Maxiell: 'I'm a Bad Boy and I fit here'

It made perfect sense, the Pistons and Jason Maxiell agreeing to prolong their relationship, but a lot of things make perfect sense and unravel over any number of trivialities.

Maxiell and the Pistons agreed to what is being widely reported as a four-year contract extension on Thursday, beating by one day the deadline for the draft class of 2005 still playing under their original contracts - some didn't have their fourth-year option picked up - to have their fifth year picked up, work out a contract extension or face the prospect of becoming a restricted free agent next July.

And, if you've been following the recent history of the NBA, nothing is quite so restrictive as being a restricted free agent these days. Of the couple of handfuls of players who hit restricted free agency last July, only two - Ronny Turiaf and Josh Smith - so much as solicited a contract offer from another team.

Turiaf got four years and $17 million from Golden State, a contract the Lakers swallowed hard and chose not to match, their penance for having signed off on ill-advised contracts to players like Vladmir Radmanovic, Luke Walton and Chris Mihm. And Smith got a contract offer from Memphis that helped two embattled front offices - Memphis and Atlanta's - save face. In light of the extension Philadelphia gave Andre Igoudala - six years, $80 million - the contract Smith grudgingly signed with Memphis to provoke Atlanta to action (five years, $58 million) was a bargain.

The bottom line: For a player like Maxiell - good enough to be in a title contender's rotation without having proven he can shoulder the greater minutes and responsibility of starting for a team on that plane - $5 million a year seems fair all around.

Over the last two years, the only restricted free agent to switch teams and draw an annual average salary above the mid-level exception, which this year is set at $5.585 million, was Darko Milicic, who got three years and $21 million out of Memphis in July 2007. But Darko didn't get the full five years.

It would have represented a risk for Maxiell to expect a mid-level exception contract next summer in the best of circumstances. But with the American economy flirting with historic lows, risking free agency would have seemed reckless.

Especially when, in his heart, Maxiell loathed the thought of playing anywhere else.

"I feel that, deep inside, I'm a Bad Boy and I fit here," he said after Friday's practice. "I love playing under Joe D and Mike Curry and feel this is going to be home for a while."

Maxiell took his share of abuse as practice ended and he stood in front of the locker room doors, waiting to talk to the media about his newly signed deal.

"Rich man!" Kwame Brown shouted to him. "You takin' us out to eat?" Tayshaun Prince teased. "Max is buying dinner for us all!" Antonio McDyess yelled as the locker room doors swung shut behind him.

Somebody asked Maxiell how long that ribbing would last.

"Until I do that them out," he said, shrugging his thick shoulders.

There's a comfort level for Maxiell in Detroit that he's felt from the start. When Scott Perry and George David did the heavy lifting on the scouting of Maxiell during his four-year career at Cincinnati, they kept coming back to Maxiell's toughness. No matter what, Maxiell was always the toughest guy on the court. Yeah, he gave up inches in the post, even in college, but his unusually long winspan and that toughness - especially that toughness - was a fit for the type of player Joe Dumars sought.

And it makes Maxiell an ideal fit for Michael Curry's hard-nosed approach, too. After four years in Cincinnati and three-plus NBA seasons, Maxiell is still finding ways to improve, Curry said.

"I think Jason is still evolving as a player. He continues to make better decisions offensively. He's done a great job defensively at protecting the paint. As he's gotten in better shape over time and gotten used to playing, he's become a better rebounder. We still want him to get even better rebounding the basketball, but sometimes as an undersized guy, it's difficult to rebound, especially outside of your area. But we've asked that of him and he's giving his best every day to do that. I think he'll get better offensively and he has gotten better shooting the ball out to 15 feet."

Go back and look at that 2005 draft. Maxiell went 26th. If you do that draft over, Maxiell's a lottery pick. There are probably only six players who would be more or less unanimous picks to go ahead of him - Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Andrew Bynum, Danny Granger, Andrew Bogut and Marvin Williams. Another six would draw some sentiment - Charlie Villanueva, Martell Webster, Raymond Felton, Jarrett Jack, Francisco Garcia and Rashad McCants.

More than half of that group will head into next summer as a restricted free agent. Maxiell doesn't have to worry about it.

"It's good to get off my shoulders going into the season," he said. "It's off my shoulders. I can play."

Curry, like Flip Saunders before him, is cautious to not overextend Maxiell. It's wondrous that he manages to produce at the level he does while ceding size every night, but it doesn't come without cost.

"I think the way his body is built and the way he plays ... he's undersized and he's playing in the post and he's battling," Curry said. "He's trying to hit on every possession. He's going to get worn down in games. I think the reality is if he plays like he plays, as hard as he plays, 20 to 25 minutes a night will be a great number for him - and he can have a great career doing that."

That, almost surely, is how the Pistons came to offer what they offered. Five million a year for 20 to 25 minutes a night is fair - at least on a good team, with plenty of depth, if those 20 to 25 minutes are quality minutes.

Jason Maxiell could have rolled the dice and hoped there was one team out there next summer with the financial flexibility and the ownership commitment to offer more. And he could have hoped that combination would also have included an environment conducive to winning and a locker room filled with as many teammates offering the same type of good-natured ribbing he gladly absorbed Friday.

That's a whole lot of hoping, though. Common sense won the day.

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Herrmann works his way into a role

It would understate things by tenfold to say Walter Herrmann flew under the radar in his only stint as an NBA starter. It came over the final weeks of the 2006-07 season, his first in the NBA after a distinguished four-year stint in Europe and golden moments with the Argentinian national team, when Bernie Bickerstaff started giving extended minutes to his earnest rookie with the flowing blond hair.

Impressed, Bickerstaff gave Herrmann the starting small forward job over the season's last dozen games. The numbers were eye-popping - not that anyone besides NBA personnel hounds and stat geeks noticed. The Bobcats were going nowhere and never got any attention outside North Carolina. In the final 18 games of the season, when Bickerstaff began to make Herrmann a regular part of Charlotte's rotation, he averaged 17.9 points and shot an incredible 58 percent.

It seemed Charlotte, which had just spent a high lottery pick on Gonzaga's Adam Morrison the previous spring, had found a solution at small forward. And that notion was reinforced when Morrison went down for the 2007-08 season before it began.

But things had changed in Charlotte. Bickerstaff was out and Michael Jordan had installed an old teammate, Sam Vincent, as head coach despite a dangerously thin resume. The new season began and Walter Herrmann rarely played.

"Last year was like crazy for me," Herrmann said after Pistons practice Thursday, the day after he opened the 2008-09 season with a tidy 10-point performance in a little less than 16 minutes in relief of Tayshaun Prince. "I didn't play in Charlotte, I didn't play here.

"My first season with Bernie Bickerstaff was great. In my first four months, I didn't play - nothing. But Bernie Bickerstaff, he was confident with me. 'Walter, take your time, be patient, your moment is here.' The second season, Sam Vincent, he never talked to me. Never."

Charlotte had, curiously enough, invested another No. 1 pick in another small forward, Boston College's Jared Dudley. So when Vincent made a public plea for Jordan to go get him another big man, the Pistons were happy to oblige for the salary-cap relief represented by giving the Bobcats Nazr Mohammed and the 3-plus seasons remaining on his contract in exchange for two expiring deals, Herrmann's and Primoz Brezec's.

Except Joe Dumars saw more than an expiring contract in Herrmann. Even though he had plugged a hole at backup small forward behind Tayshaun Prince over the summer by signing Jarvis Hayes, Dumars saw in Herrmann another opportunity to improve the roster with a unique talent.

And Herrmann is nothing if not unique. His running style is a little manic and his movements are herky-jerky, but his shooting stroke is pure and his hands ... well, it's a pity Chris Webber isn't around any longer. It would be fascinating to compare them, mitt to mitt. I always thought Webber had the most incredible set of hands I'd ever seen on a basketball player, but Herrmann gets the chance to show off his hands more dramatically. His swoops to the basket, in which he holds the ball like a grapefruit in one hand and suspends himself while air traffic clears, are eye-catching moments.

He got off to a strong start in training camp, then missed about two weeks while nursing a painful rib injury that limited his movement. But Michael Curry kept insisting Herrmann was a part of the playing group, and he made good on it in the opener by bringing him off the bench to start the second and fourth quarters.

Herrmann has more than just one supporter in the organization, too. Curry worked with Herrmann every day last season after he arrived in December, as Curry did with all the young players and those unlikely to see playing time, running drills for them on game days a few hours before tipoff.

"My relationship with him the last season was just great," Herrmann said. "He's an incredible person, so funny. I feel so comfortable with him."

After Herrmann's 4 for 6 performance against Indiana, in which he knocked down a pair of 3-pointers shortly after entering the game in the second quarter, Curry said Herrmann "might not shoot it that way every night" but would continue to be part of his rotation. On the only 3-point shot he missed, Herrmann darted in to grab the offensive rebound and then made one of his trademark one-handed layups. Later, he got another layup by beating Indiana back in transition.

After Thursday's practice, I asked Curry what Herrmann brought to the party on nights he wasn't shooting it quite so effectively.

"He plays with great intensity," he said. "Some guys, when they catch the basketball, the ball stops in their hands. We call them ball stoppers. He's a guy that helps your offensive flow because he catches it and makes quick decisions with the basketball, so he's either open and he shoots the ball or he catches it and passes it. Defensively, he's going to go out and compete and follow whatever defensive scheme we have put in place that night. You welcome that from him. He's not going to go 5 for 6 or 4 for 6 every night, but he's going to be a contributor whether it shows up in points or not."

Had Herrmann been able to compete on equal footing with Hayes last season, who knows how it would have played out? Hayes would go into dreadful shooting slumps, then break out spectacularly for a game or two every time you wondered whether Flip Saunders was about to give Herrmann a shot to win the backup minutes available behind Prince.

"Last season I came in the middle of the season, so everybody knows his role," Herrmann said. "The rotation is closed. With Jarvis leaving, I know I have an opportunity because there's TP and right now Walter Sharpe. Joe Dumars told me last season, 'Hey, Walter, be patient. Maybe next season you'll have more minutes.' I have confidence in Joe"

He must have, because over in Europe they were singing a different song. Many NBA players - especially those not native to the United States - left roster spots here for more playing time and, often, better money in Europe. And Herrmann, with his name recognition, international resume and scoring ability, drew heavy interest from teams in Spain, Greece and Russia.

"Everybody knows when you didn't play in the NBA, so everybody say, 'Walter, come back. In Europe, it's different. More minutes.' But in my case, I prefer to play in NBA. The money is the big difference. The euro is going up every single day and the American dollar is maybe going down, but in my case I just think basketball. I was playing four years in Europe, so my dream was all my life to play in the NBA. So if I have the opportunity to play here, I wanted to be here."

His teammates genuinely like Herrmann for his easygoing nature but also because they see the effort and toughness he brings. Herrmann proved himself to NBA players long ago with the mettle he displayed in helping Argentina to the 2004 Olympic title. He's thrilled Curry has seen fit to find a place for him, but isn't counting on anything going forward.

"I really don't know," he said. "I'll be ready to play hard every single night. It doesn't matter what happens. If I have to play the three, the four, you never know, but the key is to play hard every single game. When I'm on the court, I need to play D so hard and offense so hard."

