Curry won't shy away from bold decisions

Michael Curry’s first practice as Pistons head coach started at 10 a.m. It was 1:10 p.m. when he blew the whistle a final time, releasing 15 sweat-soaked players to strength coach Arnie Kander for a few more minutes of stretching and cooldown.

While they went through practice, the Pistons were divided into three five-man units. Not one of them featured more than two players who were a part of last season’s starting five. Curry wants Rasheed Wallace to know something about playing with Walter Sharpe, Chauncey Billups to develop a feel for Kwame Brown.

Three-hour practices and eyebrow-raising playing groups. If you thought Michael Curry was going timidly into his first season as a head coach, guess again. He’s not bowing to convention or cowing at the prospect of throwing new things and heavy demands at a star-laden, veteran lineup.

Almost every first-year head coach coming in with that approach would be viewed with high skepticism. Not Curry. That’s the payoff for a lifetime of diligence. Curry’s reputation – as a player who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps from undrafted free agent to NBA starter, as a leader who ascended to the Players Association president’s platform normally reserved for superstars – preceded him to his first head coaching assignment. Directives that would elicit smirks and rolled eyes from first-time head coaches of lesser mettle are taken at face value with the Pistons’ first-time head coach.

“You know he’s trying to get something accomplished out there,” Billups said. “He’s not just having us out here just to say we had a three-hour practice. We’re getting something done for the entire time and that’s not easy to say for some coaches.”

Curry is the ninth Pistons head coach since Kander joined the organization full-time in 1992. The players won’t be the only ones working harder than before under Curry. So, too, will be Kander. And that’s OK with him.

Curry has been banging the drum since the first days he was named as Flip Saunders’ successor in June. “We’ve got the best in the business in Arnie Kander,” he’s said repeatedly, “and we have to do a better job of taking advantage of him.”

During Curry’s planned three-hour training camp practices, more than the first hour will be devoted to film work and Kander’s unique training methodologies. Kander is known best for nursing injured players back to health quickly – and for preventing injury in the first place – but Curry thinks left untapped has been Kander’s expertise in tailoring conditioning programs to ensure each player gets in peak physical shape and stays there over the course of an NBA season. That last part, he says, is what he expects to be different this season.

So Kander is a big part of the Curry regime. And he said after Tuesday’s morning practice – the players are due back for two more hours tonight – that Curry is the best he’s worked with at structuring practices and explaining the purpose behind every drill and exercise. Under past regimes, Kander would work with two or three players at a time, maybe, but under Curry, everything gets done as a team.

Curry let reporters watch the last 30 minutes or so of a practice that, by all indications, lived up to his mantra: The Pistons are going to be the aggressors this season in everything they do, offense and defense and mind-set.

Here’s how the three five-man units stacked up:

• Red – Tayshaun Prince, Antonio McDyess, Cheikh Samb, Will Bynum and Alex Acker.


• White – Rasheed Wallace, Amir Johnson, Walter Sharpe, Rodney Stuckey and Rip Hamilton.


• Blue – Kwame Brown, Jason Maxiell, Walter Herrmann, Chauncey Billups, Arron Afflalo.

The Pistons were swarming defensively, trapping aggressively at every opportunity. Curry was asked afterward if he was trying to change the culture. His answer was revealing.

“That’s changing our identity,” he said of the fast tempo and aggressive play. “We changed our culture this summer. We went back to staying here throughout the summer, coming in and competing every day, working with the coaches, making sure you get better, having more of a workmanlike attitude. That was more of the culture.

“As far as our identity, as I told our guys last night, even if you were going to play the same way you played last year, you have to re-establish your identity every year. We want to establish our identity as a team that’s going to compete at a high level every night. We’re going to be really good defensively and offensively. We want to be a team that can win a game 120-110 and win a game 80-70. In order to do that, you have to practice and take advantage of all the guys you have.”

Curry is going to be peppered with questions throughout the season about all his “firsts” – new experiences for a head coach. He got some of them Tuesday, of course, after his first practice. And he’ll play along with those questions and give polite, thoughtful answers. But none of this has Curry awestruck or caught off-guard. Remember, this is a guy who said he thought he was ready to be a head coach the day he retired – a guy who said he prepared like a starter when he first arrived in the NBA as a 10-day contract, who prepared as a head coach while an assistant.

He was in the gym nearly every week of the summer, putting the young players he expects to play an integral role on this year’s Pistons – Rodney Stuckey, Arron Afflalo, Amir Johnson, Kwame Brown, et al – through the paces. They came to camp fully expecting the workload that hit them Tuesday.

“We all knew this was coming,” Stuckey said. “We already know what kind of guy MC is. We were all ready for it and we were up for the challenge.”

Billups, known for his diligent summer workouts, sounded as if he welcomed the greater emphasis on conditioning.

“That’s one of the things, a lot of the reason why in the past we’ve not gotten too many points in the paint,” he said. “It takes a lot of work to get on that post and grind in there and mix it up and get points in the paint. Even from a perimeter standpoint, dribble penetrate a lot in the paint and score and then have to get back (on defense), it takes an unbelievable amount of conditioning. He recognizes that and that’s one of his points of emphasis.”

Like all of his points of emphasis, it’s being embraced with honest enthusiasm from a team that doesn’t impress easily.

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Pistons camp: off and running

The Pistons haven’t even opened training camp yet, but they’ve already learned how to deal with adversity – or at least how to avoid catastrophe.

One of the main purposes of media day, which just wrapped up at the Pistons’ practice facility, is allowing all the major media outlets – the area’s newspapers, TV and radio stations, the NBA and The Palace’s TV production department – to get pictures and video clips of the players in their uniforms.

While Jason Maxiell was wielding a sledgehammer for the Pistons’ TV and in-arena uses, the business end of it flew off, crashed to the basketball court and skidded a good 40 feet away. Not too many minutes before that, Chauncey Billups had just emerged from the locker room at right about the spot where Maxiell’s runaway sledgehammer crash landed.

Here’s a smattering of observations based on conversations with Pistons players and coaches:

• The veterans are every bit as enthused as the young guys at the opportunity to be playing for Michael Curry.
  
  “I expect him to bring leadership,” said Rasheed Wallace, who said he decided to go back to his trademark No. 30 after wearing No. 36 to honor his brother, who died at 36, the last several seasons. “I think he already brings that respect level from the players. I think he brings that over to the coaching aspect. I saw a lot of positive things he did last year as an assistant and I think it will only improve with him at the helm.”
  
  “He really isn’t going to take any nonsense,” Rip Hamilton said. “He’s going to make guys go out there and earn their keep. I think that’s what we need – guys have to earn their keep.”



• Amir Johnson and Jason Maxiell both are excited about the chance to move into the starting lineup.
  
  “They told me I’ve got a good chance of starting,” Johnson said. “They said be ready and that’s what I am – ready to go in there and do what I can do.”
  
