseration when he spoke to his dad about his strained right elbow.

No such luck.

“He said, ‘Just spit on it.’ Usually, when you talk to your dad, he’d be like, ‘All right, man, take your time.’ He’s like, ‘Just spit on it, man, we’re at war right now. You ain’t got no choice to sit down.’ I feel all right. I feel good enough to go out and play.”

So play he will. Hamilton, who suffered the elbow injury in the final seconds of the Pistons’ Game 5 loss at Boston Wednesday night, will be in the starting lineup for Game 6 tonight as his team attempts to stave off elimination. The Celtics lead the best-of-seven series 3-2. And if they needed any extra sense of urgency, the Los Angeles Lakers provided it Thursday night by beating San Antonio to advance to the NBA Finals.

“He looked good,” Flip Saunders said after Friday morning's light practice. “He went through shootaround. He’s going to play.”

Asked if he anticipated Hamilton would have any limitations or difficulty shooting – the injury is to his shooting arm, after all – Saunders said, “We’ll have to wait and see. I know one thing – he’ll get shots off. If he has to use his left hand, he’ll get shots off.”

Hamilton has been taking rounds of ice, electrical stimulation and other forms of treatment with strength coach Arnie Kander since suffering the injury, which occurred when he got tangled with Boston’s Ray Allen trying to chase down a defensive rebound.

“My arm got stuck when we were wrestling to try to get that last rebound,” Hamilton said. “My arm got stuck, my hand went down and my elbow came up and I felt something like pop in there. I thought I could shake it off, but I couldn’t do it.”

After attempting a few shots – “nothing really deep, just trying to get range of motion on it,” he said – Hamilton had words of advice for his teammates.

“Don’t look at me as no handicap. That’s what I told the guys and I told the coach. Don’t say, ‘OK, Rip can’t shoot.’ No. I’m good. I’m fine. I’m ready to roll.”

And if Game 6 comes down to a final shot, would Hamilton be prepared to take it.?

“Yessir.”

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NBA slaps Wallace with $25,000 fine

The NBA acted quickly to Rasheed Wallace's postgame criticism of Game 5's officating crew, hitting him with a $25,000 fine, it was announced early Thursday evening by league offices.

The league said Wallace was fined "for his use of profanity and criticism of the officiating following last night's game" at Boston, which the Celtics won 106-102 to take a 3-2 lead in the Eastern Conference finals.

Here's what Wallace was reported to have said: "All that (expletive) calls they had out there, with Mike (Callahan) and Kenny (Mauer) - you've all seen that (expletive). A lot of them phantom calls, cats are flopping and falling all over the floor and they're calling that (expletive). That (expletive) ain't basketball out there. It's all (expletive) entertainment. You all should know that (expletive). It's all that (expletive) entertainment."

Wallace was hit with his sixth technical foul of the playoffs earlier in the game. If he gets a seventh technical foul, he would be suspended for the next game - and for every other technical after that, one more game.

The Pistons play Game 6 of the conference finals against Boston at 8:30 p.m. Friday at The Palace.

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X-rays negative on Rip: 'We don't know yet'

Come back off the ledge – radio reports to the contrary, Rip Hamilton has not been ruled out for Game 6. When those suggestions were being made Thursday, neither Flip Saunders nor anyone else had even taken Hamilton’s temperature yet.

The Pistons didn’t get back from Boston until well after 3 o’clock Thursday morning, so when Saunders met with reporters at 11 a.m., his answer to the Hamilton question was, “Don’t know yet. We won’t know until this afternoon. So he’s like all of our other guys, hopefully sleeping.”

Hamilton had an X-ray after the game in Boston that was negative and it’s listed as a strained right elbow. Together with Chauncey Billups’ strained right hamstring, it’s been a straining postseason so far. Hamilton now becomes best friends with strength coach Arnie Kander, just as Kander and Billups became virtual roomies during the Orlando series, scheduled for treatment with Kander Thursday afternoon ... and evening, and Friday morning, and probably right up until tipoff.

“He’s going to be sore today,” Saunders said. “If we had to play today, I don’t think he’d play. It’d be different if it was his left arm, but it’s his right arm – his shooting arm. You know, the golden arm. So I think that he’s going to need to get it polished up a little bit before he can play.”

If Hamilton can’t play, Saunders said “more than likely (Rodney) Stuckey” would start in his place. Juan Dixon would be the likely candidate to come off the inactive list and get minutes behind Stuckey at shooting guard with Jarvis Hayes and Arron Afflalo also in the mix.

• No, Stuckey was not trying to miss the second free throw with 4.5 seconds left and Boston leading 104-102. He missed the first, then the ESPN crew speculated he would intentionally miss the second. Before Garnett shot his free throws, they showed a replay of Stuckey reacting by grimacing and closing his eyes – but that was to his miss, not his make of the second free throw.
  
  “Because of where it was, no,” Saunders said. “He was trying to make that one and we were going to try to get a steal in that situation.”
  

• Rasheed Wallace picked up his sixth technical foul of the postseason when Kenny Mauer slapped him with one late after Lindsey Hunter was called for a personal foul. Wallace appeared to react by kicking out his right leg – but he wasn’t reacting to the Hunter foul; rather, he was showing Mauer what a Boston defender had done to him on the previous possession.
  
  Wallace, of course, is now one technical foul away from serving an automatic one-game suspension, which would be a heavy penalty if it comes in a potential Game 7 of the conference finals or during the NBA Finals.
  
  “We’ll talk to him,” Saunders said. “Usually when he gets this close he’ll know to tone it down a little bit. We’ll talk to him.”

• Saunders, as he was following the Game 5 loss, remains upbeat about his team’s frame of mind and chances to still win the series.
  
  “As I said after the game, we’re not going to go away. I really believe if we get to Game 6, we’re going to have a good opportunity in Game 7, because I think our players were upset. We’ve got a good mind-set. Usually when we have that mind-set, I feel good about our guys, so I think right now I’m more anxious to play Game 6 and get after it and know that our crowd’s not going to score any buckets for us or anything else, but they’re hopefully going to give us the boost we need. As I told our guys after the game, I was proud of them. We spilled our guts on that floor in the fourth quarter. And we’re going to do that for 48 minutes on Friday.”
  

• Saunders brushed off any deeper meaning over suggestions that Lindsey Hunter and his teammates were upset when he sent Billups back in the game for the stretch run.
  
  “I told (Hunter) after the game, I want my guys to play. When he’s out there, he’s a competitor. But as I said after the game, as coaches we make decisions that players question, you guys question, everyone questions. And not ’til it plays out do you find out if it’s good or bad or whatever. … The other thing you have to understand, too, is if it’s close and you don’t play (Billups), then the question is, ‘Why didn’t you play him?’ Because he’s Mr. Big Shot. So there’s never any easy decision.”

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Going down - or moving on - swinging

In baseball parlance, Ray Allen would be credited with a hold, not a save. A hold is what they give relief pitchers who come in and protect a lead before handing the ball to the closer, who saves it – or not.

So that shot Allen made late last night – the one from the left corner, just inside the 3-point arc, when he shook just free enough from Rip Hamilton to take the inbounds pass and drain a rainbow jumper, the kind he’s made for 12 NBA seasons, but never one with quite that much riding on it, one that snuffed out Pistons momentum after Rodney Stuckey had cut it to a point with a bloodless triple – put a hold on the series for Boston.

But it doesn’t save it. Not just yet.

But the Pistons can’t get too far ahead of themselves, either. As much as they probably felt like pressing the fast forward button and speeding about 93 hours ahead to the tipoff of Game 7 on Sunday night as they left the TD Banknorth Garden in the wee hours, there’s another little matter that first requires their rapt attention: Game 6.

Chauncey Billups wouldn’t take the bait after the 106-102 Game 5 loss – when the Pistons chopped 16 points off a 17-point deficit but ran out of time – as someone asked him if the comeback (one word) gave him confidence his team could come back (two words) to Boston and win Game 7.

“We can’t worry about a game 7 right now,” he said. “We’ve got to worry about Game 6.”

To be sure, the Pistons can’t look back – to the missed opportunities of Game 1, when they had a Boston team still giddy from escaping Cleveland in another Game 7, or Game 3, when they handed home-court advantage back to the Celtics 48 hours after taking it for themselves – nor ahead.

There are ample reasons for optimism that the Pistons can get this done – no matter that NBA history says 83 percent of the time the Game 5 winner of a 2-2 series prevails.

Billups, for one. He looked better than good for much of Game 5 and seems to have pushed the hamstring strain out of his mind.

“This is the best I’ve felt,” he said. “I felt really good in Game 2 before I tweaked it. This is the best I’ve felt, movement-wise and being able to explode and get that step by people and hopefully I continue to get better. I feel good about it.”

What else to feel good about?

Rasheed Wallace found his 3-point stroke, which might have been Game 5’s story if Allen hadn’t found his more emphatically.

Rodney Stuckey played with poise that keeps surprising even though it no longer should. Stuckey scored the Pistons’ last eight points, including a 3-pointer under the most withering pressure from a kid who made three 3-pointers – three! – all season. I’ve maintained all along that Stuckey, as almost all young players do, will develop his perimeter game as he matures, adding a foot or two to his reliable shooting range for the next few seasons. But to drain the one he hit with 1:17 left and the Pistons down four says something else: It says Stuckey’s destined to be one of those players who has an answer for whatever the situation demands – and it says the Pistons have a real shot to maintain the franchise’s already remarkable consistency even as the core veterans slide into less significant roles.

Rip Hamilton continues to put up 20-something points no matter how he has to get them. Lindsey Hunter has been a factor in every game even without scoring. Jason Maxiell, who hit Boston with six quick points before getting slapped with a foul that never should have been called, is a load for Boston to handle.

What the Pistons hit the Celtics with in Game 5 would have buckled their knees nine nights out of 10, but Allen’s crazy shotmaking and a handful of tough jump shots Kevin Garnett contributed – including three with the shot clock buzzing, one a triple that he, ahem, banked in – kept pushing the Pistons farther back.

The Celtics are in the desired position, no question. They also look a little fragile, despite their star power. Allen’s clutch jumper bailed them out when they were showing signs of cracking, missing free throws and playing hot potato with the basketball as the Pistons kept coming at them, the defensive heat brought by Lindsey Hunter and Stuckey and Hamilton as the lead went from 15 to 12 to eight to four to … one freaking point after Stuckey’s triple.

There are concerns, too. The biggest one is Hamilton’s elbow, the one he appeared to hyperextend in the final 10 seconds, forcing him to the bench for the final possession. The Pistons can't afford their leading scorer to have a damaged shooting arm in their biggest game - games, hopefully - of the season.

The other, and perhaps the even more pressing, is living in the moment – staring so hard at Game 6, Friday night, that nothing that came before matters and nothing scheduled beyond is recognized.

Credit Ray Allen with a hold. But the Pistons have two more hacks at Boston’s closer.

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Same destination, different route

The Pistons are right at the point now where their last two seasons have ended – two wins into the conference finals, six wins short of an NBA title. No prediction here about how this Boston series is going to play out, but no matter what happens now, what’s happened so far here is different than the last two years.

In both 2006 and ’07, the Pistons started the playoffs on a wave of momentum but midway through the second round something started unraveling. The underlying reasons struck me as different from one year to the next, but the result was the same – an offense all running in mud. Making shots suddenly seemed too lofty an ambition – just getting in position to get decent shots off was problematic.

The first two wins over Cleveland in the ’06 conference semifinals were routs, effectively decided by halftime. But sometime in the middle of Game 2, out of desperation, the Cavs started scrambling on defense and virtually ignored Ben Wallace. When the series switched to Cleveland, Rasheed Wallace rolled his ankle severely – that injury would have kept him out at least a few weeks had it occurred during the regular season – and nothing was right or easy from that point forward. Miami clubbed the Pistons after their seven-game escape against the Cavs.

Last year, the Pistons played with purpose and poise in dismissing Orlando in a four-game sweep, then played with tremendous resolve in smashing Chicago in the first two games at The Palace. They went into the United Center for Game 3, spotted the Bulls a huge lead, then crushed them in a dominant second half to go up 3-0. At that point, the Pistons – who all along had viewed Chicago, not Cleveland, as the biggest obstacle to getting out of the East – exhaled, and never fully recovered.

Even when they survived last-possession LeBron James charges to the basket to hang on for games 1 and 2 wins, it didn’t really feel like the Pistons were in control of last year’s conference finals. Their offense was too limited against a Cavs team that could ugly up a game with the best of them. For all of their struggles, the Pistons still probably would have prevailed if not for a playoff performance for the ages – James’ 48-point tour de force – in Cleveland’s double-overtime Game 5 win. But for a second straight year, the Pistons bowed out of the playoffs dancing to someone else’s beat.