No wonder Michael Curry has found a spot for him.

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Of two Mikes and the blessings of patience

If the NFL boasted a fraternity member whose DNA was a Michael Curry clone, my bet would be on Mike Singletary. Singletary's profile as a player might have been higher than Curry's - he was, after all, the veritable face of Buddy Ryan's 46 defense during the Mike Ditka Shuffling Crew Bears heyday - but they're cut from the same cloth.

Both made more of their playing careers than their physical gifts suggested. Both were identified even before their playing days ended as coaches in waiting. Both are men of unquestioned integrity about whom a negative word has never been uttered.

But overlay one atop the other and the outlines aren't a perfect match. Did you catch Singletary's debut the other day, he finally having been elevated to NFL head coach when the San Francisco 49ers fired Mike Nolan mid-season? It was hard to miss. Singletary's confrontation with 49ers tight end Vernon Davis, after Davis drew a 15-yard penalty for dismissively swiping at an opponent's facemask, resulted in a response from Davis that Singletary found objectionable - prompting Singletary to immediately send Davis to the showers.

Curry has never met Singletary. What he knows of him, he deeply respects. Prudently, he's not about to judge Singletary's actions without knowing the details that led to a response that will forever follow him, good or bad, for however long his coaching career lasts. But it's a situation Michael Curry would hope to avoid.

"From what I saw on TV with the Mike Singletary situation, to me it seems like it was more something that had been going on prior to him taking over as the head coach," Curry said when I solicited his take on it Tuesday - the eve of Curry's own debut as a head coach. "But I'm very aware that you have to have patience in this position and there are two people I've been around that I've learned a lot from about exercising patience - Joe Dumars and Stu Jackson."

Much has been made of Curry's resolve to hold players accountable for their actions since training camp began four weeks ago. Not as much has been made of Curry's evenhandedness. The accountability drum has been hammered so often, the perception of Curry runs the risk of making him look despotic, when, in fact, he's consistently praised his players for their diligence and openness to new ideas on every front, from the strategic to the way they go about preparing for jobs that many of them have held for more than a decade.

Know this about Michael Curry: He's going to address every issue that needs addressing, and that will be a daily mission, but he's not going to go off half-cocked. Every decision will be made after a thoughtful filtering of the facts - all of the facts, which includes an honest appraisal of the other side's perspective and thorough consideration for how individual issues affect the framework of the team.

"In the roles (Dumars and Jackson) have been in, they've been slow to react - take everything in and then make a really good decision," Curry said. "The position (Curry held alongside) Stu in the league office, sometimes you want to just react with your natural instincts and he's taught me you can't always do that. So I'm careful with reacting just to make sure you don't have some outburst you can't really take back."

Curry has been the picture of serenity during preseason games - yeah, I know, they're preseason games - sitting almost all of the time. He says if he spends his time standing up near half-court, he's not taking advantage of the assistant coaches at his side. He's made refraining from ref-baiting one of the 16 commandments his players have been given. He's said if he spends his time carping at officials, his players can interpret that as an excuse for their failings. When something needs to be addressed with the officials, he'll do it, but it won't be the constant barrage that many coaches direct their way.

But Curry is also an intense competitor and there are going to be times his instincts will challenge his discipline for control. Because there is no ambiguity in Curry's standards or expectations, there almost certainly will come a time when he sees fit to remove a player from a game for reasons other than fatigue or foul trouble. And that player will know it. And if he reacts, instinctively and angrily, on his way past Curry to the bench ... what then?

"Every situation poses a different problem," he says. "I'll react accordingly. But you have to understand what you're trying to get out of your reaction. If I'm reacting and saying something now that isn't going to be beneficial, then why react now if it's better to do it within the team setting?"

It takes most coaches years to learn that much, if they get the benefit of years to learn. And some never do. The proof will be in the application, of course, but Michael Curry brings to the job a wisdom beyond his resume.

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The Curry Era: The case for change

Though we'd like to believe being a Pistons fan is a daily immersion, we understand that a healthy percentage check out when the season ends and don't check back in until ... well, now. The season is barely 24 hours from tipoff and for those of you only now reacquainting yourselves with your favorite basketball team, you're probably wondering where all that change is that Joe Dumars promised.

(First of all, he didn't promise. He said it was his intent to make significant change. But he also said - in the same sound bite, if you go back and let it run - that he wasn't going to make just any deal to satisfy the second-guessers. If it was a deal that made sense, he was all for rolling the dice.)

As the summer progressed - while those for whom the Pistons are not a daily immersion were distracted by baseball or the never-ending presidential campaign or the daily drumbeat of dour economic news - Joe Dumars came to a place where he could see the possibility for significant change without significantly changing the roster.

"There's a change within," said Arron Afflalo, whose eyes never got really wide as a rookie but is that much more self-assured with a year behind him, on the eve of Wednesday's opener with Indiana at The Palace. "Not necessarily the personnel, but that hunger, that competitive spirit. If it lacked at some point during the season last year, you won't see that this year. We'll put forth effort every single night. We'll compete to win every night. And if the starting unit is not doing it, you can count on the second unit to come in there and provide that spark."

Now, a word to the wise: Don't expect the Pistons to start off 19-1. The change being implemented - defensively, offensively, strategically, tactically, attitudinally, thoroughly - logically suggests a period of adjustment. A greater reliance on more and younger players promises a long-term payoff, but not necessarily without short-term obstacles.

So if you're just plunging back into the Pistons, here's the case for change:

• Amir Johnson is starting for Antonio McDyess.

If moving McDyess to the starting lineup made sense a year ago - and it sure seemed to at the time - moving him back to the bench seems to ring truer to this year's blueprint.

The first thing to accept with the move is that starting Johnson isn't an acklowledgment that he's the better player than McDyess or that, at 34, McDyess is slipping. It's mostly about fit. McDyess and Rasheed Wallace are the two big men who can stretch defenses by stepping outside to knock down shots - Wallace to and beyond the 3-point line, McDyess to 18 feet comfortably. But when they're both on the floor, that doesn't mean there are twice as many opportunities for perimeter shots from big men.

Michael Curry assessed the situation and decided the Pistons were misusing McDyess. Enter Johnson. He might not play more than 20 minutes many nights, but they'll be hard, hard minutes. Johnson's athleticism will allow to Curry to force tempo defensively as he'd like. It will be Johnson's role to, every now and then, harass the opposing point guard after a Pistons basket to the degree that he won't get his team into its sets until the shot clock's at 12 or 13, meaning the second option is no longer a very attractive one. He'll also hustle down loose balls, extend possessions, block shots and fill a lane on the fast break - the electric plays that will energize the 30-something starters around him.

And when Johnson comes off, Jason Maxiell will pick up the baton. McDyess and Wallace, essentially, will job share the other big man spot, coming together to play critical minutes of close games, but otherwise carrying the frontcourt scoring load in shorter bursts than before while Johnson, Maxiell and Kwame Brown fit their talents to specific needs that will vary by opponent. Which brings us to ...

• Kwame Brown was added as a free agent.

Yeah, the same guy who Michael Jordan made the No. 1 pick in the high school-heavy 2001 draft, left Washington and the Lakers as a disappointment and was dumped to Memphis in the Pau Gasol deal last February.

The Pistons aren't expecting him to play like a former No. 1 overall pick - but neither are consigning him to mediocrity. At the least, they expect Brown to be the antidote whenever one from among the dwindling number of true post-up threats - think Yao Ming, Dwight Howard, Zydrunas Ilgauskas - presents problems. At the other end, the Pistons think there's a real chance that Brown, at 26, could be a long-term fix for a future that won't always include Wallace and McDyess.

"He's been really beat down, so we're trying to change that about him," Chauncey Billups said after Tuesday's practice. "I think we're boosting his morale, boosting his confidence. And that's really two of the biggest things you need in this league when you're trying to build and become a good player. You've got to have confidence and you've got to build trust in your teammates and I think he's doing a good job of that."

You know who's a big believer in Kwame Brown? Dave Cowens, one of Curry's assistant coaches. He's been a part of the NBA for almost 40 years now. Says he's rarely seen a big guy who can move as fast and fluidly as Brown. That's enough to make anyone believe there's more to him than we've seen in his pre-Pistons career.

• The bench is fully weaponized.

Curry is going to have three players off his bench before the first quarter ends. Two of them are going to be Rodney Stuckey and McDyess and their minutes, some nights, will be right there with those of Billups or Rip Hamilton or Tayshaun Prince. The third will either be Brown or Jason Maxiell - which one depends on the opposition's lineup.

Two other players, Arron Afflalo and Walter Herrmann, are going to be used to varying degrees most nights, as well. The Pistons are going to go in every game - when they go in healthy, at least - with a real possibility that 11 players will play while the outcome of the game is in doubt. That's going to make for some really long opposition scouting reports and extended morning shootarounds.

But the only reason we're talking so much about quantity with regard to the bench is because Dumars and Curry are convinced of their quality. Anybody doubt there are teams all around the league that would look at those six guys - McDyess, Maxiell, Stuckey, Afflalo, Brown and Herrmann - and not think, hmmm, they'd give our starters one heck of a game? When you're 11th man is Walter Herrmann - and when healthy in camp, he made you wonder why he didn't get a greater opportunity last season - you're in pretty good shape.

• And, finally, Michael Curry - all by himself - represents significant change.

Set aside for the moment whether you think Curry's approach will draw more out of the Pistons than the previous regime's. Know this: It is a significantly different approach. If it's change you wanted, you got it.

Curry let everyone know shortly after taking over in June that they'd do themselves a favor by reporting to October training camp in peak physical condition. Practices routinely ran three hours in camp. They'll get shorter now, but no less intense. Curry designs every drill so that there's a winner and a loser. He grades every possession for every player in every game.

The idea: To develop a sense of purpose, to play with an edge, so that every game, every practice even, becomes not just a measuring stick, but a stepping stone - to the next game, to a better grade, to a team that will hit the postseason with a hardened shell.

There is more attention paid to every detail. Slippage is addressed swiftly and forcefully. The Pistons watch tape far more than before. Curry has assembled a staff of enthusiastic teachers to assist him. Every drill is treated as a learning experience - a hands-on learning experience.

Curry's primary tenet at both ends, offense and defense, is to be the aggressor. Offensively, that means getting to the rim, winning rebound battles, forcing fouls. Defensively, it means effort and discipline, knowing the game plan and sticking to it, winning your individual battle while always being conscious of the team defensive concepts.

So what's changed? Almost everything but the names.

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Curry rips a page from Daly's book

Micheal Curry never played for Chuck Daly. But somewhere, ol' Daddy Rich is smiling.

Anybody who recalls the heyday of the Bad Boys remembers Daly staying blithely above the fray whenever the subject of playing time for one of the NBA's all-time deepest rosters would arise.

"I don't determine playing time," he would say, in perfect earnestness, "players determine playing time."

So as Curry enters his first season as an NBA head coach with a roster of similar depth, especially in the context of the 30-time NBA, he's putting it squarely back on players to fight for every available minute.

"Guys either accept their roles or they don't play," he said after Monday's practice, the clock now down to two days before the Pistons open the 2008-09 season under their first-time head coach, "and I think guys want to play. So guys accept their roles. But you've got to reward them for their role and you've got to stay true to them playing when it calls for them to play that role."