  Maxiell, by the way, said there’s nothing new to report on the possibility of a contract extension but he didn’t sound like he was concerned one way or another. If the Pistons and Maxiell don’t agree on a contract extension by next summer, he becomes a restricted free agent – but he said he’s not going anywhere, one way or the other.



• Chauncey Billups said he’s looking forward to the dynamic that will be added to the offense when he and Rodney Stuckey are on the court at the same time.
  
  “It really enhances everything,” he said. “You’ve got another guy out on the court who can make plays, get to the paint and distribute and do the things that for the last five, six years, I’ve been pretty much the only one out there who can get into the paint and create for everybody else. There are going to be times when we both are going to be out there and it causes havoc trying to play against two guys like that for the other team.”



• Rip Hamilton said while he doesn’t regard small forward as his natural position, he loves a good challenge and wouldn’t mind getting increased minutes at that spot as a way to find more time for Stuckey and Arron Afflalo.
  
  “I just love to be on the floor,” he said. “Any way I can be on the floor, I’ll take it. I love to take challenges. Some people don’t believe I can play there, so when you’re playing against another great player at that position, it makes me play even harder.”
  
  Hamilton is sporting a full beard that he says he “calls my Brad Pitt.” Makes him look like Rip Van Winkle.
  
  The first practice is tomorrow morning and should end in the early afternoon. We’ll have a report shortly after that on True Blue Pistons.

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5 hot questions of Pistons preseason

Less than a week to go until training camp. The roster is set, the veterans are filtering back into town and it’s down to the fine detail work for Michael Curry and his staff as they get set for their first go-around. Here are the five things I’ll be watching most intently over the four weeks leading up to the Oct. 29 regular-season opener with Indiana:

1. Who starts in Antonio McDyess’ spot?
Curry has said it’s an open competition for that spot between Amir Johnson, Jason Maxiell and Kwame Brown. And I think he’s going in with a completely open mind.

But somebody has to trot out there with Rasheed Wallace, Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince as the fifth starter on the first day of camp. My guess is that will be Amir Johnson for a variety of reasons.

Indications are that Curry would prefer to keep Maxiell coming off the bench. He thrived in that role last year, almost always ratcheting up the level of intensity with one of his signature plays – a ferocious lob dunk, knifing in from nowhere to snare an offensive rebound, barreling across the lane to swat away a shot spectacularly. Curry said this summer it was important to keep Maxiell fresh, citing the Orlando playoff series when he played extremely well for a couple of games while guarding Dwight Howard, then looking lifeless for the next few games because of the effort he expended. For continuity’s sake, it would be easier to limit the minutes of someone coming off the bench as opposed to starting.

Brown seems more likely than Maxiell to draw consideration, all things being equal. The foremost appeal to starting Brown is the freedom it would provide Wallace in not having to guard the opposition’s top post player to start games, keeping him out of foul trouble. But there are equally compelling arguments to be made for bringing Brown off the bench. It might serve him well, for example, to limit expectations after a career in which he’s been beaten down consistently for never living up to the status of being the No. 1 pick in the 2001 draft. There’s also something to be said for bringing Brown in late in the first or early in the second quarters to play against the opposition’s backup big man – which should play to Brown’s advantage nine nights out of 10.

The intrigue with Johnson is how his athleticism and ability to cover so much of the court defensively meshes with Curry’s vision for how he wants the Pistons to play. He wants to create offense out of defense. Curry raved at the Las Vegas Summer League about Johnson’s knack for smothering the pick-and-roll. And if the Pistons are forcing turnovers and increasing their open-court opportunities, that plays perfectly to Johnson’s strength. One more thing appealing about Johnson starting: Pairing him with the savvy Wallace figures to cover his youthful gaffes and accelerate his learning curve. Playing with four big-time scorers frees Johnson to do what he does best in the half-court offense, too – fly to the rim to pick up offensive rebounds and garbage baskets.

2. How much time will Rip Hamilton spend at small forward?

If Rodney Stuckey is going to get 30 minutes a game, as Michael Curry has said, and Arron Afflalo’s minutes are going up appreciably over the 13 a game he got as a rookie, then the only way to accommodate them without cutting Chauncey Billups and Hamilton’s minutes to the bone is to find ways to get three of them out there at the same time.

The logical extension of that premise is Hamilton playing small forward for 10 minutes or so a game, which he proved pretty emphatically he could do last season. The Pistons will want to be careful they don’t give Hamilton too heavy a dose of playing against bigger, stronger players for fear of wearing on his wiry, 185-pound frame. He’d never beg off of that challenge, so it will be up to Curry to make sure Hamilton doesn’t get ground down.

But Hamilton, Billups and Stuckey together would give the Pistons a dynamic new dimension to their offense.

3. How big a jump will Arron Afflalo take?

We’re going to assume Stuckey takes a pretty significant leap, establishing himself as an All-Star candidate for the not-too-distant future. But if Afflalo can draw 16 to 20 minutes a night on merit, when the three players ahead of him in the backcourt are the caliber of Billups and Hamilton and Stuckey, then the Pistons are going to have an even more significant backcourt advantage in virtually every game they play.

And nobody else gives them quite what Afflalo can. As effectively as he played defensively a year ago, Afflalo is confident he’ll be that much better for having a working knowledge of NBA personnel this time around. Yet to be tapped is Afflalo’s offensive game. When Stuckey pulled out of a Las Vegas Summer League game at halftime, Afflalo scored 20 points in the second half. He probably won’t ever be called on to carry the load in a game at any point this season, but he’s capable of seizing scoring opportunities.

Afflalo is either going to be grinding down the opposition’s top offensive player – imagine Michael Redd, having chased Rip Hamilton around for the whole first quarter, now having to try to shake himself free of Afflalo to start the second – or going against the opposition’s backup, which should play to his advantage in either scenario.

4. How much can Kwame Brown contribute?

When Dave Cowens, unsolicited, started banging the Kwame Brown drum on last week’s Pistons media tour, my ears perked up. Cowens isn’t easily given to hyperbole. When he said he’s been associated with the NBA since 1970 and has seen very few players with Brown’s size who move as fast and with as much body control as he does, that carries weight.

But Brown’s physical attributes were what enticed Michael Jordan to make him the No. 1 pick, so there has to be something else to make the Pistons believe they got one of free agency’s biggest summer bargains. That something else is this: Brown’s mental state.

He doesn’t have the weight of No. 1 hanging over his head anymore. He picked the Pistons – as he said, the first time in his career he got to dictate destination – for the opportunity but also for the reputation. He hoped he’d find a camaraderie-filled locker room and a nurturing environment, and from all indications he’s deeply grateful that so far everything has exceeded his expectations.

Worst-case scenario, the Pistons have a No. 5 big man better than anyone else’s. Best-case scenario? They’ve landed an athletic young big man who’ll be a frontcourt fixture for years at very little risk.