No matter what happens in this Boston series, the Pistons haven’t played out of character. Oh, sure, there have been times Boston has – and I’ll use a phrase that Flip Saunders keeps coming back to – imposed its will on the Pistons. Game 1 might have been something of an aberration, given the Pistons’ weeklong layoff and Boston’s adrenaline rush coming off its Game 7 win over Cleveland, but Game 3 was, simply put, Boston beating the Pistons to every punch.

And that’s why this year is different. Because the last two years, a night like Game 3 would have established a trend. The Pistons would have been similarly unhinged in Game 4. Instead, they scored the first 10 points of the game and, even though they didn’t pull away until the final three minutes, Boston only stayed close thanks to one of those inexplicably lopsided officiating nights when breathing on the other team elicits whistles.

That, in itself, underscored a different level of investment this year. Such a night a year ago might have thrown the Pistons into a hissing match with the officials and off their game completely. But, as Saunders correctly noted, “the only one who lost their composure was me” – he got a technical foul, though a pretty cheap one, when he kicked his leg in the air and did a pretty neat pirouette in response to one particularly flimsy call.

Boston might win this series. The Celtics still have home-court advantage going into tonight’s pivotal Game 5 and bring lots of firepower with three potential future Hall of Famers at the heart of their lineup. But if it happens that way, those who would lump this postseason in with the past two could be accused of sloppy analysis.

• The statistical evidence strongly suggests Chauncey Billups is still in the grips of the limiting effects of his strained right hamstring, and whether it’s physical or mental, as has been greatly debated, hardly matters.
  
  But Game 4 felt a lot different than Game 3 despite Billups’ 3 for 12. That could have been a far different night for him if his shot had fallen in the first quarter when he was 1 of 5 – and when three of those attempts looked good coming out of his hand. I think Saunders is right. It’s not the leg anymore, it’s the timing that was disrupted for sitting idle for 13 days. But he did have seven assists with no turnovers in Game 4 and he did make the 3-pointer with a few minutes left that effectively clinched the victory, stretching the lead to 10 points.
  
  And he did get a pep talk from Saunders. Off to the side of the Pistons’ practice floor, Saunders pulled Billups aside and told him, “It’s not how you play. That’s all the media is going to talk about. I told him, ‘when we lose it’s going to be your fault. We win, it’s going to be a lot you. That’s the responsibility a point guard has, similar to a quarterback in football. It’s how the team plays. You don’t have to go out and get 20 for us to win. You have to go out and be aggressive and if they’re aggressive, they overreact to what you do, you set other people up. It’s how the team functions.’ We shot 52 percent (in Game 4). I thought we functioned pretty well.”
  
  A more characteristic Billups in Game 5 would have a ripple effect, taking the pressure off of Tayshaun Prince and Rip Hamilton to make up for the loss of another perimeter scoring threat and lessening the burden on Rodney Stuckey, who has already exceeded all reasonable expectations for a rookie at the game’s most critical position tasting playoff basketball for the first time.
  
  I think Billups goes into Game 5 feeling closer to being Chauncey Billups than he has in three weeks.

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Pistons fly the flag with enthusiasm

A quick note on last night’s game. If you were watching on TV, you probably noticed the American flag decals affixed to the stanchions at both ends of the court. It was an idea that occurred to Dan Hauser, executive vice president of Palace Sports & Entertainment, sometime last week as he watched a playoff game on TV and noticed an empty space above the NBA playoffs logo on the stanchion. With Memorial Day coming up, the light bulb went on.

Hauser called the NBA for approval and got it immediately.

“It was our small way to thank all who have served and are serving our country,” said Hauser, for whom this Memorial Day was an even more poignant occasion. His son, Dan, is part of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit – whereabouts unknown for reasons of security.

Quite a year for Dan Hauser. The Pistons Cares Telethon that raised nearly $500,000 to benefit the Make-a-Wish Foundation of Michigan – exceeding its goal of $400,000 to grant 50 wishes to those on the foundation’s wait list – was also his brainchild.

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Joe D: 'A test unlike any other test'

Just before the playoffs started, I asked Joe Dumars about Boston – about Boston’s whirlwind regular season, about the big three’s ballyhooed focus, about their willingness to sacrifice individually. After years of putting up big numbers on bad teams, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen seemed delighted to share the glory and the responsibility equally for a change. And I asked Dumars about the certainty that Boston would head into the playoffs widely favored to get out of the Eastern Conference.

He agreed wholeheartedly: “They should be the favorites. Conventional wisdom is that it’s going to take you a little bit longer to come together than it took them. I tip my hat to them. The way they came together, the way they made it work, they should be commended, big time. I tip my hat to Doc Rivers. You have to make it come together and he’s done a good job of that.”

It was a sincere and gracious observation. Here’s what it wasn’t: a concession preamble.

Because he went on to say this: “The only thing I’ll see about that – and we have a history of this – you still have to play the games. We’ve been the favorites the last three or four straight years in the Eastern Conference and we only got there twice. Two out of four years. That tells me you still have to play the games. I don’t so much worry about being the favorites any more. I worry about the games. Let’s get ready for the games and let’s play the games.”

And then he said this: “What happens when you go deep into playoff series is you’re going to get tested. And it’s during those tests that you’re going to be defined. There’s nothing you can do to get prepared for that until it happens. You can’t talk about it, you can’t watch film on it – nothing. You just have to go through it.

“I’m not going to sit here and project what’s going to happen to those guys once they get into those deep, tough playoff series. But I do know this: That’s when all the resolve inside of you has to come out, because it is a test unlike any other test. I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of 10 Eastern Conference finals, as a player and as an executive, and I’m here to tell you it is everything in you. Whatever you have in you, you better be tough enough to handle that. You’re playing to go to the NBA Finals when you get there. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what’s happened in January or February. You’ve got to stand up and be ready. And it’s tough.”

Here we are, the conference finals between the Pistons and Celtics – the series the basketball world anticipated for months – all tied at two wins apiece, the NBA Finals berth down to a best-of-three series.

It’s time to stand up and be ready. And it’s tough.

“I think Game 5 is going to be tougher,” Flip Saunders said Tuesday morning, Arron Afflalo shooting jump shots behind him – the only player in the building on a day Saunders told the team to stay home until time to gather for the flight to Boston, a much-needed physical, mental and emotional break amid the playoff storm.

“But I think it’s going to be tough for both teams. We have a three-game series. As the series progresses and the end becomes inevitable for somebody, now all of a sudden there’s more pressure on both teams. We both have the same marching orders – a championship for either team. That’s what their goal is. It’s going to be very much a pressure situation.”

This is the third straight series in which Boston has found itself in a best-of-three finish, but this one is different in that the Celtics have had their home-court invulnerability penetrated. Saunders saw signs of fatigue in the Celtics in their Game 4 loss.

“Their shot selection was a little more frivolous than it was in other games, but that happens with fatigue and with pressure. With fatigue, it starts wearing on you emotionally. You start seeing a change in how teams play a little bit. We looked fatigued in Game 3, for some reason, and they looked (it in Game 4). … Every pressure situation turns into a stressful situation and when it turns into stress, you make bad decisions.”

It’s no guarantee how either team will look tomorrow night back in Boston, but under extreme duress in Game 4 – facing a virtual must-win situation and with seemingly every referee’s whistle going against them – the Pistons held up well emotionally under conditions that in the past have caused them to come unglued.

“They talk a lot about our team, local and national – ‘the switch.’ When things get tough, we lose our composure. And last night, the only guy that lost his composure was me, getting the technical foul. But our guys were very much focused. They know the importance of them staying on the floor. They know the importance of not giving points away. That was a big, big thing.”

A big thing that gets bigger the longer this series goes, the stress compounding, the tests multiplying. As Joe Dumars told me when this series was still just a projection, it’s the time of year when teams are defined, a test unlike any other test. The Pistons haven’t always aced those tests. But this group of Celtics never has. And until they do, even their side has to wonder if they have it in them.

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Pistons, McDyess dare to defy destiny

If Boston is banking on destiny for a boost, the Celtics better take Antonio McDyess’ temperature first. If all it takes to derail destiny is extraordinary willpower, then the Pistons have a shot – even heading back to Boston for a Game 5 that the history of these teams says should scare the Pistons. Thanks to Antonio McDyess, they’re in this series now.

The dreadful starts the Pistons endured in the first three games of this series – the 11-0 burst by Boston in Game 3 the most damaging and dramatic example? McDyess ensured that wouldn’t happen in Game 4, scoring eight points himself before the Celtics got on the board. When the Pistons’ shots stopped falling? McDyess kept giving them more chances, chasing down seven of the Pistons’ nine offensive rebounds.

“Dice was incredible,” said his sidekick, Rasheed Wallace, who first played with McDyess 15 years ago – at The Palace, of all places – when they were high school seniors playing in an all-star game. “Dice, so far, has been the best player in this series.”

When McDyess arrived here, four seasons ago, he was in full deferential mode. Not far removed from three devastating knee injuries that threatened to snuff out what had appeared a cinch Hall of Fame career, he joined a team with Ben and Rasheed Wallace up front. It was a big reason he chose the Pistons – no one was going to ask him to carry the load 40 minutes a night, to put up 20 and 12 every game.

But his deference began melting a little with each passing disappointment – the Game 7 loss in the NBA Finals in his first grab at the golden ring, the conference finals flameouts the last two seasons. This year, when it looked like it was slipping away again – when the Pistons lost two of their first three games to Philadelphia in the opening round – McDyess, wheezing through a painful broken nose, read his teammates the riot act, way out of character.

He hasn’t stopped beating the drum since. When Juan Dixon, meaning well, gave his teammates a pep talk the day after their hugely disappointing Game 3 performance put them in a 2-1 hole to Boston, saying everything was still OK, McDyess snapped.

“Juan was very emphatic, almost like a preacher,” Flip Saunders said after a 21-point, 16-rebound game that he said made him “proud” of McDyess. “ ‘We’re going to be OK. Everything is all right.’ Dice said, ‘Hey, we’ve been talking that everything is all right. We’ve got to make it happen. We can’t talk about it, we’ve got to make it happen.’ ”

“I’m kind of fed up with the excuses,” McDyess shrugged, no longer content to play in the shadows. “Since I’ve been here, we have had excuses why we haven’t won another championship and I feel that, if I don’t say anything we would have an excuse this year.”

Who knows what might have happened had McDyess not got the Pistons so far down the right path to start Game 4? Behind him came Jason Maxiell, wildly productive in his 20 minutes. And Rip Hamilton, who for the longest time had only attempted one shot in Game 4 but finished making 8 of 10, refusing to give in to frustration on a night he and the Pistons kept getting whistled for touch fouls that allowed the Celtics to stay close despite making only 15 baskets through three quarters.

Even Chauncey Billups displayed the gritty perseverance that had become the Pistons’ trademark, knocking down a critical 3-point jump shot late in the fourth quarter on a night his shot wasn’t falling.

So now the Pistons head back to Boston, the conference finals reduced to a best-of-three frenzy. It was 21 years ago to the day of Monday’s rousing Game 4 win when the Pistons lost a Game 5 under similar conditions at Boston. Remember that one? Just when the Pistons seemed destined to win, Larry Bird stole the ball and … ah, you don’t need to be reminded of the rest, do you?

So the Pistons know a little something about defying destiny. In case they’d forgotten, Antonio McDyess is here to remind them.

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Flip: 'I will not hesitate to go with Rodney'

If Chauncey Billups struggles, Rodney Stuckey plays.

“We’re going to have to wait and see how (Billups) is when he goes out,” Flip Saunders said about 75 minutes before tipoff of Game 4 Monday. “It’s not just a matter of how he’s playing, it’s how the team is playing. If he’s doing what he needs to do to initiate our offense, key our defense, contain people defensively, then he’ll play. If he’s struggling with that, I will not hesitate at all to go with Rodney and let Rodney play (point guard).

“When Chauncey has gone in with Rodney, we’ve let Rodney handle the ball a lot and try to play Chauncey off the ball and get him some shots.”

Saunders said Billups passed up some shots in Game 3, but isn’t sure if that’s because of his lingering hamstring strain or still the effects of the time it cost him – Billups had 13 days off between Game 3 of the Orlando series and Game 1 against Boston.

“I think what the hamstring has done is maybe held back some of his timing, because I thought he did turn down some shots that he had. But he’s trying. He took extra film home last night to see where he’s at. He’s doing what he can to get both his body and his mind ready.”

Billups isn’t the only Pistons starter who could use a breakout game. Rasheed Wallace isn’t going to get many easy points against Kevin Garnett, NBA Defensive Player of the Year, which makes his struggles shooting from the 3-point arc even more pronounced. Since going 2 for 4 in Game 1 of the Orlando series, Wallace is 3 for 26 over the last seven playoff games from the arc. Two of his three makes came in Detroit’s Game 2 win at Boston.