In other words, as Curry has said over the course of camp, if he's selling Arron Afflalo on being his perimeter stopper and then Michael Redd or Paul Pierce is torching the Pistons, Afflalo had better get the chance to show he can cool them down. If not ...

"That's where problems come in," Curry said. "It never comes with guys accepting a role. As a staff, and especially for me as a head coach, I have to be able to use guys with a situation calls (for) them and I have to put them in a situation to be successful. Other than that" - and here's where Daly's ears would surely perk up - "playing time ... when you compete every day in practice, guys know who should play in front of each other.

"Guys get to compete every day. We didn't have a camp in which we had our top five guys on one team and the next five on the next team. We mixed guys up. Guys got to compete, play in a whole lot of different roles. All these guys can rank the top 10 players on the team right now."

And in case there was any chance for ambiguity, Curry met individually with all 15 players on Friday to discuss everyone's roles in all of their specifics.

So everyone knows going in exactly how he fits in the grand scheme. And Curry rates each player's every possession for each game. So there shouldn't be many surprises over the course of the season if roles change, either. A player consistently grading out in the 90s isn't going to have to worry about a diminished role, but getting frequently downgraded for missed assignments or lapses in effort or judgment will show up on the grading sheet in advance of a role suddenly being diminished.

Joe Dumars said last summer that communication was the most important aspect of being a head coach in today's NBA and Curry so far is hitting it out of the park on that score. As Joe D said in the Q&A we're posting today and Tuesday on Pistons.com, while Curry isn't bashful about pointing out errors, neither is he miserly with his praise. Case in point: Even as Amir Johnson's preseason statistics didn't leap off the scoresheet, Curry was lauding the way Johnson was fulfilling the role as Curry had explained it to him since July. Then, when Johnson got sloppy in the preseason finale and fouled out in 15 minutes against Atlanta, he unequivocally said that a young player could not afford such regressions.

With the opener approaching, Curry said there's a sense of readiness about his team.

"We're ready to get into it," he said. "You kind of get tired of practicing and playing against the guys. You're ready to get into the real game situations and that's natural. But we're ready to play and we'll see on Wednesday where we're at."

There's not a hint from Curry that anything about the job has him awestruck as tipoff draws near, though he admits that he deals with anticipation a little differently as a coach than he did as a player.

"The night before games, a ton of things are going through my head as a coach and I just grab my paper and pen and start writing different things down," he said. "As a player, I was OK. All you had to do was go out there and hit somebody one play" - though this generally works better for football players - "and your butterflies go away. Now when I get anxious at night, butterflies, I just grab my pen and paper and start jotting things down."

• Kwame Brown, recovering from a right shoulder strain suffered a week ago, went through his first full practice on Monday and should be good to go on Wednesday. Indiana got bigger over the summer when it traded for Rasho Nesterovic and drafted Georgetown's Roy Hibbert, so it could be a game when Brown is the first big man off of Curry's bench instead of Jason Maxiell.
• The Pacers will be missing Mike Dunleavy, who had a breakout season for the Pacers a year ago. Dunleavy played only 12 minutes in preseason while experiencing knee tendinitis.

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Joe D: 'We're about business'

Joe Dumars has kept a low profile throughout training camp, but he's been paying attention to every practice ... no, to every detail of every practice, and to every preseason game, and to the stuff that goes on away from the court, and to the interaction he sees between veterans and young players, players and coaches, coaches and coaches.

I had the chance to sit down with him Friday afternoon and we talked at length about a variety of topics that we'll be posting on Pistons.com before Wednesday's regular-season opener against Indiana. Suffice it to say that Joe D is as satisifed as he can be that the transition to Michael Curry is everything he hoped it would be.

One of the questions I asked him was about the nature of practices during training camp, which have been rigorous and highly competitive - what he thought about that and what he expects the payoff to be.

"There was a need for us to become more intense and competitive in practice," he said. "We spent a portion of this summer speaking about complacency and when you come in and make your practices intense and competitive, that's a part of getting your team out of that. You can't just wait until games to say, OK, we're going to be intense and competitive.

"Mike and I spent the whole summer talking about this. You can't come in and have practices totally opposite of how you're going to play the game. There has to be some carryover there. So I think the first month or so here was really about re-establishing how we're going to play, what our approach is going to be, the focus and commitment that you have to make to be a Detroit Piston. That's what all of this has been about. Just to change the focus to, we're about business. So that's why I say I feel good about this first month, just getting that back, first and foremost."

We'll post the full Q&A over a few days beginning on Monday, so be sure to check out Pistons.com in the days leading up to the 2008-09 opener.

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Amir learned in one season at Big Ben's feet

It's sometimes a little tough to draw Amir Johnson out. Not as tough as it used to be, but then again, he's 21, and how many 21-year-olds are so self-assured that microphones thrust under their chin aren't a little unsettling?

But Amir cracked a wide grin after Wednesday's preseason win over Cleveland when I asked him if he would have found it intimidating three years ago - when he was a rookie, during his one season as a teammate of Ben Wallace - to go up against Big Ben as opposite starting power forwards?

"Most definitely," he nodded. "He was way bigger than me. I was about 215 and he was like 245 or 250. So I was a little intimidated by him. But now it's no problem. I just treat him like a regular guy."

The truth is, Amir got the better of Big Ben in Wednesday's preseason game, though to be fair, a 34-year-old four-time Defensive Player of the Year nursing a tender back is going to approach a preseason game with a tad less fervor than a kid trying to prove his coach was right to thrust him into a starting lineup composed of four virtual All-Stars.

Nevertheless, in virtually the same minutes (Wallace played 28 more seconds), almost all of them spent against the other, Wallace scored four points on 2 of 4 shooting, grabbed five rebounds, three of them offensive, had no steals and no blocked shots; Johnson shot 4 of 6, grabbed six rebounds and blocked four shots.

But numbers never really defined Wallace and, as Michael Curry is consistently quick to point out, they aren't how he measures Johnson, either. In Wallace's heyday, there were always a handful of plays per game, many of them not reflected by any statistical category, that jumped off the screen, momentum-changing plays to save a ball from going out of bounds, or flying across the lane to turn a layup into a meek pass back to the perimeter, or getting a hand on a loose rebound to deflect it to a teammate.

Those three years Johnson spent on the bench weren't in vain. That one year he spent as Wallace's teammate wasn't, either. He couldn't have known it at the time, but, in fact, Johnson was prepping to become, at a most basic level, to the 2008-09 Pistons what Wallace was to the Pistons when he first arrived from Orlando as a faceless free agent.

They're asking him to make every hustle play, to raise the energy level of the teammates around him, to cover their defensive lapses and to produce for them extra possessions.

"Basically, he taught me to go hard and play hard, to always beat your defender to the basket. I'm a lot quicker than Ben now that he's a little older, so I can do some of the stuff he used to do a little better (than he does now). I just look to do stuff like he did."

Without naming him, Cleveland coach Mike Brown paid Johnson a pretty nice compliment after the Wednesday game: "I think that their athleticism bothered us. There were a ton of times when we caught the ball around the rim and had potentially what I thought were good looks and then because we were concerned about them blocking them, we went into a pump fake-a-thon."

There was one sequence in the first half that no doubt stuck in Brown's mind, when Anderson Varejao had to try an awkward reverse layup because Johnson took away the front-side option from him, then forced even the impossibly long Zydrunas Ilgauskas to shoot a hurried follow over Johnson, who had recovered from one side to the other. Neither counted among his four blocks, but both were just as effective.

But there's a postscript to that interlude. Johnson, seconds later, would score a fast-break layup and draw a foul at the other end. That's one area - transition scoring - where he can become a better player than Wallace. And in flashing two pretty moves that netted him nothing when softly shot half-hooks somehow didn't nestle home, he showed another area where he can become an upgraded Big Ben.

"I made two good moves - I've just got to finish those plays," Johnson said. "That's what (Curry's) looking for me to do - finish plays and make all the hustle plays."

Curry paid Johnson an eye-opening compliment after the game when he said: "Amir has been excellent. Top to bottom, he’s had the best summer and camp out of everybody. We told Amir this summer exactly what we wanted out of him whether he started or came off the bench exactly what kind of role we wanted him to play - and he’s been great."

It's a reach to project Johnson will have an NBA career to equal Ben Wallace's. But it's less of a reach than it would have been when Ben Wallace was 21 to predict what he became.

• NBA.com's annual survey of general managers is out and the Pistons are one of seven teams to receive votes for winning the NBA title. The Lakers were picked to beat Boston in a rematch of last year's NBA Finals.

The Pistons were picked by 11.1 percent of GMs, tied with Cleveland, to win the East; Boston was the pick of 74.1 percent; and the Pistons were picked to beat Cleveland to win the Central Division by 55.6-44.4 percent.

The Palace was listed as one of nine NBA arenas that provided the best home-court advantage, a category won by Utah.

Individually, the most notable Piston mentioned was Rip Hamilton, the overwhelming choice as the NBA player who moves best without the ball. Hamilton drew 76.9 percent of the vote to trounce fellow UConn alum Ray Allen, second with 7.7 percent.

Rodney Stuckey finished behind Andrew Bynum and Kevin Durant for player most likely to have a breakout year. Tayshaun Prince was one of seven players mentioned for best perimeter defender.

Kobe Bryant was listed by 88.9 percent of GMs as the player they'd most want to shoot the ball with the game on the line.

Take it all with a graint of salt. Last year, the GMs picked the Chicago Bulls to beat the Pistons and win the Central Division. The Pistons finished 26 games ahead of the Bulls.

For complete results, see NBA.com.

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5 keys to the East, non-Pistons division

Because the Pistons don't play in a vacuum, their fortunes aren't entirely dependent on how Michael Curry fares as a first-time head coach, how quickly Amir Johnson adapts to going from afterthought to starter, how much in their tanks Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess have left at 34 or how dramatically Rodney Stuckey can affect the mix.

A lot of it is about how bright an arc the other stars in their galaxy burn over the course of the next eight months. Think about this: Their six-game ouster to Boston in the Eastern Conference finals last season gets lumped together with their six-game ousters the previous two years in the same round to Cleveland and Miami, and the summary opinion is that the Pistons are missing something from a champion's DNA. But if there had been no Boston last year - that is, if Minnesota and Seattle hadn't held fire sales to dump salary and start anew - the Pistons very likely win the East ... and who wouldn't have liked their chances against the Lakers in the Finals?

How differently would we be talking about the coming season had the Celtics not completed the most emphatic one-season turnaround in NBA history? Remember, the Pistons that went into the conference finals were a 59-win team - second-best in the NBA - and had just dusted Orlando in five games in the second round ... without their starting point guard! They had Boston on the ropes after breaking through in a Game 2 win, then gave that momentum back in a dreadful first few minutes of Game 3, going down 11-0. Those few minutes might well have been the difference in what name got engraved on the 2008 Larry O'Brien Trophy.

It's pretty well accepted that there's a fine line between winning and losing, but somehow that gets forgotten when it comes to categorizing teams as winners or losers. Sometimes all the answers come back in the affirmative, but the season still doesn't end in champagne and confetti.