5. How will the Michael Curry effect manifest itself?

No question about it, Curry has a presence about him. He’s a clear thinker, a straightforward communicator, a guy who not only understands exactly how he wants his basketball team to look but gives voice to his vision in unambiguous messages.

Not one player has said anything remotely disparaging about Flip Saunders, but it is striking how strongly all of them have endorsed the promotion of Curry. Even though they know Curry isn’t going to let them cut a single corner, they’re universally on board with him as their leader.

From afar, the promotion of Curry has been met with a fair amount of skepticism. And I can understand that. One year as an assistant coach isn’t the resume most first-time head coaches bring to the party. But there are special circumstances at work here – Curry’s familiarity with the organization and his rare leadership ability, foremost – that argue against his failure.

Those are the first five things I’ll be monitoring as camp unfolds. How about you?

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The fight for minutes starts in training camp

They suit up 12 players every night in the NBA, but for most nights on most teams the last three among them might as well be in street clothes, too. Most coaches don’t go more than three or four deep on their bench unless the margin gets out of hand or deep foul trouble or injury strike.

But from everything we’ve gathered about the Pistons this summer – the messages Michael Curry is sending about his faith in young players, the glowing reports about Kwame Brown, the confirmation that Antonio McDyess is going back to the bench, the declaration of Rodney Stuckey as a “sixth starter” – they aren’t going to be governed by NBA convention this year.

Which begs the question: How deep can the rotation really go? Ten players? Eleven?

Joe Dumars has said there’s room for all five big men at the two power positions, power forward and center. So McDyess, Brown, Rasheed Wallace, Amir Johnson and Jason Maxiell no doubt expect to play every night.

Beyond Curry’s consistent message that Stuckey will play about 30 minutes a night, he’s given every indication that Arron Afflalo has earned more than the 13 minutes he played as a rookie. The Pistons think Walter Herrmann gives them something at small forward – size and outside shooting, for starters – that nobody else can supply behind Tayshaun Prince. And we know that Prince, Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton are fixtures.

So that’s 11 players.

There’s no way they all fit into the puzzle if you pencil in the mainstays – Hamilton, Billups, Prince and Wallace – for 32 to 36 minutes a night, which actually represent fairly modest numbers for players of their stature. All of them, it could be argued, are among the top 50 players in the NBA, and players of that magnitude might typically play 36 to 42 minutes.

Let’s take the five big men for the two power positions and see how the 96 minutes available there might be carved up. Wallace, of course, will be first in line. He averaged 30.5 minutes a game last season. But he turned 34 last week – a belated happy birthday, Mr. Wallace – and Curry is a big believer in all three of the young big men coming off his bench. So let’s figure Wallace for a slight reduction in minutes. We’ll assign him 28.

McDyess, as Curry confirmed last week, will be coming off the bench again and having his minutes scaled back from the 29.3 of last season. He also recently turned 34. My hunch is McDyess and Wallace won’t spend too much time playing together this season, with the likely exception of the last five minutes of close games. I could see a scenario something like this: Wallace starts and plays the first 10 minutes, McDyess subs in and plays the next 10 minutes, Wallace returns for the final four minutes of the half. That would give Wallace his 28 minutes a game and leave McDyess with 20.

And that leaves another 48 minutes to carve up among the other three big men. It will vary from night to night, in all likelihood, depending on the matchups and considering the probable production inconsistencies to be expected of three relatively young players. But it isn’t a stretch to think they might all wind up averaging somewhere around 16 minutes a game, though it might mean 24 minutes one night and eight the next.

Now let’s focus on the three perimeter positions. Let’s start with the assumption that Stuckey gets those 30 minutes a game. It’s not a stretch to believe Billups will lose a few minutes – he turns 32 on Thursday – from the 32.3 he played last year and also log 30 a night. There are 144 minutes to parcel out for those three perimeter positions and we’ve just accounted for 60 of them.

Hamilton and Prince have consistently been the leaders in minutes played over the last several seasons. Their minutes did come down last season – after hovering up around 36 to 38, Hamilton was at 33.7 and Prince at 32.9 last season. If the rotation is going to balloon to 11, they’ll probably have to come down a little more. For the sake of argument, let’s assign them the same 30 minutes we gave both Billups and Stuckey.

That would leave another 24 minutes a game – and leaves the door open a little for Herrmann to make his case, depending on how high Afflalo’s minutes get. It’s not inconceivable Afflalo would command that many himself, but if he goes to 16 a game then that would leave Herrmann with eight.

And all of that is fun for fans to dissect and analyze, but it’s not the way Curry or Dumars are thinking. Minutes are to be earned and nobody starts earning them until training camp opens. Besides, what happens to the blueprint when Rodney Stuckey’s hand gets caught in an opponent’s jersey in the last preseason game and his hand suffers multiple fractures?

Stay tuned. It’s going to get real interesting real fast in one of the most competitive training camps the Pistons have ever held.

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Up and at 'em: The Pistons come to Midland

We got to Midland pretty much on time, but not without a few moments of trepidation. We pulled out of the Grand Traverse Resort parking lot right on the button – 7:15 a.m. I had the TV news on at 6 a.m. and they were talking about frost warnings. It was 38 degrees in Grayling. When I looked out the bus window at 9:20 and saw Sanford Lake, I assumed our bussie had overshot Midland. But he’d taken a different route than I expected – I figured he was coming all the way down Interstate 75 and getting off at 10 West, but he got off of 75 to take 127 South and then 10 East. Construction slowed us down – of course.

But students were just starting to trickle into the gymnasium at Midland Dow High School when we got there and they were revved up a few minutes later by the guys from Palace Patrol. Then Steve Moreland, director of the popular Pistons basketball camps, introduced Rodney Stuckey and Arron Afflalo before handing the microphone to George Blaha, who turned the show over first to Scott Perry.

Perry’s message to the students: During my days as a college basketball coach, once we spotted a talented player, the very first thing we did – before we’d make the decision to start the recruiting process – was to check out what kind of student they were. Because that tells coaches a great deal about what they’re getting.

Perry took it further than that. He pointed to Stuckey and Afflalo and said when he was scouting for the Pistons – and even though Perry had just left to work as assistant GM in Seattle before the 2007 draft, he’d already laid the scouting groundwork on both players – he also checked into their academic standing at Eastern Washington and UCLA. The Pistons place a higher premium on character than most NBA teams and Perry said finding out how a college player handles his academic load tells them something about his discipline.

Stuckey’s story is interesting. A big reason he ended up at Eastern Washington was he fell behind academically early in his high school career. I talked to Stuckey about that as we were standing outside the gym and he said he regretted not taking schoolwork as seriously as he should have early on. He had to sit out as a freshman at Eastern Washington because of his high school grades – but two years later, as a junior, he was named an Academic All-American.