“He’s not getting easy looks against Garnett,” Saunders said. “We’ve gone to him, started out the game and went to him early and he got things going and Garnett has gotten somewhat aggressive and pushed him out a little bit. But he’s just not going to get plain, easy, open looks on KG. He’s going to have to do both.”

The Pistons kept their active roster the same, meaning that Juan Dixon, Walter Herrmann and Cheikh Samb will be inactive for Game 4.

Check back on Pistons.com later tonight from Game 4 coverage.

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'08 Pistons have edge others didn't: Stuckey

It was at this point in each of the last two postseasons when the wheels flew off the Pistons’ offense. Against Miami in 2006 and again against Cleveland a year ago, the Pistons bogged down – looking pretty much the way they did for too much of Game 3 against Boston, when all the good work they did 48 hours earlier to wrest home-court advantage from the Celtics was squandered.

There is one significant difference this season, though. The last two Pistons teams had nowhere else to turn. This one does. Rodney Stuckey is a power pitcher on a staff of control artists, the change-of-pace guy who can prevent the prolonged droughts that plague the Pistons – or at least mitigate their damage.

Stuckey did his part in Game 3, giving the Pistons 17 points in 28 minutes. There aren’t going to be many nights when his teammates are so collectively impotent that 17 points from their sixth man won’t be enough to put the Pistons over the top. Saturday just happened to be one of those nights when Tayshaun Prince had nothing going, Rip Hamilton didn’t get rolling until way too late, Chauncey Billups made no memorable plays and Antonio McDyess’ opportunities were few and far between.

If the Pistons are going to win three of the four possible remaining games against Boston – and it’s almost a given that it has to start with a home-court win in Game 4 on Memorial Day – Stuckey is going to be a big, big part of the mix. Flip Saunders all but acknowledged as much Sunday before the Pistons got back to work.

“I think we’ve got to play him somewhere,” Saunders said. “Whether we have three guards in at a time or whatever, but he has been one of our most effective players. He’s been competitive, he’s done everything, he’s done a good job defensively and I guess my surprising point has been just how he’s had so much composure.”

Stuckey’s utter unflappability isn’t the only trait he shares with his far more experienced teammates. If you had to define the emotional range the Pistons were operating in the morning after, it would fall somewhere between anger and frustration. They knew they had Boston on the ropes and they’re kicking themselves for playing so chaotically early in the game, giving the Celtics an 11-0 lead. No one was seething more than Stuckey.

“I mean, we’re all frustrated,” he said. “We’re at home, we shouldn’t be losing like that, point blank. We’ve just got to give a better effort in the next game.”

The Pistons have gotten off to shaky starts in all three games, overcoming it quicker and more emphatically in Game 2 to win, and Saunders is baffled.

“My philosophy has always been you’ve got to win the first three minutes of each quarter and the last three, and if you win those 24 minutes in the game, usually you’re going to win the game. We’re getting off to such bad starts, we’re getting down 8‑0, 10‑2, then all of a sudden you’re falling behind, and one guy gets the ball and one guy thinks, well, I’ve got to get us going because we’re not getting us going, and he tries to do things one‑on‑one, and that’s out of character for us. Then what happens is it snowballs.

“It wears you down. You can’t keep on playing from behind. A team only has so many runs. And so the way you look at it, you’re down 10‑0 and you have an 11‑0 run, but if you're even, it’s 10‑8 and now all of a sudden you’re up nine or 10 and now you’ve got control of the game. That’s usually when we’re at our best and we haven’t been able to do that.”

It’s hard for a coach to do much about it when it happens that fast, too. Saunders called a timeout 2:17 into Game 3 – the Pistons were behind 8-0 already with Rajon Rondo headed to the line to make it 9-0. The undeniable fact is when the Pistons have been at their best in this series, Rodney Stuckey has been in the mix. Only over the last five minutes of Game 2 has Stuckey been on the bench when the Pistons have played even with or better than Boston.

With Billups struggling – his only basket in six tries came with 3:30 left in Game 3 – Saunders might have to usher Stuckey into the game sooner rather than later if the Pistons stumble out of the gate again in Game 4. Billups, to his credit, took every bullet Sunday, answering waves of questions that kept coming back to his health and his level of play.

“The bottom line is I’ve got to play better and whether it’s hurting or not, I’ve still got to play better. I’ve still got to play through it. That’s exactly what I intend on doing. I’m a leader of this team and no matter what’s going on, I feel like I’m better out there on the court. We’ve got a young guy who’s playing great right now and I’m very proud of. So we’ve got to find ways to keep him aggressive, keep him playing well, but at the same time I’ve got to play – I know that I’ve got to play good for this team to win. I understand that.”

True enough. Chauncey Billups has to give the Pistons more than he gave them in Game 3 if they have a shot to beat Boston. But it’s not as imperative as it was last year, or the year before, that he plays 45 minutes of All-Star-caliber basketball every night. Rodney Stuckey gives these Pistons a little more breathing room than their predecessors had.

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A Boston blowout buries Whiteout in a blizzard

Even before the Whiteout became a Blowout, something didn’t feel right. The Pistons spotted Boston the game’s first 11 points yet came back to take the lead with two minutes still to play in the first quarter. But if you think that 11-0 start didn’t cost them, you’re wrong. That ragged 11-0 start – the Pistons missing open jump shots, the Celtics racing the other way and getting dunks against a defense still scrambling to get set – was the story of the game.

How do you explain the 94-80 Game 3 loss? The Palace felt electric, all those blinding white shirts bathing it in brightness, the 8:30 start on a holiday weekend giving a crowd already inclined to rowdiness even more of an edge. And when the Pistons, fueled by Jason Maxiell and Rodney Stuckey, went on a 13-0 run to take the lead, they were aroar, all those early anxieties drowned out by a palpable collective energy.

But it was fool’s gold. The Pistons had gotten back in the game by playing frantically – the game had already assumed a disjointedness that seemed to trump discipline. The Pistons just got sloppy in their defensive rotations and went adrift offensively, as they’re prone to do – lots of standing around watching the guy with the ball trying to create something out of nothing.

“We had some good looks,” Flip Saunders said, clearly aware of the opportunity squandered. “We missed some shots. They made shots early. We’re the type of team, the way we play, when we grind it out, it’s always tough to play from behind like that and when we fell behind we played out of character.”

“Hyperactive,” Saunders called the way his team played. Exactly right. It wasn’t lack of effort, though you could make the case that it was lack of “focus.” I put it in quotes because often when fans accuse the Pistons of lacking focus, they really mean they were going through the motions, not playing hard. The Pistons played hard in Game 3 – they just didn’t play very smart.

There was one possession somewhere amid the lowest moments of the second half, when the 18-point halftime deficit had grown to 24, that seemed to typify the night. Tayshaun Prince got the ball with about 12 seconds or so left on the shot clock near the top of the key. He had two teammates spread out on both sides of him. But he kept dribbling and probing and his teammates kept rooted to the floor. Boston played great defense on that possession the same way they did much of the night – without really having to move. At the end of it, Prince wound up shooting a bizarre jump shot that didn’t hit anything, Paul Pierce glued to him.

Rodney Stuckey was brilliant – “It’s a shame we played how we played, the way he played,” Saunders said – but after that … not much. Some bizarre stats in this one. At halftime, Pistons starters were 8 of 29 – 4 of 20 if you take Rasheed Wallace’s 4 of 9 out of the mix. Boston’s much-maligned reserves had outscored Detroit’s starters 19-18. Paul Pierce and Ray Allen were 2 of 8 … yet Boston led by 18.

I don’t know what it means. I doubt that’s a trend. Doesn’t really matter. The damage is done. If Boston’s bench goes back to being itself, it already has played a significant role in this series. Winning this game regains home-court advantage for Boston. The Celtics win the series now with nothing more than wins in games 5 and 7. The Pistons have to win three of four games – daunting odds when they really can’t be sure what they’re going to get from key players.

“No ifs, ands or buts,” Saunders said. Game 4 is “our biggest game of the year. This is the first time they were in a situation where they had to win on the road and they did. We’ve got to do what we need to do.”

It starts with figuring out what was behind Chauncey Billups’ curiously passive night. Billups finished 1 of 6 – he hit a 3-pointer after coming back into the game midway through the fourth quarter – for six points with four assists and two turnovers. He was good, very good, pretty much the Chauncey Billups we’ve come to know over the last six years, when the Pistons won Game 2 at Boston. Was his hamstring bothering him again?

“He just didn’t have a very good game,” Saunders shrugged. “He didn’t play well.”

Billups wasn’t alone in enduring an ineffective night. The Pistons had six players score in double figures in Game 2. Boston had six in double figures in Game 3. Three starters – Billups, Antonio McDyess and Tayshaun Prince – combined to score 18 points in Game 3. Prince was 2 of 11, one of his baskets a fourth-quarter dunk when the Pistons made a last desperate gasp to cut the lead to nine with 3:05 to go.

Three games in, it’s already been a wildly turbulent series. The Pistons hung the first home loss on the Celtics in 10 postseason games to wrest control of the series in Game 2, then tossed it back to Boston by giving the Celtics the opening to win their first road playoff game in seven tries.

The ball’s in Boston’s court now – which is just where the Pistons seem to like it. For some quirky reason, it seems to put them in their comfort zone when they face a little adversity. But a little adversity goes a long way. Trying to overcome Boston with Chauncey Billups and Tayshaun Prince playing nothing like Chauncey Billups and Tayshaun Prince, that’s a little too much adversity even for them.

Check back tomorrow … we’ll have updates after practice. Better luck in Game 4.

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Pistons: 'We have to be prepared'

One of the lasting images from a night that produced many of them – Game 2 was a very special basketball game – was Kevin Garnett in the postgame interview room, staring at the stat sheet, as if he stared at it long enough, it would reveal some secret.

Boston has some imposing regrouping to do before they throw the ball up Saturday night for Game 3, but nobody – and the Pistons are first on the start of the list of everybody else – really believes the Celtics had their fighting spirit gutted by Thursday’s 103-97 loss in which they got 75 points from their big three but still came up short.

“They’re going to have great concentration,” Flip Saunders said after Friday afternoon’s brief practice. “You don’t just all of a sudden go from the best road team in the league during the regular season to, well, they’re never going to win on the road. These last couple of games, they’ve played well. That fourth quarter, there were more big shots made by both teams… Other times they’ve lost on the road because, I thought, they played tight maybe. But I don’t think they showed any tightness even when they were down by eight or nine last night.”

The Celtics are 0-6 on the road, losing all three to Atlanta and to Cleveland, but winning both series because they were perfect at home. For the first time, the Celtics are in a position where they have to win on the road to advance.

“What we have to worry about is they’re coming in our arena, where they won during the regular season,” Tayshaun Prince said. “We have to be prepared. We can’t worry about their first two series on the road. We have to take care of business.”

“I’m pretty much worried about us,” Antonio McDyess said. “But they’re a good ballclub and I know when they come in here, they’ll be fired up, trying to get that road win.”

The only teams that have lasted long enough in the playoffs to win six consecutive road games are the 1971 Los Angeles Lakers and the 2004 Miami Heat. Both teams eventually lost in the second round. So the Celtics are already treading on historic ground. No team has gone on to win the NBA championship after starting the playoffs with as many as five consecutive road losses.

• Chauncey Billups, Saunders said, tweaked his hamstring in Game 2 and was a little sore Friday morning, but went through the light practice and will be good to go for Game 3.
  

• Rodney Stuckey’s 13 points and unflappability continued to generate buzz the morning after. Somebody asked Saunders about the TNT crew’s comparing Stuckey to Dwyane Wade.
  
  “Originally, we thought that,” Saunders said. “You don’t want to put that label on somebody. He’s a little bit different. Stuckey is more of a point guard. Dwyane plays off the ball – can play with the ball, but likes to play off the ball and make plays. (Stuckey) is like that because he’s 6-5, big, athletic and he’s dynamic and that’s a lot of what Wade is. As I said four, five days ago, he’s going to be Rodney Stuckey before it’s all said and done.”
  

• Antonio McDyess said he tossed the protective mask away early in Game 2 because it was so stifling inside the TD Banknorth Garden that he was having trouble breathing, but he expects to have the mask back in place for Game 3.
  
  “I just couldn’t breathe,” he said. “It was hot, my adrenaline was going, so I just had to put it down for a second. I don’t know why, but I just had to. But I’ve got to be cautious. I got hit in the nose with the ball during the game – it hurt.”
  
  Saunders, by the way, said, “It’s probably the calmest he’s looked. He’s got a certain aura about him. His confidence, his leadership – he’s shown more leadership since that Philadelphia series. His leadership and how vocal he’s been has been off the charts. I’ve always said that a lot of times when players get into a good rhythm, it’s almost like they’re playing in slow motion even though they’re not. He’s kind of in that sense right now.”
  