So because they won't play in a vacuum this year, either, here are five situations that bear monitoring as the Pistons play out the season:

• 1. How does Boston manage the onus of defending its championship?

It might not take five, six or seven months to come to meaningful conclusions on this one. Look at how the Celtics break from the gate. Remember last year, when they not only were winning at a ridiculous clip from the start, but pounding most opponents?

That type of everyday resolve isn't easily mustered. And after playing until late June and getting patted on the back all summer, it will be even more taxing to muster it on an everyday basis for another 82 games plus.

Doc Rivers said something the other day that makes him believe winning hasn't spoiled the Celtics. He was talking about Paul Pierce, and how winning either makes you satisifed or makes you even thirstier for more success. Rivers sees clear signs of the latter. Then again, what else is he going to say? Time will tell. And maybe not too much time.

• 2. Can Elton Brand transform the 76ers?

The 76ers ended last season with a much better team than the Celtics ended the 2006-07 season. They didn't add two perennial All-Stars, as Boston did, but they hope the one they got - Elton Brand - can have the same ripple effect on the rest of the roster that Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen had on the Celtics a year ago.

On paper, it looks wonderful. Samuel Dalembert is freed to do what he does best - chase down offensive rebounds, be a menace around the rim and hit the wide-open jumpers that should be more frequent with Brand commanding double teams. Thaddeus Young, a burgeoning star, slides over to his more natural small forward. Andre Igoudala bumps to the backcourt, where his strength and athleticism should make him even more of a weapon. Willie Green goes to the bench, where his scoring ability gooses the potency.

The dying days of the Iverson era seem a long time ago. But dealing with expectations is something this bunch has never faced.

• 3. Which Jermaine O'Neal did Toronto acquire?

Is he the guy who was one of the top five big men in the game a few years back, a defensive force and a reliable post scorer and rebounder, or is he the guy who for four years running keeps coming up lame?

Because if he's that first guy, the guy who had Indiana on the cusp of greatness before it all came unraveled in a heap of ugly off-court drama, then Toronto has a chance to challenge Boston and Philly in the suddenly recast Atlantic Division, the Titanic no more. A healthy O'Neal to go with dynamic young Chris Bosh would give Toronto the best 1-2 frontcourt punch in the East, and maybe in the entire NBA.

If he's something less than that, of if he's going to miss 30 or 40 games again, then the Raptors have too many question marks on the perimeter to be anything more than another easy first-round out come the postseason.

• 4. Is Dwight Howard still evolving or is that all there is?

If that's all there is, that's still pretty good. If Howard doesn't get any better, he's still the closest thing the NBA might ever see to a young Shaquille O'Neal - unbelievable athletic ability packed in a colossally big body.

But he doesn't have the scoring sense a young Shaq had and he still seems smitten enough with that unbelievable athletic ability that he hasn't really come close to developing a signature post move or two that would make throwing the ball into their resident 7-foot Goliath a staple of Orlando's offense, as it should be.

With little in the way of depth and an unremarkable backcourt, Orlando's chances to break from the middle of the East playoff field rest mostly on Howard's growth chart.

• 5. What impact does Mo Williams have on LeBron James?

We know the news of the three-way blockbuster that brought Williams over from Milwaukee was embraced warmly by James when it was relayed to him on the other side of the world, during the Beijing Olympics. The proof will come in the fourth quarters of games in the balance - which describes more than half of NBA games - when James needs somebody in wine and gold to take a scintilla of pressure off of him and make a play or two.

The difficulty in being King James' sidekick, of course, is knowing when that time comes and when to back off and let LeBron be LeBron. And that's the type of chemistry that might not develop immediately - or ever.

All worth monitoring.

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Curry: Pistons will stick with man-to-man D

Michael Curry made his chops as an NBA player by playing unrelenting man-to-man defense, sticking around for a decade, much of it as a starter, despite a sparse offensive repertoire.

And that's how he envisions the Pistons, as their coach, playing defense: relentlessly. What he doesn't envision them playing is a zone defense. The Pistons devoted a good chunk of their Tuesday practice - the last before they finish up their preseason schedule with back-to-back home games Wednesday and Thursday at The Palace - to attacking the zone. And that's probably the extent of the work they'll put in over the course of the season regarding the zone - attacking it, not deploying it.

"I played matchup zone my entire college career," Curry said. "And we were really good at it. I like matchup zones."

But?

"One thing about a zone - you're always giving up shots. I think guys in this league are too good, over a long period of time throughout a game, to keep giving up shots. Sometimes it works. I think it's a defense that can be sort of a Band-Aid. But you can't do it over the long haul. "

But Curry's man-to-man defense incorporates zone principles, just as the zone defense that Flip Saunders learned at the knee of his college coach, Bill Musselman, incorporated man-to-man principles. In essense, all NBA defenses in the sophisticated age of advanced scouting and extensive video libraries are hybrids.

When the ball is on one side of the court, usually there are two defenders on the opposite side - the weak side, or the help side - who drift off of their man and play it half way in order to be in position to double team the post or step into the lane and stop penetration.

"I try to teach our man-to-man principles just as the zone principles," Curry said. "Our help side - that's what a zone is, it creates help side - we try to make sure we're almost in zone-like coverages even when we're on help-side defense in man to man."

When Saunders first came to the Pistons, he looked at the roster and thought the Pistons were perfect partners for his zone ideal. And they were. With Rasheed Wallace, Ben Wallace and Tayshaun Prince up front, their wing spans and court coverage were perfect blueprints for frontcourt zone personnel. And Rip Hamilton's size and speed at his position meant he could eat up ground to chase down perimeter passes - or run the baseline from corner to corner in a 1-3-1 set. Chauncey Billups' strength and size meant he could drop down from the top when the ball swung to the wing and box out weak-side offensive rebounders.

And the Pistons made good use out of the zone during Saunders' era. But the players never really fully bought into the ideology. Since the NBA passed legislation allowing the zone, it's been viewed as less than manly to employ it as anything more than an occasional gimmick defense.

"When it was introduced in the NBA, it was something different," Curry said. "Anytime something is different, guys respond different ways. But guys that have been around this league understand that if you're going to a championship, you've got to be really good man-to-man defensively. If that's what our goal is, that's what 95 percent of our time is going to be spent on - making sure we're really good man-to-man defensively. Of course, we'll have a half-court trap in; we know how to get up the court and full-court pressure; shadow the ball up the court. Those are the things that eat the clock up and keep teams from being able to attack you right away.

"We'll continue to do those things, but we just won't come down and sit in a zone and hope you miss shots."

• Chauncey Billups returned to practice on Tuesday after sitting out part of Monday's when he aggravated his mild right ankle sprain. Kwame Brown worked on the side with trainer Arnie Kander after suffering a mild right shoulder strain in Monday's practice.
• Curry plans to give his starters close to regular-season minutes in Wednesday's preseason game with Cleveland. But for Thursday's preseason finale against Atlanta, he doesn't expect his starters - with the exception of Amir Johnson - or Antonio McDyess to play in the second half.

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Pistons push hard, but stay healthy

Chauncey Billups sat with an ice bag taped to his right ankle. Next to him was Kwame Brown, an ice bag strapped to his right shoulder. Walter Herrmann, freshly back after missing nearly two weeks with sore ribs, was bounding around the practice court Monday, dropping outside jump shots and taking the ball to the basket on his unique serpentine path.

That's the Pistons' medical report, short and sunny, as usual. Even though it's been the most arduous training camp around here in many seasons, the Pistons have managed to avoid the types of injuries that seem to come in waves in most other NBA camps. Deron Williams will miss at least two weeks with a fairly severe ankle sprain. Baron Davis might require finger surgery that could shelve him for six weeks. Shane Battier and Tracy McGrady are both missing valuable time in Houston's camp.

Curry pushed the Pistons through a three-hour-plus practice on Sunday and came back with another lengthy one on Monday, taking advantage of five full days off between preseason games to bring his team closer to the level of conditioning required to play the way he wants to play - much harder than they've played in the past, he says.

But Curry is fully aware of what's going on around the NBA, the way players are dropping. It's not like he's just crossing his fingers and hoping the Pistons avoid the executioner. He leans heavily on strength coach Arnie Kander in setting up his practice schedule.

"If he tells me I need to take something off, I take it off," Curry said after Monday's workout. We knew what kind of camp we wanted to have, so we encouraged guys to come in in shape. The guys who stayed around throughout the summer came in in great shape. We haven't tried to just run them into the ground. That's why we've had so many guys be able to play and stay away from any major injuries. We know when to give them rest. Yesterday was really hard. Today was hard, but not as hard as yesterday. And tomorrow will be a shorter practice and not as much contact."

Curry said the overall level of conditioning is getting close to where he wants it to be at. How does he gauge it?

"I look at how long guys are taking before they get fatigued in certain drills," he said. "There may be a drill you do for 10 minutes and early in camp, after the four-minute mark, guys start pulling on their shorts. Now it's eight strong minutes. Even as simple as a shooting layup drill, the goal was 300 makes in 10 minutes - then we're ready to start the season. We're at 296 now."

• The deadline for signing Jason Maxiell to a contract beyond this season is Oct. 31, but both Maxiell and his agent are saying it's almost certain to not happen, meaning Maxiell will become a restricted free agent in July.

But don't read anything into it. More than anything else, it's a statement on the nature of restricted free agency in the current environment. Last year, the only restricted free agents to even get offers from another team were Ronny Turiaf, who left the Lakers for Golden State, and Josh Smith, who stayed with Atlanta when the Hawks matched Memphis' offer sheet.

There will be many fifth-year players like Maxiell hitting the restricted free agent market next July and comparatively few teams with buying power. In the event Maxiell were to draw an offer, the Pistons would have the right to match. And unless it's a completely unexpected offer - one seriously out of line with Maxiell's contributions - then Joe Dumars would almost certainly match it.

The Pistons, as numerous reports have it, have offered Maxiell money in line with what Turiaf received from Golden State. The Lakers chose not to match. With Andrew Bynum, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom available for their power positions, they didn't have the playing time available to warrant that level of investment. At least that's the perception they're comfortable letting stand. The truth is that if the Lakers didn't have bad contracts out on players like Vladimir Radmanovic, Luke Walton and Chris Mihm, they would have matched and kept a valuable part like Turiaf.

The Pistons don't have any of those onerous contracts muddling their payroll. Maxiell has said he wants to stay. The Pistons have a clear role for him; even though Michael Curry plans to rotate five big men through the lineup this year, Maxiell is one of the eight players he says is in line to get at least 15 minutes a night. Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess are both 34, Wallace's contract is up after the season and McDyess has just one more year on his deal. So there's a future as well as a present for Maxiell in Detroit.

Bottom line: Don't wring your hands if that Oct. 31 deadline comes and goes without a new contract in place for Jason Maxiell.

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In search of better starts

It was something between an observation and a lament – not a criticism – but Flip Saunders commented more than occasionally last year that there was nobody in his starting lineup that came out of the gate breathing fire. This was different than the “focus” issue or the dogged “flip the switch” question that Saunders fielded every other day of his three-season tenure.