Perry wrapped up his speech with a personal story about drug use. As a high school student, a friend tried talking him into attending a weekend party. Perry declined, guessing that there would be drugs used. Monday, he found out his friend had tried marijuana for the first time – marijuana laced with PCP, angel dust. He said that friend, a bright young man like himself at the time, was never the same. And 10 years ago, they found him dead.

Dave Cowens was up next. Cowens has really been terrific on our statewide media tour. He cracked a great line in Grand Rapids when he was talking about Amir Johnson and how much he expects out of him this year. “Amir can do a lot of things you can’t coach,” Cowens said, “and he can’t do a lot of things you can coach.”

Cowens talked about the importance of the moment. How everything students do now will stick with them. He talked about getting together with his teammates from his high school days. “When you get to be 60,” he told them, “and it will happen, and you get together, you won’t talk about the wins and losses, you might not even talk about a game. But you’ll talk about the people and remember the relationships. You’ll remember who had your back and who was easily led astray.”

Darrell Walker stressed to the students – I’m guessing there were more than 1,500 – the importance of discipline. He also reinforced Perry’s message on drugs. Walker said he’s had three family members die of heroin abuse. Walker grew up in the projects on Chicago’s south side, where he was a contemporary of Isiah Thomas. Resist peer pressure that could draw you into a life of drugs and crime, he urged the Dow students.

Then Greg Kelser talked about the maturity of Stuckey and Afflalo. When the Pistons were on the road last season, Kelser wound up sitting on the bus near the rookies and got to know them well. Then Blaha asked them questions about the importance of education. Afflalo talked about growing up in Compton and going to a school that lost its accreditation and how he had to stay focused so he could get the grades he needed to get into his dream college. At UCLA – recently named one of the nation’s top 25 universities by U.S. News & World Report – he was on track to graduate in three years plus one summer’s work before declaring for the NBA draft after his junior season.

Stuckey talked about the value of sportsmanship and respecting teachers and coaches. Then he shared with the students the fact that he didn’t qualify academically coming out of high school. He talked about the pain of staying in the dorm when the Eastern Washington team went on the road and not putting the uniform on for home games. “Start young,” he told the students. “Start now.” Then he finished with this: “And I wound up on the dean’s list – a 3.4 student.”

Then Palace Patrol came back out and got the students all lathered up by throwing free Pistons T-shirts into the crowd, Moreland led them in a “Deee-troit Basketball” cheer and then fielded questions from students for Stuckey and Afflalo before calling down two students from the audience – one boy, one girl – for a free-throw shooting contest.

Dennis Sampier, director of community relations, then told the students about the seven scholarships available throughout the season via Pistons.com/community, part of the nearly $500,000 the Pistons will be giving to Michigan students and schools this season with their partners, the Detroit Free Press and IBM.

We’re getting ready to fire up the bus again and head for our next stop, Flint, where Joe Dumars and Michael Curry – who couldn’t make the full tour, as planned, due to the death of his grandmother – are joining us at the Boys & Girls Club. I’ll check back in later today.

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Catching up with Michael Curry in Flint

Just got back from the Flint stop on the statewide media tour. (In deference to my native Upper Peninsula, let’s acknowledge that it was really a very representative job of covering the Lower Peninsula and even northeastern Ohio with Toledo the next and last stop on our whirlwind two-day barnstorming trek.) While George Blaha held court in front of an enthusiastic bunch of kids at the Boys & Girls Club, another of the learning centers the Pistons have outfitted, Michael Curry was in the recreation room talking to the media.

Curry was supposed to be with us from the start, but the death of his grandmother changed his plans. It’s been a pretty wild emotional ride for Curry this summer, starting with his being named Pistons coach in June. His dad was at that press conference. A few weeks later, he was dead. Now his grandmother.

“Everybody goes through it,” he said. “Fortunately for us, my grandmother lived 80 years and did a great job with her kids and our lives. I had my dad for 62 years. He got really sick when I was in college and we didn’t think he would make it. Sometimes you’re blessed and don’t realized it until afterward. That’s kind of the way I am now. I don’t take anything for granted. I just work hard and try to be the best I can be all the time.”

Among the other subjects he touched on, he confirmed what we’ve been suggesting for the past month – that Antonio McDyess will go back to the bench to give more scoring punch to the second unit and better utilize McDyess’ talents.

“With Dice starting last year, he averaged the same number of shots in eight more minutes a game as the did the two years before that,” he said. “We think he can be more efficient when he’s not out there with the starting unit. We have so many guys who are capable scorers and who want to score the basketball. What we have on our second unit – and I know you don’t always play first and second unit at the same time – we have Rodney Stuckey, who, like Dice, could very well be a starter, and when you have both of those guys anchoring your second unit, you allow your role players to play their roles and not play outside of themselves.

“You’re not asking Amir Johnson to become a primary scorer or Jason Maxiell or Kwame Brown. Same with Arron Afflalo. Those four guys are key and their success is about having the right combinations and having a really good post scorer and a really good perimeter scorer out there with them. That will help with their development.”

Curry said he’s talked frequently with Rasheed Wallace over the summer – Wallace is the one Piston veteran who spends the majority of his summer here – to stress conditioning and efficient play, particularly post play. And he’s pleased with the way the message has been received.

“The thing we talked about early is I wanted him to be in better shape once training camp started and wanted him to maintain his conditioning throughout the season.” Curry said he believes that strength coach Arnie Kander is the best in the business, but the team hasn’t always taken full advantage of Kander’s keen instincts for maximizing workout techniques and conditioning levels.

“I know a lot of people talk about Rasheed getting down in the post,” Curry said, “and I talked to him a lot last year about it. We will call more plays for Rasheed – and not only Rasheed – to get down in the post. Getting points in the paint is going to be one of our main focuses, but it takes a lot of conditioning, especially as you get older, to get down in the post.”

Curry talked about reducing Wallace’s minutes as well as McDyess’, which opens the door for the likelihood that all three of the other big guys – Kwame Brown, Amir Johnson and Jason Maxiell – will factor into the rotation.

Curry reiterated what Dave Cowens said on Wednesday’s leg of the media tour – that Brown has had a terrific attitude over the summer, feels a sense of belonging for the first time in his career, and they expect him to be a much more significant addition than most believe.

“I think the biggest thing I’ve seen is a young player that really likes the game of basketball,” Curry said. “If Kwame was the 15th pick in the draft, everybody would be talking about how good he’s played at stretches of his career. As the No. 1 pick, that’s the thing everyone has held over his head, which was very tough as an 18-year-old. But now, at 25, I saw a who had been beat down a lot and sometimes didn’t handle it the best but probably handled it the best way a young person knows how to handle it. Now I see him overcoming it. At his size, he’s a presence inside. It’s tough to get a young big that size. We’re lucky to have him. He’s excited. Our goal is to get him as healthy as possible, define a role for him and continue to support him and coach him. He’s had enough beat-down in his career. We don’t want to do that with any of our guys. We want to coach and teach rather than beat guys down for what they’re not good at.”