  I wrote a story on McDyess for a recent issue of Courtside Quarterly, the magazine that goes to Pistons season-ticket holders, that went into detail about McDyess’ early years and the knee injuries that he endured before becoming a Piston. I thought it was appropriate to link it here – you might have heard Jeff Van Gundy during the TNT telecast mention how McDyess was on the same plane with Kevin Garnett and Rasheed Wallace at that time.
  

• The pick-and-roll with Paul Pierce and Garnett was the staple of Boston’s offense in Game 1. Saunders said Garnett set 53 screens that night. The Celtics didn’t go to it nearly as much in Game 2. Saunders didn’t even keep track.
  
  “I didn’t count ’em all,” he said. “He didn’t get a chance. We did some things to really prevent him from getting some solid screens.”
  
  “They had different areas of their game going,” Prince said. “When you have different aspects of your game going, you go with what works, just like what we did in the last five minutes. Paul was isolating, Ray Allen had it going, KG was isoing and also had his perimeter jumper falling. So they were going with what works.”
  

• Tomorrow night, in case you missed it elsewhere on Pistons.com, I’ll be doing a live chat during the game. I’ll be starting it probably an hour or so before tipoff after we talk to both head coaches. Get your questions in beforehand if you’d like, but we’ll be doing it throughout the game.

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Game 3: Pistons must expect Boston's best

Everything about the Eastern Conference finals has made sense so far, even if it took the unfolding of those first two games to see it. Doc Rivers nailed it after Game 2 when he said he wasn’t worried so much about Game 1 – he figured the Celtics would still be on an adrenaline high from their Game 7 win over Cleveland two days earlier.

He was right. That and the home crowd were enough to carry the Celtics against a Pistons team that – and we all could see this one coming – wasn’t particularly sharp after enduring a seven-day layoff. No matter how you try to cope with the effects of that, athletes are creatures of habit – and they don’t get anything close to a full week between games even at the All-Star break.

He said it was Game 2 that scared him, when the fatigue of everything the Celtics had endured over the last few weeks would wash over them. He was right about that, too.

So you know what makes sense now? After a Game 2 that will be pressed between the pages of the Pistons’ scrapbook, unassailably one of the best playoff games in the 50 years since Fred Zollner uprooted his franchise from Fort Wayne and transplanted it in Detroit? This: That Boston, 0-6 on the road so far in these playoffs, has yet to be in position of having to win a road playoff game and will play its most focused, most furious basketball yet somewhere in these next two games at The Palace.

Listening to Rip Hamilton after Game 2, you got the sense he was already imploring the home fans to assault Boston’s senses on Saturday and Monday nights.

“The atmosphere is going to be crazy,” he said. “I think we’ve got the best fans in the NBA. Everybody knows about The Palace of Auburn Hills. We’re geeked about back on our home court. Our fans are excited. Now it’s our job to take care of home court.”

As it should be. But they should go in assuming they’ll get the best shot of a great team. Because just as the Pistons came out of Game 1 feeling they controlled their own destiny – that despite having several obvious areas where improvement was not only possible but likely – so the Celtics can take refuge in similar thoughts to combat the trepidation a winless road team might logically pack with them for the road.

For starters, Boston got Ray Allen back in Game 2. He went from a guy who couldn’t make a wide-open 12-footer to the swashbuckling All-Star launching effortless triples with hands and elbows flying at his face.

Here’s what else Boston has to be thinking: Can so many Pistons all be at, or near, the top of their games on the same night again? You had to grope to find positive performances out of the Pistons from Game 1. You would have needed a magnifying glass to find a non-contributor in Game 2. And they all made huge fourth-quarter plays.

Rodney Stuckey scoring six quick points at the start of the quarter to buy the Pistons points and time they’d need against Boston’s surge; Antonio McDyess, knocking down that huge baseline jumper to stop Boston’s 8-0 run and chasing down two precious offensive rebounds; Rasheed Wallace sticking that baseline jumper from the other side with a few minutes left to push the lead back to six; Chauncey Billups shaking loose to sink a reverse layup off an inbounds pass that was launched with the shot clock at three; Tayshaun Prince knocking an offensive rebound free to retain a possession he would finish with a long jumper, then spotting Billups for that reverse layup; and, finally, Rip Hamilton, first darting through everyone to grab an offensive rebound and allowing the Pistons to bleed another 20-some seconds off the clock, and finally with the shot of the game, the runner with 48 seconds left after beating Kevin Garnett off the dribble from mid-court.

The Celtics had to be thinking, as they dragged themselves on board their flight to Detroit in the wee hours, that if just one of those players had shrunk from the moment – any player, any moment – they’d be up 2-0 in the series, not exactly home free, but having the Pistons close to cornered.

The pressure would have been squarely on the Pistons to hold serve in two home games just for the chance to make it a best-of-three series with Boston still having the security blanket of two games at home.

It’s wrong to suggest the pressure is all Boston’s now, though, wrong and dangerous. The Pistons need to recapture the same sense of urgency they carried into Game 2. Give one back at home and the Celtics will return to the new Garden unburdened, buoyed by snapping their road futility streak and secure in the knowledge that home-court advantage is theirs again. And winning on the road gets tougher the deeper you get into a playoff series.

So the series is all even and so is the pressure. There’s something else that might be weighing on Boston’s mind, even as they comfort themselves with thoughts that so many Pistons can’t possibly all be so good on the same night again. Is it possible, or likely, that the big three of Garnett, Pierce and Allen are all going to be so wildly productive on the same night again, either? How deflating must that be, to get 75 points from your stars – 75 efficient points, too, coming on 51 shot attempts – and still lose? At home?

Will Allen’s resurgence continue away from the familiarity of home? Can Garnett and Pierce keep knocking down tough, contested shots at the rate they did in the first two games? The thought had to occur to the Celtics that any other team in the NBA would have wilted under the type of fire Boston threw at the Pistons in Game 2. And if that wasn’t good enough …

Here’s another disquieting thought that probably passed through the Celtics’ collective brain at 30,000 feet – we got virtually nothing from our role players at home. What can we possibly expect them to produce on the road, where role players almost universally provide little?

And if Doc was right that fatigue finally caught up to them in Game 2, how likely is it that they’ll be any fresher 48 hours later after taking one to the gut?

Stay tuned. It’s going to be a wild couple of nights at The Palace.

And check back later today for more on Pistons.com – the Pistons are practicing at noon and we’ll have more about last night’s game and a look ahead to Game 3 from both sides.

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And check back later today for more on Pistons.com – the Pistons are practicing at noon and we’ll have more about last night’s game and a look ahead to Game 3 from both sides.d comments on Keith's posts can be submitted via the Pistons Mailbag. Click here to submit your question.

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NBA rules on Rip: Flagrant one, no suspension

Just got word from the NBA that Rip Hamilton’s foul with 9:59 left in the fourth quarter of Game 1 – when he got his elbow up and ran into Kevin Garnett – has been upgraded to a flagrant one foul. Flagrant one is a lesser offense than a flagrant two foul, which results in an automatic ejection.

Had the NBA deemed Hamilton’s foul a flagrant two after the fact, it could have suspended him for Game 2. You might remember that Antonio McDyess was given a flagrant two foul in the Pistons’ Game 5 loss to Cleveland in the 2007 conference finals. Probably because he was ejected from that game, the NBA did not suspend him for Game 6. But because Hamilton was only whistled for a personal foul against Garnett and not ejected, had the NBA ruled it a flagrant two foul there’s a pretty decent chance he would have been suspended for tonight’s game.

So that’s the first bit of good news for the Pistons, who when they put their feet up Wednesday night and watched Game 1 of the Western Conference finals probably empathized with both teams – the Lakers for the difficulties of stepping into such a frenzied environment after extended inactivity, the Spurs for the travails a road team faces in opening a conference finals in the other guy’s building.

And I couldn’t help thinking: Game 1 of the Western finals is what Game 1 of the Eastern finals probably would have looked like if it had been played at The Palace instead of in Boston.

The Lakers were clearly out of sync, falling 20 points behind the Spurs midway through the third quarter. The Spurs were clearly running on fumes, allowing the Lakers to chop 75 percent of that seemingly safe cushion away in a matter of a few minutes.

The Pistons had an even longer layoff than the Lakers, seven days to LA’s five. The Spurs had an even tougher turnaround than the Celtics, who at least got to sleep in their own beds after winning Game 7 and practice in their own building the next day. The Spurs spent a restless night in an airplane, took off late for a long flight to the Coast and essentially lost a valuable day between games.

My guess is if the Spurs hosted Game 1, the Lakers would have had the same difficulty mounting a comeback even after shaking off the rust before a San Antonio home crowd, which would have given the Spurs enough of an emotional boost to hold off the LA surge even through their fatigue.

In a series between two evenly matched teams, Game 1 often doesn’t tell us much. It takes both teams that first game to size up the other and the circumstances, then digest it and figure out where to go from there starting with Game 2. Tonight should be a truer reflection of what we can expect from the rest of the series than Game 1, just as my guess is that San Antonio isn’t likely to take a 20-point second-half lead in Los Angeles for Game 2 – or blow it if they manage to do it again.

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No mystery: 'We played a horrible game'

The Pistons didn’t wake up Wednesday blessed with any great revelations, but there probably weren’t any to be had. There was no mystery to their Game 1 loss – they were too slow getting into their offensive sets, their defense was a step behind Boston most of the night, they settled for too many long jump shots and they didn’t get the type of performance they needed from Chauncey Billups after his long injury layoff.

“We played a horrible game,” Antonio McDyess said. “We felt we played a horrible game and we just can’t continue playing that way. I think tomorrow is going to be a little different.”

Flip Saunders admitted he expected some rough patches early and felt pretty good when the Pistons got to halftime trailing by only one. The flat third quarter – the turnovers, especially – did them in.

“We knew coming in that … we were going to be not as competitive early, but I thought we got to 41‑40 and got into it and we were OK. But the third quarter, when we should have jumped on it, we just didn’t. We didn’t get it done. We turned the ball over too much. We beat ourselves. We’re a team that, we came off of a playoff low of three turnovers and we had seven in the third quarter. So when it’s a close game, we turn it over seven times, we don’t give ourselves a chance.”

It’s safe to assume the Pistons will alter the way they defended Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett on the pick-and-roll play – Saunders said Garnett set screens a whopping 53 times in Game 1.

“Well,” he said when asked about that likelihood, “you’ll find out.”

Cleveland was very aggressive in defending Pierce on the pick and roll, trapping him more often than not. Of course, Pierce burned Cleveland for 41 points in Boston’s Game 7 win over the Cavs, so you have to be careful when choosing your poison with an All-Star.

Billups said he came out of Game 1 feeling pretty good physically and expects not only he, but backcourt partner Rip Hamilton, will attack more often in Game 2.

“I’m going to – I probably will,” he said. “I know with Rip and I not being aggressive and trying to score the ball, our chances, they go down a little bit. So I think that he and I both have to be a little more aggressive, and that’s not necessarily taking shots but just getting into the teeth of the defense. You know they load up, you know they’re going to be coming off on penetration, and (it’s important) to get guys easier shots and not fight the shot clock so much.

“The rhythm was a little bit off, but even when they don’t let you reverse the ball, then that’s when you’re going to take action, take seams. That’s just something that once you see how teams are playing certain things, that’s when you make certain adjustments. I think we’ll do a better job of that tomorrow.”

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Amid the Game 1 gloom, rays of sunshine

Disappointing, sure. Disheartening, not even close.

The Pistons knew that Game 1 might have been their best chance to win a game at Boston. They also knew that it might have been Boston’s best chance to prevent the Pistons from stealing home-court advantage. Counterintuitive? Not really.

Both teams had heavily discussed and analyzed vulnerabilities going into Game 1 – the Pistons had been off a full week, and their point guard almost two full weeks while rehabbing an injury he clearly wasn’t convinced he’d overcome; the Celtics had just two days earlier wrapped up a physically – and emotionally – draining seven-game series against Cleveland.

So it was not a huge surprise that Boston got off to an 8-0 lead. The Pistons were braced for an early storming of the beaches by the Celtics, playing off pure adrenaline in the aftermath of a Game 7 win and lifted by the predictably raucous home crowd. The Pistons trailed by five after one quarter and it could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse.

But the Pistons found something in the second quarter. The backcourt tandem of Rodney Stuckey and Lindsey Hunter were disruptive defensively and Stuckey, as the Pistons hoped he could, punched a few holes in Boston’s often impenetrable defense. Keep that second quarter in mind.

What the Pistons had to be banking on – in the same way Boston banked on predictable Pistons’ sluggishness at the start – was that the Celtics, after the initial emotional wave wore off, would display signs of physical and mental fatigue and make unforced or barely forced errors, start settling for tougher shots and make the extra defensive rotation a little less frequently.