There were a handful of factors at play when Michael Curry decided to return Antonio McDyess to the bench and replace him in the starting lineup with 21-year-old Amir Johnson. And we’ve documented them here: the desire to separate Rasheed Wallace and McDyess so Curry would always be able to have one of his two best frontcourt scorers in the game; the wisdom of injecting a little youth into a 30-something starting lineup and, in turn, of putting an experienced hand amid an otherwise frightfully young bench; and the synergy that Wallace’s savvy and Johnson’s athleticism would provide.

But Curry is hoping one other positive is generated by the switch: better starts to first and third quarters.

“We’ve got to continue to find ways to get off to better starts,” Curry said Friday. “I’m confident if we get off to good starts to games and third quarters, we’re going to be fine as a team. Because I’m confident in our bench vs. other teams’ benches and I’m confident in our starters finishing games vs. other teams’ starters. So it’s going to be the start of that first and third quarters. And Amir has that youthfulness and athletic ability. For (the starters), it’s a welcome addition. He does things and covers for guys. He’s always in help mode and he does things maybe they can’t quite do as well as they used to.”

• More evidence of Curry’s egalitarian approach to administering justice:
  
  The NBA is being pretty strict this year about allowing players to check into games unless they’re at the scorer’s table ready to go when they’re prepared to administer the basketball and start play. When Curry tried to get Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton into the game in the fourth quarter, before the Pistons started their comeback from 15 down, referee Jason Phillips wouldn’t let them check in.
  
  Curry admonished Billups and Hamilton for taking their time getting to the scorer’s table, just as he scolded Will Bynum in the first half when Bynum incurred a delay of game warning – it contributed to the Pistons losing a point in the second half when a second delay on Hamilton for interfering with the ball after a Pistons basket resulted in a technical and foul shot for Dallas – for not having his uniform shirt tucked into his shorts.
  
  “Most guys do go slow to the table,” Curry said, “but my point is get to the table and get all your other stuff taken care of because you may cost me three or four possessions while you’re still at the table because you didn’t get there in time. There was a point to let Chauncey and Rip know that, as well as I let Will Bynum know that. All the guys appreciate that because they know I’m not going to point out a younger guy and not point out a veteran guy. As I told the veteran guys, I expect a better example.”



• Two straight games of frigid shooting numbers – 28 percent against San Antonio, 32 percent against Dallas – haven’t rattled Curry’s faith in his new offense, yet to be fully installed.
  
  Besides a new playbook, the Pistons are essentially digesting a new offensive philosophy that distributes responsibility for decision-making and playmaking instead of concentrating it in the hands of the point guard.
  
  “In the San Antonio game, it was strictly on guys got into you and made you to go your second and third option,” Curry said. “We get into each other in practice and we go to the third and fourth option on plays. You’ve just got to trust it. The only thing that builds that trust is time. Some things just take time. No matter how fast we want it or how much we want it, some things take time. I have to have the foresight of what I’m trying to get to in the future.
  
  “Yesterday we played 10 or 11 guys and everybody (graded out) over 90 except one guy – offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency. If we’re going to score 90 percent or better defensively, we’re going to win a ton of games.”



• Walter Herrmann, still suffering from sore ribs that have limited him to one preseason game, is showing improvement. He ran and shot on Friday and, Curry hopes, could be cleared to practice either Sunday or Monday. Walter Sharpe was limited in practice with a slight left knee injury, which he incurred in Tuesday’s game at Grand Rapids.



• Curry will give the team Saturday off, then they’ll have three practice days before the final two preseason games, Wednesday and Thursday at The Palace. Then they’ll practice Friday, take next Saturday off, and have three more practice days leading to the Oct. 29 opener with Indiana.
  
  “I love the practice time,” Curry said. “I’ll take that kind of schedule any time. Any time we can get practice time, we’ll get better. So I look forward to it.”

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Curry: In order to be served, youth must prepare

Amir Johnson is 21 and Rodney Stuckey 22 and they look like they could hike up Mount Everest in the morning, be back in time to play 48 minutes at The Palace that night and then go out and cavort until the wee hours the way 21- and 22-year-olds are wont to do.

But Michael Curry knows well the incredible physical demands that an NBA game, never mind an NBA season, can exact on the most finely tuned human body. And he knows that no matter how polished the exterior might look, there is an arc that young players must travel before their bodies – and that means the inner workings, minds included – are ready to absorb the punishment that’s coming.

So before the Pistons played the Spurs the other night, and somebody asked about expectations for Stuckey, Curry started with this: “Playing in the NBA over the course of 82 games and the preseason and the postseason takes a toll on your body. His body hasn’t gone through that toll yet. If he’s going to be a guy who can play around 25 minutes a night, he has to get his body prepared to do that and the best way to do that is by playing him additional minutes.

“He didn’t have quite that bounce (last) Friday night and I’m sure he did something different to make sure he had a little more bounce on Saturday. These are the things he has to learn, because he won’t be playing 12 minutes a night anymore. He’ll be one of our key minutes guys and we just want him to use this preseason to continue to build his base. It won’t happen by the start of the season, but if he averages 25 minutes a game we want his 25 minutes in the postseason better than the 25 minutes he’s giving us right now – and that only happens over time.”

And on Wednesday, he said of Johnson: “I told Amir, for three years he could do whatever he wanted to do the night before a game, two days before a game. It didn’t matter what he ate. He wasn’t playing, so he was just getting a workout in every day. Now he has to think about what he’s eating, he has to think about what time he’s off his feet, the amount of time he’s walking around or going somewhere, how late he may be up.”

It’s not only about training the body, but about training the mind through the discipline required to train the body. The message is that the young players are no longer just adornments – nice if you’ve got ’em, but not essential – but foundation pieces. Curry needs to be able to count on them every night. For him to have that confidence in them, he wants their bodies to be in peak condition, so fatigue or weakness doesn’t stand in the way of their progress. Johnson can’t take advantage of his off-the-charts athleticism if he’s too gassed to fly across the lane and swat a shot away or not strong enough to fight through a pick to chase down a shooter. Stuckey can’t explode off his lethal crossover dribble if the previous 24 seconds of defense wobbled his knees.

More Curry on Stuckey: “Before it was, OK, Stuckey comes in and we hope he plays well, and if he plays well, he’ll play for a while. But now it’s not just what we hope he gives us. We expect a certain level from him. When he’s on, he’s really good. And when he’s off, he’s bad. He can’t be bad. When he’s off, he’s got to be OK, and when he’s on, he’s got to be very good. You want to cut that gap and when you do that, you find yourself playing at a high level more consistently throughout the year.”

There’s a focus issue in consistency – or inconsistency, as the case may be – that’s alleviated if the legs and lungs aren’t a concern. So Curry is going to make sure players stay plugged in to strength coach Arnie Kander throughout the season, so that as the dog days approach they don’t fall into sloppy habits or ill-advised eating patterns.

Curry, entrusted by Joe Dumars with this job partly because of the way he connected with the young players that could form the core of the next generation of Pistons, has given Stuckey and Johnson wide berth to stake their claim to the present as well as the future. The Pistons are going to be a very good team, with or without them. But if their bodies can adapt to the rigors of a full NBA season, then their minds will be best prepared to process everything about to be thrown at them as full-fledged members of a contender’s rotation. And with them at their best, the Pistons have a shot to be something better than very good.

And Michael Curry is doing everything within his power to make sure the inner workings are as honed as the polished exteriors.

• Check back on Pistons.com before tonight's 7:30 p.m. tipoff with Dallas for a pregame update on True Blue Pistons.

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Curry cleans up a problem he says was ... his?

Michael Curry found the culprit responsible for allowing San Antonio to get off 24 3-point attempts in Tuesday’s loss at Grand Rapids, most of them open looks, and make 10 of them. It was the guy looking back at him in the mirror when he shaved Wednesday morning.

But wait – there’s more. (And we don’t mean a second set of Ginsu knives for three easy payments of $19.99.) Not only did Curry admit to his team that he made a mistake, he volunteered the information to reporters, making his mea culpa both private and public.

Chauncey Billups says he’s had other coaches who would admit mistakes to their players – “I’ve had a few that did do that,” he said Wednesday, “and I’ve had some coaches that never would” – but to also admit fallibility publicly?

Curry shrugs. What’s the big deal?

“Right is right; wrong is wrong,” he said. “If you mess up, they know you messed up. There’s no trickery to this stuff, guys.”

His sin, we should point out, was hardly egregious. It was more a communications breakdown than anything. Curry thought it was clear how certain pick-and-roll situations should be defended, but there was enough of a gray area that the Pistons didn’t play it the way Curry envisioned against San Antonio.

And the first words out of his mouth the next day were these: “After going back and watching the tape, I realized defensively our guys were a lot better than I thought. The mistakes that they made were my fault. I had a couple of areas that we had some uncertainty, so what I did was made sure today that I cleaned everything up.”

Curry played for a lot of coaches throughout his career and admits that what he did is “not common at all.” But he’s certain that it’s the right thing to do and sees it as a straight-line equation, something with application far beyond coaching.

“I think we’re all like that,” he said. “I don’t think it has anything to do with coaching. Whether you’re in a relationship or whatever, when someone is wrong, if you can admit you were wrong or you probably caused some of the problems that occurred, if you can admit to that, then they know you’re in this with them, you’re not above them, we’re in this together.

“If I’m going to be able to get on guys every day when they mess up, I’ve got to at least admit when I don’t prepare them the best I can, myself and my staff, so we take full credit for some of that.”

It sounds simple, of course. But there are only 29 other jobs like the one Curry has and something about the position – and its trappings – changes most people. Protecting the job becomes paramount. Admitting mistakes runs the risk of forming a certain negative perception that can snowball through media portrayals and contaminate the public consciousness. It could even be construed as a sign of weakness by players. For a first-time head coach, it takes enormous self-assuredness to break so dramatically from the mold.

“He’s always been like that,” said Billups, a teammate of Curry’s when he first came to the Pistons six seasons ago. “When you’re a leader, you’ve got to lead and you’ve got to step up to some things that a lot of people wouldn’t. When things are not going great, you’ve got to be able to step up and say, ‘It’s my fault.’ That’s one trait of a leader.”

The first inkling Curry wasn’t going meekly into his first head coaching assignment came in Las Vegas during Summer League, where Darrell Walker, a former head coach himself, told me that it was unusual for any head coach – let alone a first-timer – to so freely delegate authority to his staff. Then training camp started and Curry did things like mixing the starters up among balanced units instead of going with the traditional first-, second- and third-teamers. Now this.

Joe Dumars wanted to shake things up, he famously said last June. Without making anything approaching a significant trade, it appears he has.

• Billups, who sat out Tuesday's game with a mild ankle sprain, practiced on Wednesday, though Curry described it as a "non-contact" practice, and said he hopes to play in Thursday's game against Dallas at The Palace. Walter Herrmann remains day to day with sore ribs, Curry said.

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5 into 2: Curry tinkers with big-man tandems

There hasn’t been a whole lot of drama to previous Pistons training camps because no NBA team has had less lineup uncertainty over the past five years than this one. Despite the relative lack of off-season personnel shuffling, that’s changed this year. It’s changed because the coach changed, because the new coach wants to go deeper into this bench, and because the bench – no matter who was coaching – has forced the issue. They’re better.