Those were the highlights from Flint. We’ll have more over the next week or so as the days until training camp continue to fly off the calendar. Cheers.

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Cowens toots Kwame Brown's horn

Dave Cowens raised my eyebrows a little on the Grand Rapids leg of our statewide media tour when he spoke to a group of Pistons corporate partners and fans after a luncheon at DeVos Place.

Cowens got up and told listeners that there was one guy who was going to make the most difference between this year’s team and last year’s. Give up?

Kwame Brown. Cowens said he’s been around the NBA since 1970 and he has seen very few guys as big as Brown who move as fast and under as much control. He said Brown, at roughly 275 and with very little body fat, moves his feet extremely well and will be a major factor defensively and as a rebounder.

Brown came into the league as the No. 1 pick in the 2001 draft and, Cowens said, he’s been set up for failure ever since. He clearly wasn’t ready to meet the expectations of the No. 1 pick right out of high school, he didn’t have much of a support system in place and his confidence got battered early and often.

I know Brown’s history and I know his signing with the Pistons was met with a lot of skepticism. But I also know the people tooting Brown’s horn now. Cowens isn’t given to hyperbole. He’s been very guarded in his comments about the futures of players like Amir Johnson and Cheikh Samb. Michael Curry has been nothing but positive in his early assessments of Brown, too. Joe Dumars, likewise.

After Cowens spoke, I asked Scott Perry about his comments regarding Brown. Perry knows Cowens wouldn’t say what he said unless he believed it.

Brown has struck everyone around the Pistons as being truly grateful for the opportunity presented him here. As Brown said after signing in July, this is the first time in his career where he’s controlled the process and gotten to choose his own situation. He feels not just wanted here, but like he’s in a place where everyone is rooting for him to succeed and – more critically – surrounding him with an environment that will give him every chance to succeed.

Brown, by the way, will be taking a trip Friday on Roundball Two, the Pistons’ team plane. He’ll be chaperoning to Disney World the families of five Make-a-Wish kids as the Pistons continue granting wishes from the Pistons Cares Telethon held last March that raised about $500,000 for the Make-a-Wish Foundation of Michigan, enough to grant 60 wishes.

Two of the families are from the Grand Rapids area and joined the Pistons’ traveling caravan for lunch at DeVos Place.

I’ll check in again tonight after our rally in Traverse City.

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A Lake Michigan reverie - and more on Kwame

Just got to our overnight resting spot in Traverse City after wrapping up a long day with a rally downtown overlooking Lake Michigan. While Rodney Stuckey and Arron Afflalo addressed the crowd, and George Blaha emceed the show with help from Greg Kelser, and the two fans who won our Pistons.com contest to tag along on our two-day trek through the Lower Peninsula and into Toledo were introduced to the crowd, I stood behind it all and looked out over Grand Traverse Bay and was reminded of the reason I’ve always believed Michigan’s economy will bounce back and be better positioned than most states for the long haul. To paraphrase James Carville, it’s the environment, stupid.

At the end of the day – at the end of a day where the orange fireball sun sinks typically into the Lake Michigan horizon – Michigan is still blessed with incredible natural resources. Once momentum starts to turn, the vacuum that’s been created by the drag on the economy and the loss of jobs related to manufacturing and the auto industry is going to filled by business and people who realize the opportunity here and the chance to live in a place with endless amounts of fresh water, beautiful vistas, deep woods and four seasons that present themselves largely without the threat of devastation from hurricanes, mudslides, raging fires and earthquakes.

But enough of that. Amid my reverie, I caught up with Dave Cowens and asked him about what he’d said regarding Kwame Brown on our Grand Rapids stop, which I referenced in my blog update on the Grand Rapids-to-Traverse City leg.

“He’s really fleet of foot,” said Cowens, who in Grand Rapids had said that in his time in the NBA dating back to 1970, Brown moved as well and with the body control he’s rarely seen in a man that size. “He can run like a deer. He’s quick. I was surprised, a guy that size. I think he’s going to do some nice things for us.”

Cowens said he got the same sense from Brown that I did when he spoke to reporters shortly after signing with the Pistons in late July – that he feels at ease for perhaps the first time in his career after bearing the weight of expectation that comes with being the No. 1 overall pick, as Brown was in 2001.

“I get the sense he’s happy to be here and just wants to help and doesn’t feel like he’s got a lot of pressure on him. He shouldn’t feel that way, anyway. We play a game. He’s got certain skills and you go out there and do what you do and have fun with it. He’s been around long enough now that I think he understands that.”

Joe Dumars and Michael Curry will be happy to get solid post defense and stout rebounding from Brown, but Cowens sees some offensive potential, too.

“Get him around the basket and put him in the post and he’s got some pretty good moves,” he said. “He makes quick decisions. His thing in the past has been as a finisher. He’d get to the right spot and miss a little one and get frustrated. It’s really keeping that focus all the way through the shot and not getting frustrated.”

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Goodbye Lansing, hello Grand Rapids

The first leg of the Pistons media tour is in the books. Our happy traveling band just left Lewton Elementary School in Lansing and we’re headed for Grand Rapids now, then it’ll be on to Traverse City for a downtown rally late this afternoon.

The Lewton gym was packed with schoolkids as George Blaha and Greg Kelser hosted an assembly program. The Pistons left a few nice presents, too - $2,500 for Lewton and a $2,500 scholarship for the essay contest winner, Alejandro Sanchez. Lewton was the first stop because the Pistons were revisiting one of the 19 Learning Center projects they’ve undertaken – outfitting school libraries with computers and books and splashing up the décor in a Pistons theme that’s served as a magnet for schoolkids. The Pistons will do their 20th Learning Center project next month in Pontiac and then, in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of The Palace, will stop in all 20 projects over the course of the season.

A few quick basketball-related topics:

• Joe Dumars was hit with the usual questions we’ve discussed on Pistons.com throughout the summer – the lack of a major trade, the coaching change to Michael Curry, the expectations for young players like Rodney Stuckey. On the anticipated return of Antonio McDyess to the bench, Joe D said he and Curry have talked “maybe once over the last three weeks. He’s going to look at all of those guys. He’s going to look at (Jason Maxiell), he’s going to look at Amir (Johnson), he’s going to look at Kwame (Brown). He’s going to give each one of those guys a chance to play with the starters during training camp and the preseason to see what kind of mix it is.”
  

• Rodney Stuckey’s enthusiasm for playing under Curry was evident when I talked to him in Las Vegas in July during the Summer League and, if anything, it’s even greater now. Stuckey said there’s been a different buzz around the practice facility this summer.
  
  “Having MC as our head coach, he believes in us 110 percent,” Stuckey said. “He’s going to give us an opportunity to showcase our talent. When the young guys go out there, we’re going to do what we do, go hard, play good defense. The attitude’s been good. I was just saying that things are different around the practice facility. Having a new coaching staff here, just spending more time around Michael Curry – things are going to be a lot different. We’re really ready to get started and get back in the grind.”
  