The surprise of Game 1 was that Boston got better after halftime and the Pistons really didn’t. In fact, the third quarter – when you might have expected the Pistons to have their legs under them and Boston to start feeling the damaging effects of two seven-game series and a short turnaround – was devastating to the Pistons.

They were the ones who got careless – and carelessness is often the symptom of fatigue. It’s the aggressor who usually makes fewer mistakes and the Pistons allowed Boston to become the aggressor in the second half, when logic dictated the Pistons would have been the ones surging emotionally and physically.

So … what now?

Well, it’s not all bad news for the Pistons. Really, it isn’t. That second quarter, for one thing, bears analysis. Doc Rivers, even in his post-Game 1 relief, alluded to his team’s inability to deal with the pressure of Hunter and Stuckey.

Hunter is 37 and can’t, nor shouldn’t, be counted on for an expanded role. He gave the Pistons 13 solid minutes in Game 1. To expect more than six or seven minutes a half from him would be dangerous.

But Stuckey? He’s a rookie, so don’t rest the weight of turning the series on his shoulders, but it’s clear Flip Saunders went into Game 1 believing in what Stuckey exhibited in the Orlando series. Stuckey gave the Pistons 23 minutes and – even though Billups can and should be sharper and more assertive from this point forward – I wouldn’t expect Stuckey’s minutes, or his impact, to diminish.

My hunch is Saunders is now looking at the three perimeter spots as a job-sharing arrangement between four players – Billups, Stuckey, Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince – with Hunter as the spot specialist, thrown into the fray on a case-by-case basis. Jarvis Hayes didn’t get off the bench in Game 1, Saunders probably leery of his ability to stay in front of Paul Pierce, a load even for a defender as gifted as Prince. If there’s a fallback, it might be Arron Afflalo, whose competitiveness, poise and proven defensive mettle might provide the Pistons valuable transition scoring chances in a series where points out of the half-court offense will come grudgingly.

Hamilton looks like he’s the primary backup to Prince. Ideally, both those players would get four-minute rests per half, as would Billups. That opens up 24 minutes of playing time – and Stuckey’s first in line for all of them, based on his rapidly expanding ability to make and finish plays.

What else counted as good news about Game 1? The way Billups finished. There was a tentativeness to him in his first- and third-quarter stints, but when Saunders brought him back for the last five-plus minutes, he was All-Star Chauncey Billups in flashes – a hard baseline drive past Rondo for a layup, curling around a screen and pulling up assertively to knock down a jumper, drawing a foul off another aggressive penetration move. It’s not very likely his leg suddenly felt appreciably better. The likelihood is that he got to a place mentally where he felt confident that his injured hamstring wasn’t going to betray him again and cut it loose. Assuming he feels none the worse for it after today’s practice or tomorrow’s morning shootaround, we should expect to see more of that Chauncey Billups in Game 2.

One more thing to consider: Human nature says Boston is about to exhale. The Celtics knew the Pistons were cooling their heels and waiting for them and they knew that had to put the Cleveland Game 7 behind them. And when I say “they knew,” I mean that on something beyond an intellectual level. But there’s a chance, at least, that now Boston will allow itself a moment of self-congratulation for not succumbing to the temptations of fatigue in Game 1.

Maybe the real benefits of the Pistons’ extended rest won’t show up until Game 2, after they’ve reacclimated to the pace and passion of a playoff series and have had the chance to touch the Celtics’ soul to gauge their temperature.

For as much went right for Boston and as much went badly for the Pistons in Game 1 – Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce’s tremendous efficiency on the one hand, Rasheed Wallace and Chauncey Billups treading water on the other, for four quick examples – it was still a six-point game midway through the fourth quarter.

It’s OK to be disappointed by Game 1. The Pistons are, too. Disheartened? Not even close.

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Lousy night started with lottery winners

Tuesday was a lousy night all around for the Pistons. I’ll have more on their Game 1 loss shortly, but let’s start with the lottery. Of the 14 teams in the field, the Pistons really had a strong vested interest in only two, Chicago and Miami.

Remember, it was at this point a year ago – before Cleveland came back from a 2-0 deficit to sweep the Pistons out of the Eastern Conference finals – when the Pistons themselves viewed Chicago, not Cleveland, as the most immediate threat to their Eastern supremacy.

The Bulls went into Tuesday night’s draft lottery with a 1.7 percent chance of winning the top pick. Only Orlando back in 1993 – one year after adding Shaquille O’Neal with the No. 1 pick – beat longer odds to win the top pick. (The Magic picked Chris Webber, then shipped him to Golden State for Penny Hardaway, the No. 3 pick that year, and three future No. 1 picks.)

Idle thought: What do you suppose ran through Mike D’Antoni’s mind when the Bulls didn’t show up at No. 9 in the lottery – immediately signaling that they’d leaped into the top three – and the Knicks got pushed down a spot to No. 6? And then when the Bulls’ card came out No. 1? D’Antoni was torn between the Chicago and New York jobs. The Bulls already had a huge roster advantage, but it grew exponentially with Tuesday night’s addition of a potential superstar – either the dynamic point guard to make D’Antoni’s preferred offensive style go in Derrick Rose, or the dynamic inside scorer the Bulls need to complete an otherwise gifted team in Michael Beasley.

Probably the same symbolic grimace that ran through Joe Dumars’ mind when he saw not just that Chicago got the No. 1 pick but Miami – two years removed from an NBA title – got the No. 2 pick. Two consensus great players in this draft, Rose and Beasley, and they’re both coming to organizations that already had the pieces in place to be playoff teams next season.

Tuesday, in fact, might have been the karmic tonic for the NBA’s East-West imbalance. Last year, Portland and Seattle both beat long odds to get the 1-2 picks in another draft with two consensus great players, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant.

There’s no reason the Bulls shouldn’t be in the thick of the Eastern Conference chase next year no matter what direction GM John Paxson decides to turn – both with the No. 1 pick and the roster moves begging to be made. He’ll have decisions to make on restricted free agents Luol Deng and Ben Gordon and he’ll have a frontcourt logjam with Tyrus Thomas, Joakim Noah and Drew Gooden if he adds Beasley to the mix, but the right coaching hire will have a lot of talent to sort out.

The key in Miami will be Dwyane Wade’s knee. They’re doing some experimental treatment – which in itself is pretty worrisome – but if Wade can recapture all or most of the explosiveness that set him apart and less than two seasons ago had him in the discussion with LeBron and Kobe as MVP timber, then Wade alongside Shawn Marion (assuming he doesn’t opt out of his contract) alongside Rose or Beasley give the Heat a ridiculously formidable nucleus for a 15-win team.

As for the Pistons, sitting at the 29th pick, it’s a long shot that they’ll find anyone there good enough to crack the rotation. Not impossible, but not likely. The best bet is finding a wing player who they think can provide backup minutes behind Tayshaun Prince. Jarvis Hayes is a free agent. The Pistons stuck with him throughout the regular season, but he’s found himself rooted to the bench in the playoffs – not appearing in Game 1 against Boston – as his jump shot has proven too erratic to risk his defensive struggles.

Who might be there? Well, ESPN.com’s Chad Ford – who rightly predicted the Pistons would take Rodney Stuckey with the 15th pick immediately after last May’s lottery was completed – is picking Memphis’ Chris Douglas-Roberts. That’s as good a guess as any. He’s an unorthodox player – a skinny slasher with an unorthodox jumper, but he’s got a motor in Rip Hamilton’s class and he plays exceptionally hard. The thing about Douglas-Roberts is that if Dumars and personnel director George David like him, they’ll find out about him intimately – Durand “Speedy” Walker, recently brought on full-time to join David as primary college scouts, was Douglas-Roberts’ AAU coach with The Family.

But the Pistons could just as easily pick a young big man, aware that Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess will be 34 when next season starts, and address the more immediate need of backup help for Prince with all or part of the mid-level exception that Dumars essentially put into play with his cap-friendly trade of Nazr Mohammed to Charlotte in December.

So that’s the lottery half of the Pistons’ lousy night – more on the more important half, the flat Game 1 loss to Boston, coming a little later.

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Herrmann inactive; Bulls lottery winners

The Pistons went with an inactive list of Juan Dixon, Walter Herrmann and Cheikh Samb for Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals against Boston. Not terribly surprising. Lindsey Hunter is active in case Chauncey Billups’ hamstring acts up. Hunter had some nice moments when the Pistons won at Boston in December. The decision for the final spot probably came down to Herrmann and Amir Johnson. But Boston doesn’t really have any big men who play out on the floor – as Orlando did with Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu – with the exception of Kevin Garnett and, if the Pistons go through Rasheed Wallace, Antonio McDyess, Theo Ratliff and Jason Maxiell, they probably like Amir’s greater length and athleticism to check Garnett. He got a little taste of it in the Pistons’ March loss at Boston and got schooled a few times on Garnett pump fakes, but at least got his feet wet.

They just finished the NBA draft lottery with the Bulls coming up big winners. Projected to pick ninth, Chicago beat very long odds to get the No. 1 pick. The Bulls will be especially torn. As badly as they need the interior scoring threat that Michael Beasley offers, Derrick Rose is a homegrown star and a potentially charismatic point guard. Miami is pretty certain to take whoever the Bulls pass on among those two, though the Heat are rumored to be enamored of USC’s O.J. Mayo, as well.

Here was the complete order of finish:

14-Golden State
13-Portland
12-Sacramento
11-Indiana
10-New Jersey
9-Charlotte
8-Milwaukee
7-Los Angeles Clippers
6-New York
5-Memphis
4-Seattle
3-Minnesota
2-Miami
1-Chicago


I’ll have more impressions of the lottery and the draft crop in tomorrow’s blog as well as analysis and observations of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. Check out Pistons.com later tonight after Game 1 for my game report.

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10 months later, Pistons-Celtics comes to pass

It was at Chauncey Billups’ charity golf outing last summer when the Pistons announced they’d re-signed their point guard to a free-agent contract. His agent, Andy Miller, was in town for the occasion. And Andy Miller also happens to represent Kevin Garnett. So Joe Dumars got the heads-up before word started spreading on the basketball grapevine – Garnett was about to be traded to the Celtics for Al Jefferson and assorted flotsam and jetsam.

It was a pretty stunning deal, given that the Celtics had taken their shot at Garnett before the draft, armed with Jefferson and the No. 5 pick in a talent-rich draft, and that wasn’t enough to get the deal done. Boston moved on, peddling the No. 5 pick and two of the few remaining desirable pieces the Celtics owned – Delonte West and the large contract of Wally Szczerbiak, down to its final two years – to Seattle on draft night for Ray Allen.

That the Celtics had enough left to entice Minnesota into dealing Garnett was stunning. That Garnett was joining Paul Pierce and Allen in Boston was guaranteed to make the Celtics a player in the Eastern Conference. But who was going to play with them? How would the big three – all of them 30 or over – hold up playing the heavy, heavy minutes it appeared they would have to play to allow Boston to win? How would Danny Ainge fill out the roster when the salaries of his three stars ate up 100 percent of the salary cap?

Dumars and Flip Saunders openly mused about the possibilities that day at Billups’ golf outing. Billups, too. They all knew the Eastern Conference had just gotten a lot more interesting – remember, the Garnett trade came on the heels of the Knicks’ acquisition of Zach Randolph, Charlotte’s pickup of Jason Richardson and Orlando’s signing of Rashard Lewis, adding tremendous firepower from the West – but they all still felt they were the team to beat.

Billups, in fact, was confident enough in his team to help persuade Garnett to reconsider the Boston option he essentially had shot down a month or so earlier.

I don’t know if there was any point during the season, when Boston sprinted from the gate and never looked back, winning 66 games and essentially locking up the No. 1 overall seed more than a month before the playoffs arrived, when Billups or his teammates or their coaches ever looked at the Celtics and wondered if they were unbeatable. I doubt it. Here’s what Saunders said when I asked him Monday if the Celtics came together as he envisioned they might when he first considered the possibilities that day last summer.
“I thought they would come together,” he said. “I didn’t think it would be as quick and dynamic as it has been. I thought they would win their division. I think they won 66, 67 games – no, I didn’t think they’d win that many. I thought they would be somewhere in the upper 50s.

“The thing I didn’t know is that they’d be able to stay healthy last year and that’s the thing they’ve been able to do outside of Garnett. And when he went down, to their credit, as a team they really played well. They won some games I didn’t think they’d win.”

The Celtics peaked in late March, going into Texas and sweeping the triangle trip – at San Antonio, Houston and Dallas – in a grueling four-night test, the first two without Allen. If the Pistons ever had doubts about their ability to knock off the Celtics, that would have been the time.

But it’s pretty clear they headed to Boston for tonight’s Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals feeling fully confident that they control their destiny. They’re not going into this series hoping that Allen’s shooting woes continue or that Pierce left his best on the floor in a 41-point performance to close out Cleveland or that Garnett twists an ankle sometime over the next 10 days.