Jason Maxiell had his breakout season a year ago and clearly deserves a spot in Michael Curry’s rotation. Amir Johnson, still just 21, is a Curry favorite for his athleticism and the possibilities he presents as Curry looks to force the issue defensively and get more easy transition baskets. And the addition of Kwame Brown gives the Pistons another option in Curry’s toolbox, a big man capable of hand-to-hand combat with the dwindling supply of true post players.

So a big part of training camp is figuring out how five goes into two and how the varied skills of each of the five big guys best complement which specific other member of the group.

Here’s what I’ve figured out so far: Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess, because they’re the two guys who can step outside and knock down jumpers, probably aren’t going to be on the floor too often at the same time – though all bets are off in the last six or eight minutes of close games. That’s when I’d expect Curry to go with his two best players, and right now, on most nights, that’s still Wallace and McDyess.

But for the first 40 minutes? Everybody’s level of play increases when paired alongside Wallace. He’s their best back-to-the-basket scorer – even if he doesn’t do it as much as he once did, or as often as he might; he has the deepest shooting range; he’s their savviest team defender; and he ranks with McDyess as their best and most versatile post defender.

Curry put Johnson in the starting lineup partly because he thought his youthful athleticism was a necessary addition to a veteran starting lineup that sometimes needs a kick start. But it was also a decision driven largely by the security blanket Wallace offers Johnson with his constant vocal instructions and instant intuitive recognition of all situations. Put another way, Wallace will help harness and focus the potential brimming in Johnson.

Curry also has already come to the conclusion that Brown’s skills are best drawn out when paired with Wallace or McDyess.

“I thought Kwame would play really well with Sheed and Dice,” Curry said. “We really like to have him on the court with one of those guys because of their experience and ability to shoot the basketball. It really spreads the floor and gives him a chance to be really big in the paint. We were hoping that coming in and we’ve been able to see that. Amir is playing well with Rasheed and playing well with other guys. We knew what we would get out of Max. He’s played with those guys and Max can play with Kwame as well as Sheed and Dice.”

Maxiell’s progress – his mid-range jump shot continues to improve, and he’s got at least one or two staples to his low-post game now - moves him closer to the type of player Curry can use in tandem with someone other than Wallace or McDyess. Maxiell and Johnson, for instance, would give another different look – if they can prove that defensive rebounding wouldn’t suffer.

The Pistons are halfway through the preseason heading into tonight’s game in Grand Rapids against San Antonio. But the preseason isn’t where the testing ends. Finding the best big man tandem will be an ongoing test for Curry, varying from game to game depending on the progress of his three young components and the opposition. The goal is to know exactly what he has – and what he can expect – from each possible combination by the time the playoffs roll around.

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Curry effect reflected in early stats

When those who know Michael Curry best talk about how they expect him to most affect the Pistons this season, it’s more attitudinal than strategic. They’re talking about the aura of toughness Curry projects being transferred to a team that didn’t grind through tough stretches in recent seasons with quite the cold-blooded efficiency they did in the past.

But, as it turns out, Curry’s effect might be seen equally dramatically in the style of the Pistons’ play as well as the substance.

Granted, four games is a puny sample size, but results so far jibe with Curry’s mission statement of being the aggressor, forcing turnovers and getting better ball movement offensively with more players getting their hands on the ball.

The Pistons are forcing 20.5 turnovers a game. They’re committing almost as many (19), but Curry expected an initial spike as his team adjusts to an offensive philosophy that spreads ballhandling and playmaking duties around instead of concentrating them in the hands of the point guard. There’s another adjustment they’re making, too – to learning how to transition to offense after forcing all those turnovers they’re instigating.

“We watch it,” he said after Monday’s practice following Sunday’s day off on the heels of a stretch where they played three games in four nights, winning all of them to go to 4-0 halfway through the preseason schedule. “We put a couple of drills in to make sure we take care of the basketball a little better. The other night our young guys really took care of the basketball and our veteran guys in the starting lineup had nine turnovers and all the younger guys off the bench only had eight. We’re getting there (in) taking care of the basketball.”

They also had 29 assists on 36 baskets against Milwaukee, meaning almost 81 percent of their baskets produced assists. That brought their four-game average to 69 percent, up 8 percentage points over last year’s regular-season total.

Whenever the Pistons were sluggish offensively last year, the culprit as Flip Saunders saw it was their inability to get defenses moving from side to side. Saunders always wanted the ball to move from the strong side to the weak side, creating passing lanes for cutters against a moving defense, post-up openings and opportunities for dribble penetration. In the playoffs, against stronger defensive teams with the advantage of zeroing in on the Pistons’ playbook for a week or more, the deficiency frequently became more pronounced.

That’s the motivation behind Curry’s philosophical shift. It became too easy for opponents to take the basketball out of Chauncey Billups’ hands in the postseason, leaving the Pistons sputtering offensively as players unaccustomed to initiating offense were suddenly faced with doing so. It’ll be interesting as the season unfolds to see how adaptable the Pistons can become offensively.

• The Pistons are probably going to get a 48-minute dose of someone other than Billups initiating the offense in their preseason game against San Antonio in Grand Rapids on Tuesday night. Billups suffered a minor right ankle sprain in the win at Milwaukee on Saturday night and worked with strength coach Arnie Kander during Monday’s practice.
  
  “I stepped on (Andrew) Bogut’s foot,” Billups said. “I’m good, though. I’ll be all right.”
  
  “I don’t think it’s bad,” Curry said, “but we’ll set him out for a few days.”
  
  That will mean more time for Rodney Stuckey and Will Bynum, with Alex Acker sliding over to be the No. 3 point guard. Stuckey already leads the Pistons in minutes played, averaging 27 a game.
  
  “I want to play Stuckey more minutes in the preseason,” Curry said. “He hasn’t played those minutes. You’ve got to train your body to play 25 minutes a night in the NBA. Until he plays consistently at that pace, he’s got to learn what he needs to do to make sure his body is ready night in and night out and that’s a good testing time for him right now.”

• Walter Herrmann remained out with sore ribs. Though Herrmann can take part in conditioning drills, the area of his injury is such that everyday occurrences like coughing or stretching aggravates it.

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Numbers aside, Amir settling in as starter

Amir Johnson doesn’t want to be forced to surrender his Zoo Crew membership, but he also doesn’t want to give up his spot in the starting lineup.

When Michael Curry made the decision to return Antonio McDyess to the bench, he had three choices to replace him alongside Rasheed Wallace in Detroit’s frontcourt: Johnson, fellow third-year forward Jason Maxiell or free-agent signee Kwame Brown.

Johnson, still only 21 and with less than 1,000 career minutes on his resume despite entering his fourth NBA season, was given first shot for a variety of reasons. He injects the most athleticism into a veteran starting unit, pairing him with the wily Wallace offered the most synergy, and keeping Maxiell in a familiar role held further appeal while allowing Brown to be used selectively against the increasingly rare conventional low-post players.

The stat sheet says reviews are mixed so far. Through two preseason games, Johnson is averaging a modest three points, three rebounds and one blocked shot in 16 minutes a game. But Curry has consistently maintained that the box score is the last thing he’ll use to monitor Johnson’s effectiveness.

“I say this all the time,” Curry said after Wednesday’s win over Milwaukee. “Throw his stat line out the window. If you saw the intensity with which he plays and the speed and the athletic ability he brings to that starting unit … we’ve just got to work with the rest of our guys in the starting unit so they can pick u the pace just a little bit more as well.”

Before the game, Curry said he and his staff break down every possession and give each player a plus or a minus. And, so far, Johnson is passing that test with flying colors.

“We haven’t posted the offensive grades yet,” Curry said, “but defensive grades, he usually scores really well. He usually shadows the ball, he usually follows the game plan. The problem he’s had is sometimes he gets caught up under the basket and doesn’t box (out) and get the guy out of the paint. He contests shots, he’s in help position – he’s always helping. Those are the key areas that you grade out at and if you do each one you’re supposed to do each possession, you get a plus on that possession.”

Johnson’s only basket was Detroit’s second of the game, a transition dunk where he beat Milwaukee’s defense downcourt on the strength of his sprinter’s speed – freakish for a 6-foot-11 frame.

“Offensively, Amir is cool as long as he runs,” Rasheed Wallace said the next day. “He’s only 20-something, young 20s, so he has to use that to his advantage. We saw a little of that last night with a couple of leakouts. Amir’s coming along. We’re just trying to get him into a more defensive mind-set – stay down, don’t give your man the easy look on the post, fight him on the post, fight him on cross screens.”

When Wallace and McDyess were the frontcourt tandem last year, they were virtually interchangeable defensively, deciding among themselves which one would guard Dwight Howard, for instance, on a particular possession. If Wallace picked up a foul, McDyess would typically wave him off and take over guarding the top offensive post player on the next possession. It will be different, Wallace said, with Johnson.

“Yeah, it definitely changes,” he said. “Amir is a little younger. He doesn’t know the tendencies of both the power forwards and the centers down there on the block. That’s something he’s learning now. With Dice and myself, we’ve been in this long enough we pretty much can guard anybody because we know their tendencies.”

That means Wallace probably will guard the top post scoring threat, allowing Johnson to use his court coverage ability to chase perimeter-shooting power forwards while also recovering to shut down the lane against penetration.

The adjustment process for Johnson is more than just hearing Mason call out his name during pregame introductions, it’s going from one among many young guys in the Zoo Crew to being a fresh face among the most established starting unit in the NBA.

“It’s a lot different,” he said. “Every game, you’ve got to play against the top guys and I’m not used to playing against the top (power forwards) out there, so it’s hard. It’s tough. I’ve got to shake the cobwebs out and play hard.”

And, paired next to Wallace, he knows he’s expected to be the one sprinting back on defense and chasing down loose balls with his athleticism.

“It can be tiring, because I’m the guy that always pressures the floor and gets all the hustle points,” he said. “But it’s very helpful, too, because he tells you what to do. He tells me what guys’ strengths are and their weaknesses. So it’s very helpful to play with Sheed.”

For now, Johnson is more than content to focus on his strengths and forestall the day when he’ll be more content to let the box score be an accurate reflection on his contributions.

“It’ll eventually carry on, but right now I’m just playing defense, learning the different defensive situations on the court,” he said. “I basically can get offensive rebounds and score points like that, but right now I’m just basically working on defense.

“It feels good. It’s been a long time coming, sitting on the bench three years playing under Flip, and now that I’ve got a chance to play it feels good. I’m going to try to keep the starting position and work as hard as I can.”

And the Zoo Crew?

“I’ll still consider myself a member of the Zoo Crew.”

• Curry said that eight players will play “heavy minutes” every night – the starting five, plus McDyess, Maxiell and Rodney Stuckey. One or two from among three others – Brown, Arron Afflalo and Walter Herrmann – could play that many minutes on a given night, depending on the matchups.

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Hammond hits the ground running in Milwaukee

More than a few general managers manage to last a long time in the NBA without ever taking the types of gambles John Hammond did in his first few months on the job in Milwaukee. Make a bold trade and have it backfire, that’s a pretty quick way to find yourself packing boxes and updating your resume. Make cosmetic changes to a decent roster that gives you the chance to compete for a playoff spot most seasons, that’s good enough for a lot of owners equally paralyzed by the fear of gambling on greatness – even if it means never risking the one or two moves that could lead to a championship.