  I’ll have more after the Grand Rapids appearance on the road to Traverse City – assuming I can find a place to recharge my laptop battery in Grand Rapids. No AC outlets on the bus.

Read the essays from the Tipoff Tour's scholarship winners: Jerry A. Hendrix, II | Alejandro Sanchez

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LeBron prevents a clean sweep for Pistons

We’re going to begin running a six-part series Monday on Pistons.com that looks at the team position by position, wrapping up with an overview of the bench, and just for fun I looked at the other four teams in the Central Division and stacked them up against the Pistons.

Viewed in that light, it’s pretty difficult to pick anyone but the Pistons as the division’s best team. I’ve got the Pistons better at four positions than anyone else in the division and better off the bench.

The Pistons are decisively better at point guard. In fact, you could make the case that with Rodney Stuckey’s playoff performance, the Pistons have the two best point guards in the division. I’d group Chicago’s point guards, Derrick Rose and Kirk Hinrich, second, followed by Indiana’s new combo of T.J. Ford and Jarrett Jack narrowly over Cleveland’s Mo Williams and Daniel Gibson or Delonte West and Milwaukee’s Luke Ridnour, Tyronn Lue and Ramon Sessions.

Interestingly enough, every team in the division but the Pistons radically overhauled their point guard position over the summer, perhaps a reaction to try to keep up with the Billups-Stuckey duo. By and large, it’s a very strong group.

Chicago spent the No. 1 pick on Rose, perhaps with an eye on moving Hinrich either in trade or to shooting guard if the Bulls can strike a deal with someone for restricted free agent Ben Gordon. Cleveland engineered the three-way trade with Milwaukee that netted them Williams, the Bucks taking on Ridnour from Oklahoma City in the deal. Indiana traded for both Ford and Jack in separate deals, dramatically upgrading over the inconsistent and oft-injured Jamaal Tinsley.

At shooting guard, Rip Hamilton and Arron Afflalo get the edge over Milwaukee’s Michael Redd and Charlie Bell. Redd is a superior shooter, but Hamilton is clearly a better all-around player. One of the most overlooked Pistons stories continues to be Hamilton’s growth as a defensive player over the past few seasons. Go back and look at the Pistons’ two wins over New Orleans last year, when Hamilton checked Chris Paul, and then check out their March win over Cleveland when Hamilton, not Tayshaun Prince, guarded LeBron James and limited him to 13 points.

James gives Cleveland the indisputable edge at small forward and presents a clean Pistons sweep. Small forward, by the way, is the deepest position in the division. For consistency and versatility, I go with Prince and a collection of Pistons – Hamilton, Afflalo and Walter Herrmann, who could be a surprise this season – No. 2 in the division, but you could make a strong case for Chicago’s Luol Deng and Andres Nocioni or Milwaukee’s Richard Jefferson. Even Indiana’s Danny Granger belongs in the discussion.

The line has blurred between power forwards and centers. When I talked to Pistons vice president Scott Perry for the purposes of this series, he said he’s always considered Rasheed Wallace a power forward. But if Wallace starts alongside Jason Maxiell or Amir Johnson, it’s pretty certain Wallace will be guarding the opposition’s top post player more often than not.

At any rate, if you consider Antonio McDyess, Johnson and Maxiell the three Pistons’ power forwards, I’ll take that group ahead of Chicago’s Drew Gooden, Tyrus Thomas and Cedric Simmons. Cleveland’s Ben Wallace, Lorenzen Wright and rookie J.J. Hickson come next; followed by Milwaukee’s Charlie Villanueva and rookie Joe Alexander; and Indiana’s Troy Murphy and Maceo Baston.

That would leave Wallace, Kwame Brown and Cheikh Samb to consider at center, and I’ll take them narrowly over Cleveland’s Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Anderson Varejao. Then would come Milwaukee’s Andrew Bogut, Francisco Elson and Dan Gadzuric; Chicago’s Joakim Noah and Aaron Gray; and Indiana’s Jeff Foster, Rasho Nesterovic and Roy Hibbert.

The Pistons’ bench looks to be clearly the division’s best. Stuckey, Afflalo, quite possibly McDyess and two from among the following three – Brown, Johnson and Maxiell – plus Herrmann give Michael Curry tremendous depth. Assuming Cleveland gets Delonte West back, I’d go with the Cavs – West, Gibson, Varejao and Wally Szczerbiak – next. Then Chicago, with the likes of Larry Hughes (assuming he doesn’t start), Nocioni, Thomas and Thabo Sefalosha. Milwaukee and Indiana look thin in spots on their benches, particularly in the frontcourt.

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10 NBA stories that bear watching

How big a leap does Rodney Stuckey take in his second season? If Antonio McDyess returns to his super sub role, who takes his spot next to Rasheed Wallace in the starting lineup? How significant of a role will Kwame Brown command? Does Michael Curry handle the weight of being a head coach as unflappably as he’s handled everything to this point?

All of those start getting answered in less than three weeks now. If Tuesday night’s chill didn’t fully reinforce the notion that summer’s just about fully surrendered, then the fact that Pistons training camp is on the horizon ought to do it.

But let’s put the Pistons aside for a moment and look around the league. Here are the 10 storylines that should generate the most buzz:

1. How does Ron Artest’s addition affect Houston? When you sign on to Artest, you get the whole package – the good, the bad and the gruesome. On paper, Artest’s addition is brilliant. It gives an offense that often goes stagnant a third major threat, it lends an element of toughness to a team badly in need and it makes one of the league’s top defensive teams that much stronger. But Artest is the most volatile star in the league, more unpredictable in his unpredictability than Dennis Rodman in his heyday. It was an eminently worthwhile gamble for an organization treading water, but make no mistake – it’s a gamble that could leave them all traumatized.

2. How will the parts mesh in Philadelphia? The decision to sign Elton Brand in free agency appears a no-brainer, but it’s never that easy when you toss around the kind of money it required for the 76ers to lure Brand away from the West Coast. I’d also be a little leery about investing $80 million in a guy about to turn 30 with that body type coming off a torn Achilles tendon. Call me crazy. It sets Philly up to put a dynamic lineup on the floor, though. Brand makes Samuel Dalembert a better center because they no longer need him to be a scoring threat. He allows Thaddeus Young to bump over to small forward, where he’ll eventually overwhelm many opponents once his skills catch up to his athleticism. He moves Andre Igoudala to shooting guard – Igoudala has his own huge new contract to live up to – and Willie Green to the bench. The Sixers have the pieces in place to make the biggest one-season gain in the league.

3. How does Boston withstand the rigors of a title defense? Central to that question is this one: How can Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen muster the same intensity – the same “let’s pull together and sacrifice everything to prove all the critics wrong saying we’re not winners and we can’t sublimate our egos to a common goal” collective will – after playing with such unrelenting focus over nine months last season?