The Pistons like their chances. They like that they went into the playoffs fresh, like that they got an unexpected challenge from Philadelphia and responded splendidly, like that they beat Orlando in five games after losing Billups four minutes into Game 3 and like that they’ve had plenty of time to rest while Boston was getting the same rude treatment from Cleveland the Pistons themselves absorbed a year ago at this time.

They like that the reliable old core – Billups, Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess – is now supported by a group of reserves with a complementary skill set. They like that Rodney Stuckey has validated what they’ve suspected about him all along, proving in the Orlando series that he’s got both the talent and the makeup to shoulder big moments.

That said, they also have to realize the necessity of seizing this moment, of punching Boston in the gut while the Celtics are still deeply inhaling in the aftermath of the exhausting Cavs series. The series won’t be over if the Pistons come back to The Palace trailing 2-0 – if Atlanta and Cleveland recovered to push Boston to seven games, then the Pistons surely are capable of the same – but coming back with a split, or better, sets them up much more favorably to not only win this series, but to arrive at the NBA Finals with better karma.

The moment the Pistons have anticipated for about 10 months now – the East finals, down to these two teams – is about eight hours away. Enjoy.

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Key D: It all starts with 1-on-1 vs. big three

When the Celtics won in their only visit to The Palace this season, they got 20 points from rookie Glen Davis. When the Celtics beat Cleveland in Game 7 to provide the Pistons their Eastern Conference finals opponent, they got 10 huge second-half points from mothballed veteran P.J. Brown.

The connection? Paul Pierce’s ability to break down defenses and force rotations, Kevin Garnett’s versatility demanding attention and the threat of Ray Allen’s 3-point bombs. Doing what’s necessary to mitigate the damage Boston’s big three can inflict is going to create openings for role players. The Pistons, like the Cavs before them, are probably going to err on the side of living with the consequences of paying extra attention to those with the ability to hurt them most dearly when the conference finals open Tuesday with Game 1 in Boston.

But the less help they have to give Tayshaun Prince, Rip Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace in their personal matchups, the better. The Pistons, like the Celtics, are not just defensive-oriented teams, but team defensive-oriented teams. Yet the first line of defense is winning the individual matchup.

The heart of Boston’s offense is the pick and roll as executed by Pierce and Garnett. Just as it was in their previous series with Orlando, the play starts with the hands in the ball of the opposition’s small forward – Pierce for Boston, Hedo Turkoglu for Orlando. But the huge difference is Garnett’s offensive versatility placing enormous stress on Prince and Wallace – or Antonio McDyess, when he’s guarding Garnett – to shut off every option. Orlando’s choices were limited – Turkoglu off the dribble or Dwight Howard going hard to the basket. Garnett can and will step out and drain jumpers consistently from inside 20 feet.

“Probably the best 17- to 18-foot shooter of anybody in the league,” Flip Saunders said of Garnett, the player he rode for 10 seasons in Minnesota. “So he can pick and pop and shoot, but he’s also a great passer. It’s not an easy situation to rotate to him. You leave to help off Pierce a little bit to get to him, it leaves Pierce an opening to the basket. It’s going to be more of a team defense at the point of attack, whether it’s an iso or a pick and roll or a down screen, those two guys involved with that, Tay being involved with one of them, they have to handle it correctly so he doesn’t get any openings.”

The Pistons were the polar opposite of Philadelphia, their first-round opponent – half-court team against a transition team – and then saw a radical switch to Orlando in the second round, going from the league’s worst 3-point shooting team to its most prolific. Now, in Boston, they get a team very similar in philosophy and firepower to themselves.

“We’re mirror images,” Saunders said. “Defensive-oriented teams; both teams are good offensively when they move the ball; both teams have inside guys who like to play outside at times; two guards (Allen and Hamilton), both (from) Connecticut … you can go right on down the list. Right now Pierce is their best player in the playoffs; Tay might be our best player, both at the three spot. And when their point guard plays well, they win; when our point guard plays well, we win.”

The Celtics need to get Allen rehabilitated, though, after a dismal second-round showing. Allen averaged 9.3 points in the seven-game series, shooting 33 percent and making only 4 of 24 3-pointers. It got to the point where Doc Rivers held Allen out in Game 7’s decisive fourth quarter until Cleveland had cut Boston’s lead to one point with 2:20 left. Allen finished with four points. But the Pistons are going to guard him no less aggressively for fear that one breakout flurry would revive one of the league’s most dangerous shooters.

“Ray’s a great shooter,” said Hamilton, hosted on his UConn recruiting visit by Allen, though Hamilton’s first year at UConn was Allen’s NBA rookie year. “You can’t sleep on him at any point in time of the game.”

Saunders thinks heavy minutes over the first 60 games of the season could be having an effect on Allen, who’ll turn 33 in July, “but as long as he’s got the ball in his hands, he’s capable of shooting the basketball. He can go out and get a game where he’s going to get 6 of 7 threes. You can’t just say, ‘I’m not going to guard him.’ ”

As for the Wallace-Garnett matchups, Saunders saw plenty of it firsthand when both were in the Western Conference.

“Both have great respect for each other,” Saunders said. “The difference is that Rasheed has more of a perimeter, 3-point type of game where KG is more mid-range. Both have the ability to get down on the block and score, but they’re both reluctant to get down there. Both are great defensive players. Both can run the floor. They’re kind of clones of each other. Most of the time when we played Portland, when Sheed got the best of KG, they’d win. When KG got the best of Sheed, Minnesota would win.

“That’s a key matchup. If one of them can get on the other one, you have an opportunity for success for your team.”

The one matchup that looks decidedly in either team’s favor is at point guard, where Chauncey Billups is a three-time All-Star and Rajon Rondo a second-year player and first-year starter with little shooting range but long arms and excellent quickness that allow him to be highly effective as a defender and rebounder. The wild card in that matchup is Billups’ injury and rust status – he hasn’t played a game since May 7 when he got hurt four minutes into Detroit’s Game 3 loss at Orlando.

The Celtics picked up veteran Sam Cassell when the Clippers bought him out in February for just this matchup. Though Cassell was passed over in the final two games of the Cleveland series for Eddie House, he expects a more prominent role against the Pistons. Here’s what Cassell told Boston reporters after Sunday’s Game 7 win: Doc Rivers “told me I might not play the last two games just to get ready for the Pistons, so that’s what I came here for, to play against the Pistons, and hopefully the Finals. (Rivers) played for (Gregg) Popovich. I know that Popovich does the same thing. He gives guys rest. I got four days of rest. I’m cool. I’m ready to take on whatever role I get.”

Cassell is the just the type of role player ready to pounce at the openings that will inevitably come his way as the Pistons wrestle to mitigate the damage inflicted by Boston’s big three. It figures to be a constant chess match, the advantage going to whoever figures the other out quickest.

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21 years ago today: The greatest series ever began

It was 21 years ago today that the greatest playoff series I’ve ever witnessed firsthand – in any sport – began, the Pistons losing Game 1 of the 1987 Eastern Conference finals at old Boston Garden. Amir Johnson was 18 days old.

Flip Saunders was an assistant coach at his alma mater, the University of Minnesota, still more than a year away from beginning his CBA coaching career. Joe Dumars was the second-year starting guard alongside Isiah Thomas in the Pistons’ backcourt. Assistant coach Terry Porter was in his second year with a rising young team in Portland still three years away from meeting the Pistons in the NBA Finals.

Chauncey Billups was a 10-year-old in Denver, Rip Hamilton a 9-year-old in Coatesville, Pa. Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess were 12, Tayshaun Prince 7.

I remember it distinctly because I called my father from the press room at Boston Garden to wish him a happy birthday. Sometime later today, I’ll call him again in a weird sort of basketball circle-of-life moment.

That was the series that announced the Pistons as serious players. The NBA was all about the Celtics and Lakers back then. Their two regular-season meetings were always epic. Magic and Bird were the most captivating stars to have arrived in a generation, anchoring the two most storied franchises in league history. In that era, the Lakers and Celtics dominated the NBA the way Michigan and Ohio State held sway over the Big Ten in the Bo and Woody era.

That all changed with the 1987 Eastern Conference finals. Even though the Celtics won – escaping with two pivotal wins, games 5 and 7 at Boston – they emerged from that series knowing it was their veteran savvy, their big-game experience and maybe even the leprechauns of Boston Garden that wound up the deciding factors. By the time those two teams met again the following year, the Celtics knew the Pistons had figured them out. They knew that because in beating them in ’87, they’d had to reveal too much of themselves, letting the Pistons see firsthand the type of passion and commitment and steely nerves it took to win a title.

It was the same thing that would happen to the Pistons in 1990 when it took them seven games to beat the Chicago Bulls en route to the second of the Bad Boys’ NBA titles. The Pistons were getting a little bit older and Chicago a little bit hungrier, and the four-game sweep of 1991 could not have been a total shock to either side.

Times have changed since then. Free agency and the salary cap have altered the way teams are built and changed the dynamic of a championship team’s arc. The Celtics just engineered the greatest turnaround in NBA history on the strength of two deals that never would have been swung back then. Seattle and Minnesota, who supplied Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to Boston’s reclamation project, knew they weren’t taking back talent for talent. They were taking 50 cents on the dollar for the chance to start over again without a superstar’s contract weighing down their salary structure and limiting their options.

So I’m not sure what the lesson of 1987 is as it applies to 2008. The Celtics might be hungrier – Garnett, Allen and Paul Pierce have one conference finals appearance apiece to show for their three-plus decades of combined NBA experience – but they don’t exactly have youth on their side. The Pistons, in fact, have had the more significant infusion of young blood on their roster.

It’s a lesson Joe Dumars took from his experience – the experience of 1987, when he and a couple of young bucks named Salley and Rodman made the Celtics realize their vulnerability, and the experience of 1990, when he could see the same rampaging energy being harnessed in Chicago.

I’m not sure the Eastern Conference finals of 2008 is going to challenge its 1987 predecessor on my all-time list, but I know this: For season-long anticipation and potential for thrills, it’s off to the same promising start.

Check back later today for a report from the Pistons’ practice before they head out to Boston.

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Eastern finals set: Pistons vs. Celtics

It looked iffy with 2:20 left when LeBron James stole the ball and dunked to pull Cleveland within a point, but the Eastern Conference finals that the basketball world has expected for months has come to fruition - the Pistons will open at Boston on Tuesday night after the Celtics hung on for a 97-92 win over Cleveland.

That was a draining Game 7 to finish off a very physical series, so the Pistons are going to head to Boston knowing they might not get a better chance to steal a game on the Celtics' home floor - Boston is 8-0 at home this postseason and 0-6 on the road - than they'll have in Game 1.

Game 2 will be Thursday night at Boston with games 3 and 4 at The Palace next Saturday and Monday - Memorial Day. All of the first four games will tip off at 8:30 p.m. with all but Game 3, which will be an ABC game, to be televised by ESPN.

James had a game similar to the one he had in Game 5 of last spring's Eastern Confernece finals when he scored 48 in a double-overtime win at The Palace. James finished with 45 points, but the difference was that Boston's Paul Pierce virtually neutralized him, countering with 41.

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Down to the wire in Boston

Around about the middle of the third quarter of Cleveland-Boston Game 7, when LeBron James and Paul Pierce were trading daggers, do you suppose Tayshaun Prince was hoping they'd bump knees and knock each other out for the season? The Eastern Conference finals aren't going to be a day at the beach for Prince if Cleveland wins, but it might not be appreciably more enjoyable for him to chase Pierce around for two weeks, either.

Prince has guarded the other team's central offensive figure in each of the first two rounds, Andre Igoudala of Philadelphia and Orlando's Hedo Turkoglu, who had the ball in his hands at every critical juncture in the second-round series. He'll get more of the same - in bigger and more lethal doses - in the conference finals.

They're just about ready to head to the fourth quarter of this one with Boston leading narrowly. The odds say you stick with the home team, but the Pistons know well how James can dominate one quarter to win a game.

Should be a dramatic finish in Boston. And the Pistons will be the most interested observers of all.

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It's down to the who and the where for Pistons

Aspirining journalists learn the five W's on the first day of Journalism 101 - who, what, when, where and why. The Pistons crossed another off their list Friday night - the when. Cleveland's Game 6 win over Boston means the Eastern Conference finals will open Tuesday night. By late Sunday afternoon, the Pistons will cross the last two W's off their list - the who and the where.

Before the 3:30 p.m. tipoff in Boston, though, the Pistons will have held a Sunday morning practice, not knowing which team they'll be playing two days later. Odds are they'll spend a little more time focusing on the Celtics, though, given that the home team has won all six games of the series.

In a perfect world, the Pistons would have opened the conference finals on Sunday at home. That would have given them four full days off since disposing of Orlando in Game 5 on Tuesday. Now they'll have had a full week between games. That probably tips the scales a little more toward "rust" than "rest," but the silver lining is that Chauncey Billups' strained right hamstring will have had 13 days between games by the time Game 1 tips off.