But in a matter of weeks, Hammond undid the two major pieces of business the Milwaukee Bucks had conducted the previous summer – trading lottery pick Yi Jianlian away for proven veteran scorer Richard Jefferson and engaging in a three-team trade that dumped 2007 free-agent signee Mo Williams, replacing him at point guard with Luke Ridnour.

“People say, ‘What do you take away from Joe Dumars and your time with Joe?’ ” Hammond said upon his return to The Palace, where for the last seven years he served as Dumars’ vice president, when the Bucks visited Wednesday night. “That’s it. I can’t tell you how many times Joe said to me, whether it was referring to the job we were doing or maybe the person who was coaching our team, when he talked about leadership he said, ‘If you want to lead, you can’t be afraid, John.’

“That’s one thing that definitely stuck with me. It wasn’t about going in and saying we have to do something. It was nothing more than evaluating the situation and seeing what could get done, what was available for us. The Jefferson get was a very good get for us and we like Luke Ridnour.”

Hammond felt a little pang of anxiety in trading Williams within the division to Cleveland, where he gives LeBron James the consistent scoring sidekick he’s lacked, because of the effect it might have on his ex-team.

“You hate the fact we moved him within our division and that maybe a team like Detroit and Joe could be competing against him,” Hammond said, “but at the end of the day, this was the right thing for us.”

Hammond had several opportunities to leave the Pistons in previous seasons as Toronto and Portland, in particular, made strong runs at him. But Hammond valued what he had in Detroit on many levels, including a settled family and a stable ownership situation. Dumars said Hammond often reminded him, from the perspective of someone who’d worked for other NBA organizations, how lucky the Pistons were to have an owner, William Davidson, who gave his executives wide latitude to do their jobs without second-guessing moves that didn’t work.

In Bucks owner Sen. Herb Kohl, Hammond thinks he’s found a kindred spirit.

“I met with him a couple of times, and each time I met with him, I told my wife, No. 1, he’s a good man, and No. 2, he’s a man who’s committed to winning. You put those two things together and it made it right.”

The timing was right from the family’s perspective, too. Hammond had resisted previous overtures in part because of John and Marsha’s reluctance to uproot their daughter, Lauryn, while she was still in high school. But with Lauryn heading into her senior year, they felt it was workable to live apart for part of a year.

“We probably wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been going into her last year,” Hammond said. “Right place, right time. That’s what it was at the end of the day. I looked at the Milwaukee situation and said this is a team that can win, has some pieces that are workable and a team that can improve.

“Someone called me just a few weeks ago and asked if I’d made the right decision,” Hammond said. “I thought about it for a moment and said that it’s my responsibility to make it the right decision. So it’s my responsibility to make it work and do the very best we can. We’ve got an owner who’s going to give us the opportunity to win and you can’t ask for anything more than that. We’re going to start with the same philosophy we had here – good people who are willing to compete. The rest will take care of itself.”

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Billups is fine with Curry's 'spread' offense

If your point guard isn’t comfortable running the offense of the head coach’s choosing, trouble isn’t too far around the corner. It would be like putting a dropback quarterback in charge of a spread offense. (Can anyone think of a relevant local example? Perhaps at the college level? No? Never mind, then.)

So there was at least the potential for trouble, amid an otherwise remarkably sunny Pistons training camp, in the fact that Michael Curry’s offense spreads the ball around more, taking it – and a commensurate amount of decision-making – out of the point guard’s hands, and that upon the first laboratory testing of the new system, the Pistons coughed up the basketball 24 times in their preseason opener at Miami.

But don’t send up any flares just yet. Both Curry and Billups shrugged it off and Billups, in fact, says the new offense should benefit him.

Curry, to be sure, said last week he expected turnovers to increase initially, as players get accustomed to a different playbook with a different set of responsibilities. The payoff, he believes, will be a less predictable offense that delivers higher-percentage shots.

“Most of the turnovers came from myself and (Rodney Stuckey), guys who were handling the ball,” Billups said. “Just carelessness, running new sets. You’ve got to define where the ins and outs are going to come and where people are going to be at. Early in the preseason, you’re going to have some high turnover games, because sets are different and some guys are going to be initiating sets and making plays.”

“I had more (turnovers) from guys I didn’t think would have as many,” Curry said. “We’re going to continue to get better as we get in better shape. A couple of turnovers were basically fatigue turnovers. Some was being in different positions that are new to guys. I expected some of those, but some of the carelessness ones we’ve got to eliminate.”

Where Billups figures to get some help is relieving the constant pressure of taking the ball upcourt against pressure. There will be times Tayshaun Prince, for instance, can do that, against a defender not nearly as accustomed to or proficient at guarding the ball beyond the 3-point arc. Billups also figures to have his load lessened by Stuckey’s expanded role. There will be many times this season when the two share the floor, with point guard duties interchangeably assigned.

But in white-knuckle moments?

“I expect that when the time comes, if it’s a close game, the ball is going to be in my hands and I’m going to be making decisions,” Billups said. “But it takes a lot of pressure off of myself and Stuck and the other guys who are handling when in between – second quarters, end of first quarters and the start of fourth quarters – we’re running sets and plays that other guys are getting to touch the ball and make decisions. That takes a lot of pressure off of us.”

Billups, for his part, came to camp prepared to play whatever style Curry settled on. When he came through the locker room doors at media day last week, he looked noticeably leaner through the chest, upper arms and trunk. He says he’s only about 5 pounds lighter, though, getting there through a healthier diet and more focus on court work and conditioning and less weightlifting.

“I just wanted to be ready,” he said. “I wanted to be on top of my game and be ready for whatever. Expectation-wise, I knew Mike was more defensive and high intensity, but I just wanted to be back on top of my game, especially coming into the summer with the hamstring thing.”

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Kwame's 'Welcome to the Pistons' moment

Rasheed Wallace showed up at Michael Curry’s introductory press conference in June, tacit confirmation that Joe Dumars’ hire had his full approval. In case anyone missed the implication, Wallace took every opportunity at media day to give Curry his vote of confidence.

Curry reciprocated Tuesday after a lively practice that featured vintage Rasheed. From his refusal to let go an official’s call that he’d kicked a ball defensively, aborting a possession in which Wallace’s defense was about to force a shot-clock violation, to his relentless verbal assault on Kwame Brown as they battled each other in scrimmage.

“No way on God’s green Earth can you lock me up,” Wallace baited Brown. “I go hard; you lollygag.” On it went. Wallace told Brown he couldn’t hang with him through all his NBA stops and told him he was lucky he didn’t go up against him in high school. When Wallace’s unit sat and Brown’s continued to scrimmage against another five, the harangue continued.

Brown, playing more and more aggressively, scored a basket.

“One basket in 3½ hours!” Wallace blared. Brown scored again. “Two baskets in 3½ hours!” came the cry. Brown scooped up a loose ball at half-court, charged to the rim and practically carried poor Cheikh Samb through the rim for another basket. “Three baskets in 3½ hours!” echoed throughout the Pistons’ practice gym.

His teammates carried on as if nothing was happening. They’ve all gotten the Rasheed treatment somewhere along the line. But they were paying attention. So was Michael Curry. They were looking to see how Brown responded. Because if Rasheed was going to rattle him in an October practice, they’d start to wonder what use their new big man would be to them in, say, Boston or Cleveland, come May or June.

“He’s testing him,” Curry said – and then he said something telling, recalling a conversation he had with Jud Buechler, his Pistons teammate during the 1999-2000 season.

“It’s funny, because when Rasheed does it, some people take it as he’s getting on guys too hard. I never played with the Bulls, but I sat here with Jud Buechler who talked about how Michael Jordan messed with Steve Kerr every single day in practice. Whether he hit him coming off picks or yelled at him or jumped at him for every shot he got ready to take, he was testing his guys and when he needed him most, he turned to him and he helped him knock down the shot to win a championship.

“But Michael was being a great leader.”

And Rasheed, as Curry left unsaid, is viewed through a different prism.

“The reality is that all great players find in their own way to challenge their teammates to see if they can handle it and if it’s someone they can depend on come game time,” Curry continued. “Sheed has challenged Amir (Johnson) the last few years and Amir has finally grown to the point where he doesn’t see the need to do it as much because he knows he can depend on Amir and the things he brings to the table. He’s done the same things with (Jason Maxiell). And if you watch Rip (Hamilton), he does the same things with his young guys that are competing against him.”

Brown has let everyone know this turn with the Pistons is a new lease on life for him. He took the full dose of Rasheed in the spirit of its intent.

“He’s loving it,” Chauncey Billups grinned. “They’re competing every single day. … Kwame is used to it. Coming into this league as the No. 1 pick and having his struggles, he’s had a lot of people talking down on him. … But one thing he knows is that we do that out there, but once we get over to that other building” – The Palace – “everybody’s on the same page and anybody on that other team that talks, we’ve got his back.”

“It was fun,” Brown said. “Sheed is going to make me better by challenging me in practice and going hard. It’s just how you perceive it. It actually fires you up instead of doing the opposite. Sheed is unique. He was jawing all day at practice. I told him he was in the trunk – I’m locking him up. And he did not score, but he didn’t want to talk about that. Just because you’re the loudest, that doesn’t mean anything.”

Before Brown came back out on the floor to talk to reporters, Wallace had already pulled him aside in the locker room – just in case there was any misunderstanding – to let him know what he was up to.

“We just talked about it in the back,” he said. “He was just making sure I was good, just take it in stride as a veteran trying to help a young guy out.”

Steve Kerr’s probably still waiting for Michael Jordan to make sure his psyche wasn’t bruised too badly.

• Walter Herrmann sat out the last hour of practice with sore ribs, a minor injury incurred at the open practice at Oakland University last Thursday. Curry didn’t rule him out for Wednesday’s home preseason opener against Milwaukee.



• Cheikh Samb, who did not play in Sunday’s game at Miami after taking a hard shot to the jaw in Saturday’s practice, was a full participant in Tuesday’s practice.



• Former NBA official Jess Kersey visited Pistons camp Tuesday and spent about 30 minutes after practice talking about this year’s points of emphasis. Curry said one of them is making sure defenders don’t get up under jump shooters, but give them enough room to come down without risking injury.



• We’ll have more tomorrow with Chauncey Billups talking about his summer and why he came to camp lighter and leaner.

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A different take on turnovers

The Pistons averaged 11.66 turnovers per game last season under Flip Saunders. Nobody in the NBA took better care of the basketball. That was no surprise to Saunders, whose teams routinely finish among the top few in that category. Saunders designs his offense so that his point guard almost exclusively is the player initiating the play – making the key pass off of which everything else leads to the shot that particular set was designed to produce.

Michael Curry said the other day that his offense is structured differently.

“We’re doing some offense where other guys are handling the ball other than our point guards,” he said, “so it’ll be very important how we take care of the basketball. I expect our turnovers will be up a little bit because of that, but we want to get that under control in the preseason so we can run offense with more guys touching it. We think because of that, guys’ shooting percentages will be higher.”

He probably didn’t guess that the turnovers would be up by more than double. The Pistons committed a ghastly 24 miscues in their preseason-opening overtime win at Miami on Sunday night. His point guards combined to commit 11 of them, including six by Chauncey Billups – in just 22 minutes.