4. How does Jermaine O’Neal change Toronto? Again, on paper, this was an easy call for Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo. He had two quality point guards and needed to create a bigger role for one of them, so he swapped T.J. Ford and spare parts to land a guy who two years ago was recognized among the top handful of big men in the game and still is only 29. And even though O’Neal makes huge money – an average of $22 million left on his deal – it’s only for two more seasons. But nagging injuries have prevented O’Neal from being an impact player for long stretches of the last four seasons. Reports over the summer were glowing – then again, they were last season, too. If he’s hale, O’Neal and Chris Bosh could be the NBA’s top interior 1-2 punch.

5. How quickly can Portland come together? The Blazers went .500 in the rugged West last season and now bring on two players who could have enormous instant impact, Greg Oden and Rudy Fernandez. But Oden hasn’t been fully healthy since high school – he played half a season at Ohio State with a wrist so badly damaged he had to shoot free throws with his left hand, then missed all of last season rehabbing a knee – and there are questions about his long-term durability, as well. Fernandez has generated major buzz since the Olympics, but the transition to the NBA is usually more challenging for Europeans. There are other questions, too, including Brandon Roy’s health; the unsettled small forward position, where Martell Webster and Travis Outlaw job share; and the viability of Steve Blake as starting point guard for a contender.

6. How does Carmelo Anthony respond if it goes south in Denver? And it has an excellent chance of going south in Denver this year. Allen Iverson is in the last year of his contract. George Karl is a wild card. J.R. Smith leads the league in immaturity. And there are credible rumblings that Anthony was livid when he learned the Nuggets gave away Marcus Camby to lessen their luxury-tax burden. With the notion already out there that the Nuggets were quietly shopping Anthony this summer, a rocky start could lead Anthony to force management’s hand – as Iverson did in Philadelphia just two seasons ago.

7. How much help can Mo Williams provide LeBron James? Of all the moves GM Danny Ferry has made in his time in Cleveland, this is the one that has the most potential to fundamentally change the Cavs for the better. Williams will have to learn to pick his spots, but his scoring ability gives Cleveland its most reliable No. 2 option of the James era. It also eases some of the constant burden to both initiate the offense and finish it that falls to James.

8. How many grains of sand are left in the Phoenix hour glass? With Shaquille O’Neal and Grant Hill both 36 and Steve Nash 34, Muggsy Bogues might have trouble squeezing through what remains of the Suns’ window of opportunity. But put them together with Amare Stoudemire, Leandro Barbosa, Boris Diaw and low-risk free agent Matt Barnes and that’s a lot of firepower. Ex-Pistons assistant Terry Porter faces maybe the toughest job in the NBA this year. He’s going to emphasize defense to a team that’s been immersed in Mike D’Antoni’s high-octane offensive system the last few years and he has a delicate balancing act in managing the minutes of an aging team that doesn’t go particularly deep.

9. How much time does Jason Kidd have left to give Dallas? The Mavs paid a heavy price to acquire Kidd last February and didn’t get anywhere near the bounce they had hoped. Now they’ve brought in a new coach, ex-Pistons and Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, and cross their fingers that Kidd, 35, has enough left in his tank and, with familiarity, will click and make magic with Dirk Nowitzki and Josh Howard.

10. How close to the pre-injury Andrew Bynum will he be? And, deserving co-billing, how will Bynum and Pau Gasol finally mesh up front? Before he went down last season, Bynum – who is all of 3 months older than Greg Oden – was emerging as one of the top big men in the league, looking every bit the part of a future franchise cornerstone and perennial All-Star. He says he’s 100 percent. If that’s so, then Bynum and Gasol will be a devastating force, especially flying under Kobe Bryant’s radar.

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Pistons likely to open with 14 players

It’s appearing more and more likely that the Pistons will open training camp with 14 players under contract, one under the league maximum. That’s Joe Dumars’ preferred mode, giving him roster flexibility as the season unfolds in the event of injury or opportunity to add a veteran free agent – maybe one who gets bought out, a la Chris Webber two seasons ago, or someone who comes out of retirement late in the season for a playoff run – to fill a niche role.

Dumars said in late August during the Q&A I conducted with him on Pistons.com that if Lindsey Hunter didn’t decide to come back for one more season, he would likely leave the 15th spot open. That was before the confusing story about Hunter’s involvement in a mortgage deal gone bad leaked. One enforcement agency considered Hunter the dupe, while another was reportedly investigating him as the perpetrator. It’s apparent Hunter will have his hands full for the immediate future untangling the facts of that case. If he’s exonerated and expresses an interest in coming back at some point during the season, it’s possible he’ll ultimately be the one to fill that 15th role.

One player who used the summer to enhance his prospects of occupying a roster spot with the Pistons someday – not this season – was Deron Washington. The third of the three second-round picks the Pistons exercised last June, Washington impressed Dumars and Michael Curry in Las Vegas with his athleticism and tenacity, then opened more eyes in August when he was working out with the other young Pistons at the practice facility.

Washington recently signed a contract to play with Hapoel Holon of the Israeli Premier League. Pistons VP Scott Perry told me that Washington will be playing at small forward and developing his perimeter offensive skills. The Pistons think he’s already an NBA-quality defender who showed them a little more offense than they thought he had over the summer. Two of Washington’s teammates might be familiar to fans of American college basketball – 6-foot-8 Curtis Withers from Charlotte and guard Luis Flores of Manhattan.

Trent Plaisted, the second of Detroit’s second-rounders, had signed in July with Angelico Biella of the Italian league.

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Mr D goes to Springfield? Well, of course

Maybe they ought to change the name. Oh, sure, Hall of Fame has a nice ring to it, but take a look at the names of the enshrinees in basketball’s mecca in Springfield, Mass. For every Dr. J, there’s a Dr. Luther Gulick. For every Twin Tower – one spire, Hakeem Olajuwon, goes into the Hall tonight – there’s an Oswald Tower. For every Red Auerbach, there’s a Red Mihalik.

There’s also an Alfred Cervi, an Alva Duer, a Frank Morganweck and an Ernest Quigley. And on it goes. Those people, and dozens more Springfield denizens like them, are barely famous in their own households.

Yet all of them, in their own way, helped shape basketball as we know it. So it’s really more the Hall of Fame & Influence.

And when it comes to influencing the game, then Pistons owner William Davidson is a no-brainer, unanimous first ballot choice.

It’s like Joe Dumars, who’ll present Davidson for induction, told me last spring when Mr. D was announced as one of the seven inductees in the Hall’s 2008 class. “Well, of course,” he said. “Of course he should be in the Hall of Fame.”

Davidson is about as anonymous at the stratospheric pop-culture level as it gets for a man who’s owned a professional sports franchise for three-plus decades, won championships at the highest levels of basketball and hockey and shows up No. 1 on the list of Michigan’s wealthiest people. But he’s not Mark Cuban or Daniel Snyder or George Steinbrenner, owners who not only inject themselves into the daily operations of their franchises but shamelessly court media attention to boot.