If Boston is the opponent, the Pistons would be most likely looking at home games next Saturday and Monday - Memorial Day. The tipoffs would be 8:30 p.m.

When the Lakers won at Utah on Friday night to end that series, it was just the second road win in 23 second-round games. The Lakers are now in a situation similar to the Pistons' - waiting three more days until San Antonio and New Orleans play their Game 7 on Monday night to find out their conference finals opponent. The Western Conference finals will start on Wednesday night.

It's getting ahead of ourselves, I know, but you have to believe it's in the Pistons' best interest for New Orleans to beat San Antonio - and then the Lakers, too. If you could handpick an NBA Finals opponent for the Pistons, of the four teams that reached the second round, I'd have ranked them this way: (1) New Orleans - the Pistons were 2-0 against them this season and Rip Hamilton did a very good job of containing Chris Paul both times, though Paul was playing on a sprained ankle in the rout at The Palace; (2) Los Angeles - Might be the best team, but the Pistons match up with the Lakers pretty well; (3) Utah - Their struggles with the Jazz are well documented; (4) San Antonio - Too much success in too many big moments to wish the Spurs as an opponent.

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Watching with a purpose

Flip Saunders will be watching tonight’s Cleveland-Boston Game 6 intently – he just might not be able to tell you the score.

“I look at a game differently,” he said after the Pistons’ Friday practice, their third day in a row without a game to play – a streak that could stretch to six if Cleveland holds serve at home tonight and forces a Sunday Game 7. “I look at more not the results of what happens and more of what they’re doing to try to get results. I try not to get caught up in what the score is, but conceptually what they’re trying to do.”

Of course, he’ll be interested in the final score – because that’s going to dictate his weekend. If Cleveland wins, the Pistons won’t practice on Saturday. If Boston wins, they’ll be back at it Saturday morning and hopping a flight east in the afternoon for a Sunday Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.

Saunders has been pleased with what he’s seen in practice the past two days, from getting Chauncey Billups back from the hamstring strain that forced him to miss all but four minutes of the final three games of the Orlando series to the all-around focus he sees in a team that’s won seven of its last eight playoff games.

“It was good,” Saunders said of Friday’s practice. “No one got hurt. Got a good sweat, got a lot accomplished. No question our guys have come in these last two days and kept our edge. There’s been no slippage. They’ve been on each other, so that’s been good.”

Both Saunders and Lindsey Hunter said the Pistons’ potential conference finals opponents have deep similarities to their defensive concepts and their offensive schemes.

“They really like to grind it out,” Hunter said, “walk the ball up, get it to one of their playmakers. Cleveland has LeBron (James) – he’s 90 percent of their offense. Two different teams that attack in two different ways, but kind of the same way.”

“Cleveland and Boston defensively play pretty much the same way and offensively they’re the same in some ways. (Zydrunas Ilgauskas) is a post-up guy for Cleveland and (Kevin) Garnett for Boston. Their threes handle the ball a lot in James and (Paul) Pierce. There are some things that are very similar.”

Hunter, too, said he’ll be watching Game 6 for more than entertainment purposes.

“I watch for tendencies,” he said. “I watch to see what play they yell after timeouts, what they like to go to with four seconds on the clock. That’s what you watch.”

If Saunders had to guess, it would be that the Pistons wouldn’t be practicing on Saturday and traveling later in the day. Asked if he had a prediction for tonight’s Game 6, he said, “I’m going to go with what everybody else has been doing – I think the home team has a good chance of winning. That’s what they’ve been doing the whole time.”

In 21 second-round games, the home team is 20-1 – the only loss was the Pistons’ Game 4 win at Orlando.

• Saunders said Billups looked like himself – well, except for the black tights he’s wearing now to keep his injured right hamstring warm.
  
  “In fact,” he said, “he worked harder today than when he was real healthy.”

• I asked if Saunders if he’d look for ways to get Stuckey on the floor more with Billups and Rip Hamilton, given how well he played filling in for Billups.
  
  “I can’t really answer that right now,” he said. “We’ll have to wait and see how Chauncey is going to react in game situations. A lot is going to depend on where we’re at and what we need. The one thing Stuck has proven is his ability to get to the basket and Boston is a team that, the way they play defensively, they lock things down. You might have to create your own play and he can do that as well as anybody on our team.”

• Regarding assistant coach Terry Porter’s interview with Suns president Steve Kerr for that team’s coaching vacancy, Saunders said, “The people we have on our staff, all those guys are committed to what we have at hand. I think (Porter) understands why he’s being looked at – one, he’s been a head coach, but also the success we’ve had here. This league is very much a copycat league at times. When teams are having success, they look at that team – how the play and they things they do – and say maybe that’s what we want.”

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The Pistons are proceeding as if they’ll be playing Sunday. Not because they’re predicting Boston will be the first team besides them to win a second-round road playoff game, but because it’s better to be safe than sorry. A Boston win at Cleveland in Friday’s Game 6 would mean they’d have to travel to Boston on Saturday and play Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals on Sunday afternoon. A Cleveland Game 6 win would delay the conference finals to a Tuesday Game 1 – at Boston if the Celtics win, at The Palace if Cleveland prevails.

“It doesn’t matter either way,” Flip Saunders said. “We’re approaching it with the idea we’re going to play on Sunday. If Cleveland happens to win, we readjust.”

They’re already making one happy readjustment – to the great likelihood that no matter when the conference finals open, Chauncey Billups will be b-b-b-back in the starting lineup.

“I was very happy with what I was able to do today,” Billups said after going through the full practice. “I came in just hoping I could go through some five-on-oh stuff, and then when we go up and down and scrimmage, just play a little bit. And I was able to probably do a little more than I thought I would be able to do.
“He would have played (if there had been a game) today,” Saunders said. “He looked good in practice.”

The Pistons watched tape at the start of practice, but they’re already pretty familiar with both teams – Cleveland because they played the Cavs three times over the season’s final month, after the Cavs added four new players at the February trade deadline, and Boston because the Celtics have been on every contender’s radar since starting the season on a championship course. Besides that, the teams are very similar defensively.

“Both of them are aggressive,” Tayshaun Prince said, “and both of them like to take you out of your sweet spots.”

“They’re similar in what they do,” Saunders said. “They both try to control tempo, pack the paint, try to take away your penetration as much as possible.”

Prince thinks the Cavs are even better defensively than they were a year ago, when they held the Pistons to 86.3 points a game in the six-game conference finals – a number inflated by the 107 Detroit scored in its double-overtime Game 5 loss.

“A combination of Ben (Wallace) and Anderson (Varejao), Delonte West is a great defensive point guard, so they’re better all-around defensively,” he said. “And they have some different looks offensively with (Wally) Szczerbiak and Joe Smith off the bench. They’re a different team, but one thing you really notice is they’re a lot better defensively.”

• Flip Saunders has never doubted Rodney Stuckey’s self-assuredness, but he saw something in Stuckey at Thursday’s practice to make him think the success Stuckey had filling in for Billups in the games 4 and 5 wins over Orlando had done something even for Stuckey’s confidence level.
  
  “He had a great practice today,” Saunders said. “I’ve always told you guys he never lacked confidence. It’s just that the more times you do it, the more confident you get. He understands now that on bigger stages, he can still do what he thinks he can do.”
  
  The potential conference finals opponents suggest there might not be many chances to it, but a Pistons lineup that includes all three guards – Billups, Rip Hamilton and Stuckey – with Prince offers intriguing possibilities. It would have to be selectively used – Prince, for instance, would have a tough defensive matchup against rebounders like Ben Wallace and Anderson Varejao if the Pistons face Cleveland, or Boston’s Kendrick Perkins or Leon Powe – but putting four multifaceted and dangerous perimeter players on the floor would post serious challenges to the opposition’s defense, too.

• Prince called it an “iffy situation” and Billups a “Catch-22” – the case for rest vs. the risk of getting thrown out of a pretty good rhythm that has seen the Pistons win seven of eight playoff games since falling behind Philadelphia 2-1.
  
  “You worry about that, but at the same time, when you’ve played a lot of minutes in consecutive games, you worry about getting rest, too,” Prince said. “And we have people banged up. It’s kind of an iffy situation, which one you would rather have.”
  
  “That’s always a concern,” Billups said. “It’s kind of like a Catch-22. You want days off, you want to be able to recover and get healthy, but at the same time you want to keep your rhythm.”

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Billups good to go

Just got out of Pistons practice a few minutes ago, and I'll have more in a little bit, but just a quick note to let you know that Chauncey Billups participated fully in practice and said he felt pretty good. Flip Saunders said he'd have been able to play tonight if the Pistons had to play a Game 6 against Orlando. Also, Antonio McDyess returned to Mississippi for the funeral of his grandmother, who died Tuesday, and is expected to rejoin the team on Saturday. The Pistons would open the conference finals on Sunday if Boston wins at Cleveland on Friday night. If the Cavs win to extend the series to Game 7, the conference finals would open on Tuesday.

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Odds say the Pistons won't be playing Sunday

The odds that the Pistons will be playing Sunday are about 1 in 20. What makes me say that? Cold, hard facts. When the Celtics and Lakers won Wednesday night, that made home teams 19-1 in the second round – the only road winner was the Pistons, who held on to win at Orlando in Game 4. Which explains why the Pistons I’m sitting at the team’s practice facility as I write this, and they’re inside watching tape – which potential opponent they’re studying more closely, I’m not sure – while everybody else still alive in the NBA is still fighting to join them in the final four.

Now, the Pistons’ have a recent history of not playing especially well after long layoffs. They came back from the All-Star break groggy, getting spanked at home by Orlando and then losing the next night in Milwaukee.

So you can worry about that, I suppose, but I wouldn’t waste any emotional energy on it. There’s a huge difference. A huge difference between what went on over All-Star weekend and what the Pistons are experiencing right now, a huge difference between playing Orlando and Milwaukee in February and taking on Boston or Cleveland in the conference finals.

Trust me, Boston or Cleveland would swap places with the Pistons in a heartbeat. And who’d have guessed a week ago – after Orlando had won Game 3 and Chauncey Billups was down with a hamstring injury that held the potential to end his season, really – that it would be the Pistons sitting around waiting for everybody else to arrive at the party?

The most tangible reason this break is good for the Pistons, of course, is Billups and his hamstring. He was very close to playing in Game 5. Even though he said he wasn’t 100 percent, he was amazed at the strides he’d taken from Monday to Tuesday. My guess is he would have been well enough to play had there been a Game 6 in Orlando tonight. And by Sunday – the earliest the conference finals could open, Tuesday if Boston-Cleveland goes to Game 7, which is the safer bet – I’d further speculate that Billups won’t even remember which hamstring he strained without thinking about it.

But there are reasons beyond that. Without Billups, the tax on Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince, especially, in games 4 and 5 was heavy. I still think there are residual benefits falling to them for not having to play heavy minutes throughout the regular season and getting worn down, but in the short term they ran the risk of being sapped in a short turnaround to the next round.

Now it’s Cleveland or Boston running that risk – and that could be especially critical to the Pistons’ chances for stealing a Game 1 on the road if Boston turns out to be the opponent.

Check back later and I’ll have something from practice – maybe even a hint which potential opponent they studied more closely.

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Joe D: "A mano-a-mano play"

Joe Dumars agrees with me – Tayshaun Prince’s block of Hedo Turkoglu rates above the Reggie Miller block on his list, too, because it was pretty much a gunslinger’s duel where both sides showed their cards and his guy came out on top.

“This was a mano-a-mano play,” Dumars said as part of a wide-ranging interview we did Wednesday morning, the day after Prince’s big blocked shot with 15 seconds left helped preserve the Game 5 win over Orlando and lifted the Pistons to the Eastern Conference finals for the sixth straight season.

“Hedo turned the corner and decided, ‘I’m throwing it down. I’m not going to try to lay it up. I’m not going to try to float it.’ And that’s a mano-a-mano thing you say to yourself on the court. And Tayshaun said, ‘I’ll meet you at the rim.’ ”

“You have plays like that where both guys make up their mind that ‘I’m going to impose my will on you.’ Hedo made up his mind and Tayshaun made up his mind. Those are the most impressive plays. Because there is no surprise element here. It’s one guy saying, ‘I’m coming.’ And the other guy saying, ‘OK, I’ll be there.’ ”

Among other things, Dumars said he feels better about the Pistons at this point than he did heading into last year’s conference finals; he was surprised when he found out during the game that Rip Hamilton had surpassed Isiah Thomas for No. 1 on the all-time Pistons playoff scoring list; he couldn’t help but think about his performance in Game 3 of the 1990 NBA Finals, the day his father died, when Antonio McDyess had a huge fourth quarter hours after learning of his grandmother’s death; he believes Rodney Stuckey is the most composed rookie he’s seen in his eight years as Pistons president.

For the complete Dumars Q&A, click here.

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Prince's block: His all-time best?

Picking Tayshaun Prince’s best block is like debating the best article of the Bill of Rights – they’re all somewhere between tremendous and outstanding, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and without any one of them the body of work would be less than it otherwise is.

But the one he had on Hedo Turkoglu to save the Game 5 win – and the series - over Orlando on Tuesday night ranks ahead of the Reggie Miller block for me. Oh, it’ll never replace the Miller block on the highlight reel because of the more spectacular nature of that epic block, coming out of nowhere to swat a layup from behind.

But the unexpected nature of the Miller block was partly on Reggie’s end, too. He gathered his steps to make sure he’d be going off the right foot at a safe speed to make an easy layup. He didn’t know Prince was coming from behind until it was too late. The wonder of the block on Prince’s part wasn’t that he swatted it away at the end of the play, it was that he made up so much ground to get there.

But the Turkoglu block … wow. There was nothing surprising about it to Turkoglu. Except that anybody could cover that much ground and block a dunk – a dunk! – at the rim without making body contact or coming close to a foul. Really, it’s amazing that Prince blocked that shot so cleanly that nobody – not Turkoglu, not Stan Van Gundy, not the folks sitting back in Orlando with blue face paint – could grumble about the non-call.

The day before the game, after practice, Prince was asked whether his block of Miller in 2004 or the game-winning basket he made in Game 4 at Orlando last Saturday was more special to him. Here’s what he said:

“I’ll take the block any time of the day. It’s more special. I don’t care if the block was one of 82 games or the last game of 82 or in the playoffs. That’s more important than anything to me. The satisfaction to get a defensive stop to win the game, that’s what’s more gratifying than hitting the game-winning shot in my eyes. If you get a huge defensive stop to ice the game, that makes you feel a lot better.”

He must be floating on Cloud Nine today then, because blocks don’t get a whole lot bigger than that one. If Turkoglu makes that shot, the Pistons would have been in deep danger of losing a game they led by 10 points less than four minutes earlier. On a night they got so many huge contributions from so many different players – Antonio McDyess with an inspired fourth quarter after learning of his grandmother’s death hours earlier, Rodney Stuckey going 30 minutes without committing a turnover, Rip Hamilton draining 16 consecutive free throws – to lose that game and have to head back to Orlando … well, I think the Pistons still win the series, but at a high cost.

Lots of good things to come out of that game. Check back on Pistons.com later in the day for more.

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Chauncey: No go for Game 5

Chauncey Billups was encouraged by the progress his injured right hamstring made from Monday to Tuesday, but it wasn't quite enough to allow him to play in Game 5.

"I'm getting better," he said just minutes ago when he arrived in the Pistons' locker room for the 7 p.m. tipoff of Game 5. "I was very encouraged today with what I was able to do. I'm just not quite ready."

Flip Saunders said the Pistons would again keep both Juan Dixon and Lindsey Hunter active with Rodney Stuckey starting in Billups' place.

"It's so tough," Billups said of sitting out his second straight game after injuring himself early in Game 3 last Wednesday. "Elimination game, we're at home, felt like I could be out there but I don't feel like I could be out there, you know what I mean? It was definitely a tough decision. In the long run, I feel it's better to be safe than sorry, especially at a time like now."

Billups said he'd be doing his best cheerleading act and was confident that Hunter and Dixon would fill in admirably for him after helping the Pistons win Game 4 without him at Orlando last Saturday to take a 3-1 series lead in the conference semifinals.

"Being home today, I know we'll play a lot better," he said. "We've got our 22 thousand behind us, so I feel good about that as well."

If the Pistons lose Game 5, Game 6 is scheduled for Thursday night in Orlando.

"The decision is going to be made basically by Arnie and I," Billups said, a reference to strength coach Arnie Kander. "It's going to be 70 percent Arnie and 30 percent me, because sometimes my pride takes over and I'm like, 'Man, let me go,' and it might not be the smartest thing to do. We exhausted every opportunity to try it out. Arnie says that I can't really hurt it any worse, but my whole thing is if it's not getting better, it's getting worse. I want to be ready. I want to be better."

Billups worked out with Kander in the morning, playing some modified one-on-one and running from corner to corner to shoot 3-pointers while Kander fed him passes, then took further treatment in the afternoon and tested the leg again.

"What you all saw me doing this morning is the extent of what I've done for the last week. I ran from corner to corner, the most running I've done. I haven't been able to run up and down full-court and play defense on somebody full-court, somebody play defense on me. It's different when you get out here at 7 o'clock, 7:30 at night, as opposed to just running around and shooting by yourself."

Hamilton 10 points behind Isiah for No. 1

If Rip Hamilton scores 11 points when the Pistons go for the kill against Orlando tonight - and that's just a shade over half his career playoff average - he'll surpass Isiah Thomas for No. 1 on the franchise's all-time playoff scoring list. And he'll do it in one fewer game than Thomas played.

Hamilton goes into Game 5 with 2,251 points in 109 games for a 20.6 per game average; Thomas had 2,261 in 111 career playoff games for a 20.4 average. Already this postseason, Chauncey Billups has moved ahead of Joe Dumars and into third place on the all-time list with 1,859 points in 105 games to 1,752 in 112 games for Dumars.

"I wouldn't be able to do it without winning games," Hamilton said. "Breaking Isiah's playoff record, it's fun. It's a great accomplishment. I haven't been here that long. I didn't start my career in Detroit, but it kind of seems like that. To be only 10 points away from him and still a lot more games to be played is an awesome thing."

"That's a great feat," Billups said. "You're talking about Isiah Thomas, one of the greatest of all-time. Rip having the chance to break that, it speaks volumes about how long we've been here together and how many playoff games he's been able to play and how effective he's been. We've had some long playoff runs around here and Rip has been our No. 1 option ever since I've been here. Rip is a great player. We don't really look at it right now, but once we're all gone, we'll remember how great a player Rip is."

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Stuckey makes 2nd team All-Rookie

Despite missing the first 25 games of the season with a broken left hand and being stuck behind two perennial All-Stars, Pistons rookie Rodney Stuckey impressed NBA coaches enough to be voted to the T-Mobile All-Rookie second team.

Rookie of the Year Kevin Durant and Seattle teammate Jeff Green were named to the first team, along with Al Horford of the Atlanta Hawks, Al Thornton of the Los Angeles Clippers and Luis Scola of Houston.

Named along with Stuckey to the second team were Jamario Moon of Toronto, Juan Carlos Navarro of Memphis, Thaddeus Young of Houston and Carl Landry of Houston.

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Billups: 'I'm very encouraged'

Chauncey Billups went through his most extensive test of his hamstring since straining it six days ago at the Pistons’ Tuesday morning shootaround – and came out of it sounding truly encouraged about his prospects for returning for the first time.

“It’s feeling a lot better,” Billups said after playing a modified one-on-one game with strength coach Arnie Kander and running corner to corner to shoot 3-pointers while Kander fed him passes. “Just wait and see, but it feels better. I’m encouraged, that’s for sure. I feel a lot better than yesterday. Pushing off to my left is kind of hard, plus I’m out there by myself so there’s nobody really kind of pushing me and playing defense. But it feels good. I’m very encouraged.”

Billups remains a game-time decision, Flip Saunders said, with Billups saying the decision would be “70 percent Arnie, 30 percent me.”

In the six hours or so between the end of his morning workout session with Kander and the time when a decision must be made to hand in the active roster, Billups said he will be taking more treatment at the team’s practice facility, get another workout test in and then arrive earlier than usual at The Palace for one last test.

Billups said he hasn’t yet tested his injured right hamstring at full speed.

“That’s the first time I did any kind of sprint work, that corner-to-corner action, and that’s a lot different than going full-court time and time again. I haven’t been able to do that, get to top speed and sprint. That’s one thing that does concern me.”

Saunders said if Billups is cleared to play, he’ll start and play a normal role, though Billups said he’s “not close to 100 percent.”

“But I don’t have to be 100 percent to come back,” he said. “I just want to feel like where I can be productive.”

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Prince makes 2nd team All-Defense

For the fourth straight year, Tayshaun Prince has been named to the NBA's All-Defensive second team - and Chauncey Billups and Rasheed Wallace almost joined him.

Prince was named to three first-team ballots and 14 second-team ballots for 20 points. Billups was named to five first-team ballots and four second-team ballots, finishing with 14 points - the most of any player not named to one of the top two teams.

Kevin Garnett, NBA Defensive Player of the Year, led the first team and was tied with Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers, both with 24 first-place ballots and 52 total points. Joining them were 2007 Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Camby of Denver and San Antonio teammates Tim Duncan and Bruce Bowen.

Rip Hamilton also drew one second-place ballot, giving the Pistons four players to receive at least one vote - the only NBA team with four players to draw votes. In all, 36 players representing 20 NBA teams drew at least one vote.

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Thank Hawks for needed days off

If these playoffs end where the Pistons hope they do, they might consider cutting the Atlanta Hawks in for a playoff share. Pushing the Boston Celtics to seven games in the first round might have residual benefits if they happen to meet in the conference finals, but the Pistons are already benefiting from the unexpectedly tough fight Atlanta put up.

Because Boston’s second-round series got the latest possible start, the NBA had to sprinkle a few extra off-days into the Detroit-Orlando series. And with Chauncey Billups’ injured hamstring taxing those attempting to fill his void – Lindsey Hunter and Tayshaun Prince, most notably – the days off are coming in especially handy right about now.

So the Pistons took a full day off Sunday – one day after their gripping Game 4 win at Orlando put them one win away from a sixth consecutive trip to the conference finals – and went back to work on Monday to prepare for Tuesday night’s Game 5.

“I needed that day off,” Hunter said after Monday’s practice – and after getting extra shooting work in, as well. “And it was Mother’s Day. My wife understood. I took it easy, didn’t do too much.”

Hunter played 26 minutes with Billups unavailable and Rodney Stuckey in foul trouble, his longest outing of the season. Prince played 46 minutes, often serving as the de facto point guard while also guarding the man Orlando entrusts with the basketball, Hedo Turkoglu, every second Turkoglu played.

“It definitely helps,” Prince said of the days off. “Once I saw we have extra days in between games, that’s the time I’m not going to come out in the second half.”

What are the odds the Pistons have to lean heavily on Prince and Hunter again in Game 5? They might not know definitively until 90 minutes or so before Tuesday’s 7 p.m. tipoff. Billups worked out extensively with strength coach Arnie Kander again on Monday and Kander said progress has been steady and no setbacks have occurred.

“We worked in a 15-foot space just to give him a comfort level and he did everything,” Kander said. “Hard dribbles, defensive slides, we boxed, we did all sorts of maneuvers and he didn’t feel anything.”

Because Billups has never experienced a hamstring strain before, Kander said part of the challenge is mental – to know how much and how fast to push it.

“Rip (Hamilton) hurt his hip earlier in the year – he’s hurt his hip 10 times. He knows how to play through his hip. Lindsey Hunter has had every injury known to mankind. He can work through whatever he’s had. When you’ve never had something, it’s a whole different animal. You’re not used to it. What we’re trying to do is give him his space and his comfort level, letting him work through it, see how he feels the next day. We’ve had absolutely no setbacks. He’s come in every morning feeling better and that’s great.

“The soreness continues to diminish. It’s to a point now where he wakes up with no soreness at rest. He moves around, he feels comfortable. He can do a lot of pretty intense things on his legs right now and he has no pain when he does it.”

If Billups can’t go, the Pistons will again start Rodney Stuckey – and likely Antonio McDyess over Jason Maxiell at power forward – with Hunter at the ready and Prince running the offense for a considerable chunk of time, within reason.

“We’ll mix and match,” Flip Saunders said. “We don’t want to take the ball out of Stuckey’s hands when he’s in there. What you’ve got to watch, if you use it too much, we’re going to wear (Prince) out. We can’t let him enter the ball, catch it, score and defend. We can’t let him do all of those things.”

The Pistons wound up leaning on Hunter to do things they never expected to ask of him. Even though he wasn’t in uniform for weeks at a time during the regular season, Hunter diligently maintained his fitness level, not knowing if he’d been used for one minute in the playoffs or the 26 he wound up playing in Game 4.

“You have to have a goal,” he said. “If you’re just doing it, then you probably wouldn’t (push yourself). But I always envisioned a situation would come about where I’d be needed, so I pushed myself as hard as I can to prepare for it and luckily I was doing that or I would have probably died out there on the court. But I felt pretty good.

“You just have to try to stay as ready as possible. It took me a whole half to get my legs under me. I was really tired the first half, but I was fine after that. The thing about it, you can’t emulate game situations. It’s impossible. So you just push yourself as hard as you can and when you get in those situations, hopefully muscle memory and all that stuff helps. But there’s nothing like playing in a game.”

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