So it’s probably not widely understood exactly what Davidson did to merit Hall of Fame enshrinement.

Let’s start with the only resume item Davidson is willing to consider as a defining achievement – his forceful support of David Stern in the early days, when hidebound traditionalists among NBA owners looked askance at a guy who they knew as a sharp legal mind but not as the dynamic personality required to raise the profile of their game.

It’s easy to look at Stern today – the guy who’s been the driving force in not only growing NBA revenues to unforeseeable heights but also in fostering a worldwide spike in the sport’s popularity – and see a visionary. But Davidson was pretty much the lone wolf on Stern back when owners were looking for a successor to Larry O’Brien, who always drove 55 and kept it between the lines.

The Hall’s selection process is a great mystery – voters are not made public, and even the grapevine doesn’t produce much in the way of fruitful rumors – but Stern did his part behind the scenes to advance Davidson’s candidacy, so deeply does he appreciate the support and respect the advice the Pistons’ owner has provided him during the length of his tenure.

Stern told me a year ago that Davidson has influenced every aspect of NBA business. He was a vital voice among the NBA’s board of governors. His international business expertise helped Stern navigate waters on the other side of the world as he sowed NBA seeds in foreign soils. When they were vetting future owners, or debating franchise relocations or expansion, or negotiating TV contracts or corporate partnerships, Davidson was a rock for Stern all these years.

How different today’s NBA might be if not for Davidson’s bold decision to privately fund The Palace of Auburn Hills, the building that did nothing less than revolutionize arena architecture and forever change the way NBA teams do business. Nobody had ever located suites – now the lifeblood of the NBA revenue stream – at the most advantageous viewing levels until The Palace. Nobody had ever dared to build that many of them – a preposterous 180. Nobody had charged the prices The Palace commanded.

Chuck Daly will tell you that another Davidson innovation – providing his team its own customized jet to spare them the inconvenience and physical toll of ceaseless commercial travel – was a critical factor in the back-to-back titles his Bad Boys won in 1989 and ’90. In short order, everyone had their own plane. Who benefits? Players, sure, but the game wins, too. Road teams playing their fourth game in five nights have a fighting chance when they haven’t spent three hours on a tarmac the night before because the flight crew was over its limit and United or Northwest had to call in a standby crew from Topeka.

The three championships are nice, too. The Pistons have done it without benefit of playing in a glamour center that draws superstars for the climate and marketing bonanza awaiting them. They’ve done it without ever having much in the way of lottery luck – mostly because they’ve done a terrific job of avoiding the lottery.

They’ve done it because Davidson has stuck by the mantra that allowed him to take a family-run business teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and transform it into the global glass-manufacturing giant Guardian Industries has become – by finding good people and giving them the resources and the latitude to do the jobs assigned them. It sounds simple, but it’s amazing how complicated it gets when the voice at the top of the pyramid doesn’t deliver a consistent and focused message, creating an environment where competing agendas and petty jealousies and toxic politicking take root.

In NBA circles, the Pistons are viewed as a model franchise – from the way they do business to the way they play the game to the manner in which they treat fans and employees alike. Ask anybody why that is and the answers trace right back to the owner’s suite. Ask anybody with a working knowledge of his life if Bill Davidson belongs in the Hall of Fame and the answer, as Joe Dumars put it, is, “Well, of course.”

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Newsflash: It's tough to make it to the NBA

I don’t want to stomp on anyone’s American dream, but it’s really tough to make it to the NBA. Really tough. Look at the Pistons’ roster. Five players were top-10 draft picks and four of them were top-four picks: Kwame Brown went No. 1 in 2001, Antonio McDyess went No. 2 in 1995, Rasheed Wallace went No. 4 in 2005 and Chauncey Billups went No. 3 in 1997. Rip Hamilton was the No. 7 pick in 1999.

Tayshaun Prince was the No. 23 pick in 2002. Of the four other players in line for serious roles this season, only Amir Johnson wasn’t a first-round pick. Johnson was something of an unknown quantity when he came to the NBA straight out of high school – the last high school player to be selected before the collective-bargaining agreement was changed that summer – as the No. 56 pick of the 2005 draft.

Rodney Stuckey, who’ll play starter’s minutes, was the No. 15 pick in 2007, 12 spots higher than Arron Afflalo went that year. Jason Maxiell was the No. 26 pick in 2005.

The NBA talent pool now spans the globe. So think about that. Ninety percent of the players expected to comprise Detroit’s rotation this season were deemed among the 27 best draft-eligible players in the world in the years they were selected.

You think it’s tough getting into Harvard, run the odds on that against making it to the NBA.

Colleges get excited if they’re lucky enough to sign a top-100 player from a given high school class. If you’re at the bottom third of that list, that would make you either a third- or fourth-round pick in the NBA draft – which stops after two rounds and isn’t historically kind to those selected in round two. From a typical high school class, maybe 40 players will have anything more than a cup of coffee in the NBA and at least half of them won’t approach the level of impact player.

A rich NBA draft is one that can produce 20 players who develop into solid rotation players. The 2007 draft is on its way to being remembered that way with players like Greg Oden, Kevin Durant, Al Horford, Mike Conley, Jeff Green, Brandan Wright, Joakim Noah, Thaddeus Young, Julian Wright, Al Thornton and Stuckey showing enough as rookies to project as impact players at some point.

But even at that, there were at least four players taken in the 2007 lottery – Yi Jianlian, Corey Brewer, Spencer Hawes and Acie Law – on whom the jury remains out. Another group of players – Afflalo, Marco Belinelli, Javarris Crittenton, Rudy Fernandez, Daequan Cook, Wilson Chandler and Jason Smith among them – could emerge as significant pieces.

The 2006 draft, though, is already looking spotty, to be kind. Four of the first five players taken – Andrea Bargnani, Adam Morrison, Tyrus Thomas and Shelden Williams – have contributed little or nothing so far. Only LaMarcus Aldridge among the top five has made an impact to date. The next three taken – Brandon Roy, Randy Foye and Rudy Gay – have star potential, Roy and Gay especially. But then comes Patrick O’Bryant, Mouhamed Sene, J.J. Redick and Hilton Armstrong. Perhaps one-third of the 2006 draft’s first round could be out of the NBA within a season or two.

The Beijing Olympics underscored the growing reality that quality basketball is being played in Europe, South America, Australia and parts of Asia and Africa. It was tough enough to make it to the NBA when it was almost exclusively an American game, but the odds grow longer every year – and figure to ratchet up exponentially as the game’s popularity explodes in population centers like China, India and Brazil and the NBA’s outreach takes hold in Africa and elsewhere.

As that process evolves, there will still be opportunities for the most forward-thinking organizations to find undiscovered or undeveloped talents at spots outside the lottery. But making it to the NBA is going to become increasingly difficult as basketball grows while the world shrinks.

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