But let’s hold off on panic mode just yet. First of all, it was the first preseason game. Defense is ahead of offense. Curry hasn’t even installed his full offense yet. The sets he has installed, the Pistons only learned in the five days of practice they had leading up to the Miami opener.

Billups has a pretty remarkable turnover history, averaging around two per game, considering the amount of time the ball spends in his hands. Once he learns the nuances of Curry’s offense, you can expect the same responsible safekeeping of the basketball from him.

The NBA average was 14.11 turnovers per game last season, which means the Pistons turned it over 2.45 times per game less than the norm. But just as Saunders geared an offensive philosophy toward protecting the ball, his defensive philosophy was equally conservative. He rarely extended his defense to force the issue, preferring to sit back and protect the rim. Nothing wrong with that. It’s safe and conventional and it served the Pistons well, as their consistent ranking among the top handful of teams defensively under Saunders attests.

It also helps explain why the Pistons forced fewer turnovers than the league average, 13.51. That still means the Pistons were a net 1.85 to the good in turnover differential. Because they protected the basketball so well and were among the league’s top offensive rebounding teams, the Pistons were the only team – credit to ESPN stats whiz John Hollinger, who has a fascinating look at each NBA team from a statistical standpoint available on ESPN.com – in the league to average more than one shot per possession. So do the math – nearly two extra possessions per game translate into at least a couple of points, factoring in shooting percentage, 3-point percentage and foul shooting opportunities and percentage.

Curry knows all of that. But he’s banking on two things to more than cover for the anticipated increase – slight, he hopes – in turnovers: forcing more turnovers, which will lead to transition scoring chances, and, as he said, a higher shooting percentage.

It will be fascinating to see how those things play out as the season moves along.

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It adds up: Lock-down defense makes a return

One of the most persistent misperceptions of Flip Saunders’ three years as Pistons coach was that they abandoned their bedrock defensive identity that carried them to the 2004 title under Larry Brown. In fact, by any meaningful statistical measure, the Pistons remained an elite defensive team under Saunders – even though two of the three seasons on Saunders’ watch came without Ben Wallace.

Last season, for instance, the Pistons were No. 1 in points allowed per game (90.1), third in field-goal percentage (.437) and third in 3-point percentage (.332).

But how does the old saying go? There are three types of lies – lies, damn lies and statistics? The Pistons were very efficient, very workmanlike defensively under Saunders. But they weren’t a smothering, suffocating, intimidating defense very often, and at times when they absolutely needed to lock down – which in their defensive heyday with Big Ben as anchor, they seemed able to do at will – it just wasn’t there for them often enough.

It’s dangerous business to make projections based on four days of training camp, but I’m pretty much sold that the swagger – the go ahead, I dare you to knock this chip off my shoulder Pistons bravado – is about to make a dramatic reappearance.

A few things are at work here. First and foremost, it’s Michael Curry’s mantra. He’s insisting the Pistons will be aggressive in everything they do. You’re going to see them trapping, swarming, elbowing and clawing.

It’s a philosophy that dovetails perfectly with Pistons history, of course. The two eras that have produced the three championship banners – the Bad Boys of Isiah, Joe D, Laimbeer and Mahorn, and the Dumars-as-president creation – are rooted in blue-collar, hard-nosed basketball. But it wouldn’t be possible if the Pistons weren’t staffed to make it happen.

Curry has at his disposal the guts of a savvy, veteran unit that all bring unique and well-rounded defensive skills to the table. Tayshaun Prince, Rasheed Wallace and Chauncey Billups all draw votes for the NBA’s All-Defense team every season. Rip Hamilton has been grossly underrated as a defender for the past three seasons, at least. He did superb work last season on stars as varied as Chris Paul and LeBron James, who probably go off as the frontrunners for MVP this season. And Antonio McDyess is similarly overlooked when the league’s best post defenders are mentioned. Pop in the tape of last year’s December win over Houston and watch McDyess harass Yao Ming to abject frustration.

But beyond that, Curry has a deep stable of frisky colts itching to show their in-your-face mettle. Amir Johnson is the likely fifth starter this season and he’s got some Rodmanesque qualities to his game for his ability to cover great chunks of the court, smothering a pick-and-roll 25 feet from the rim, then recovering to swat a shot with either hand on the other side of the lane. Arron Afflalo is eager to show he has some offense to his game, as well, but perfectly willing to hang his hat on a defensive stopper’s role for now. Jason Maxiell – remember the work he did handcuffing Dwight Howard in the playoffs despite spotting him half a foot? Rodney Stuckey oozes the athleticism that Curry is eager to put to use forcing tempo defensively to create easy points at the other end.

Curry’s mind-set and the personnel to make it work are nice, but it still takes a coach willing to defy NBA convention by digging deeper into his bench than the norm – especially when doing so will mean unusually low minute totals for All-Star-caliber players. Curry, by every indication, is perfectly prepared to do that.

And, beyond that, a fourth component that points to a damn-the-torpedoes firestorm of fury from the Pistons this year: conditioning.

Friday’s practice ended with a Bataan death march of a drill. Curry put 10 minutes on the clock and put the Pistons – 14 of them; Wallace sat out the last hour of another three-hour practice with routine soreness – through a full-court drill that would have had Kenyan marathoners begging for mercy. Up and down the court they went, two balls always in play, running three-man fast break drills in both directions. One among them would get the layup attempt, while the two trailers would simultaneously receive passes and shoot wing jump shots. The goal: 250 baskets in 10 minutes, racing the clock and the limits of human endurance.

It is, at its heart, a conditioning drill, of course, but it incorporates basketball skills so that players must perform despite crushing fatigue – handling the ball without a misstep and shooting jump shots through weary legs and heavy arms.

“We definitely want to make every drill competitive,” Curry said. “When you have a team that has been as successful as this group, you have to mix things up a lot to keep their attention, to keep them challenged. So we put a goal on every drill we do. There’s a winner and a loser in every drill or there’s a number the group has to get. Today it was 250.”

The final tally: 269.

Curry has preached consistency of effort since being named to succeed Saunders. He said, famously, at his introductory press conference that the way you get a motivated team was “to sit the ones who aren’t motivated.” There were nights the past few seasons when it wasn’t very hard at all to score on the Pistons. Curry doesn’t merely want to eliminate those nights, he wants to eliminate every possession within those nights that doesn’t live up to his standards of effort.

He’s got the depth to give his words wallop. He’s got the conviction to stay true to his code. And he’s got a team well on its way to having the legs needed to obey what the mind instructs.

So, yeah, it’s dangerous to make projections after four days of training camp. But this one feels pretty safe.

A few more thoughts on the open practice held Thursday night at Oakland University:

• The Rasheed Wallace-Amir Johnson pairing looks like it benefits both players. As Curry said, “They’ve done a really good job. Amir brings all the athletic ability and youth to the floor. He’s not a very vocal guy, so when you put him out there with Rasheed, Rasheed helps him in a lot of areas and he doesn’t make nearly as many mistakes. I think they complement each other very well. Sheed can’t move like he once could, but he can direct Amir to do a lot of the dirty work for him.”
  
  It’ll be interesting to see how opposing teams defend Johnson. He’s not going to take many shots out of the half-court offense, but if you let the man guarding him drift, Amir will make a killing on the offensive glass – another Rodmanesque comparison.



• I’m still trying to figure out how Walter Herrmann can carve out a role when it’s clear that the only way to accommodate the kind of minutes Stuckey and, to a lesser degree, Afflalo are in line to receive. But Herrmann showed in the OU scrimmage that he’s got a really effective, really unorthodox offensive array. His scoring burst also suggested rookie Walter Sharpe has some work to do defensively before he can begin to challenge for minutes. But Sharpe has a chance to be a really good offensive player. On offensive potential alone, Sharpe might wind up being one of the top 10 players from the last draft.

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A rousing night at OU's open practice

Another really nice open practice at Oakland University. They came here last year because The Palace was unavailable, but I’d be surprised if they move it away from OU anytime soon. It’s a perfect venue for it – just big enough, not too big – and they get a terrific response from the OU students.

The night started with 20 minutes of Palace Patrol doing their thing, shooting T-shirts into the crowd and getting the crowd revved up; then some Automotion dance routines, followed by a series of dazzling Flight Crew dunks. Pretty amazing how far the trampoline dunk has come as an art form in the last decade or so.

Then the Pistons took the court at about 6:50, all of them introduced individually. They started it like they do all their practices – with Arnie Kander and Dave Boyer running the Pistons through their stretching drills as Michael Curry explained the purpose behind the warmup.

I talked to Arnie about this last week. I found this interesting: He’s not worried about loosening up the muscles. He wants to warm the body up from the inside – the ligaments, the tendons, the bones, the cartilage and, more importantly, the fluid that surrounds them. In so doing, the muscles will warm up gradually. You won’t find the Pistons bending over to touch their toes – there’s nothing in that movement that approximates a basketball motion. He’s a fascinating guy. Parents will love this: He thinks the best way to keep kids healthy is to keep them active by … doing household chores! Give ’em a rake or a mop and put ’em to work. And if they’re in middle school, at least, have them start packing their own lunch so they’re aware of what type of fuel they’re putting in their body. By the way, he thinks energy drinks are really bad ideas, at least the caffeine-based ones.

Rasheed Wallace, as he did last year, grabbed a couple of kids out of the stands, gave them headbands, had them do all of the warmup exercises and invited them to sit on the bench during their scrimmage. Rasheed does that sort of thing all the time behind the scenes. Kids are drawn magnetically to him and he’s as open and genial with them as anyone in the game. He also made Walter Sharpe wear a headband with “rookie” hand-scrawled across the front. Will Bynum escaped such treatment, a nod to his cup of coffee with Golden State a few years ago. Rodney Stuckey, Arron Afflalo and Sammy Mejia got it last year, too.

The Pistons then split into two groups – perimeter players on one end, big men on the other – for what Curry calls “player development” work. Drills, basically, lots of shooting drills, intended to simulate the types of shots each group of players would get in games, plus rebounding drills for the big men.

Curry split the team into three five-man units for the scrimmage portion of the practice. The units were grouped like this:

• Blue – Cheikh Samb, Jason Maxiell, Tayshaun Prince, Alex Acker and Chauncey Billups.



• Orange – Antonio McDyess, Kwame Brown, Walter Herrmann, Arron Afflalo and Will Bynum.



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

It wasn’t a conventional scrimmage in that White team would take it from one end to the other against the Blue defense, then Blue would come back the other way against the Orange defense, then the orange the other way vs. the white defense. If an offense scored, it continued on offense.

They started the clock at 60 minutes and let it run. They played in roughly 10-minute segments and the unit that had the most baskets “won” – with the two losing units running a few down-and-back sprints.

White won the first segment with six baskets to two for Orange and one for Blue. Amir Johnson was the star of the segment with two baskets – one on a lob feed from Wallace – and impressive rebounding.

Blue won the next segment with six baskets to four for Orange and one for White. Walter Herrmann was especially impressive with two 3-point baskets, one snaking drive finished with a one-handed swooping layup and a bullet pass through traffic to Arron Afflalo.

After that, they went to a more conventional scrimmage format. They did some switching up of units mid-stream, some of it necessitated by Prince sitting out with an ice bag strapped to his left knee. Nothing serious – they expect he’ll be back at practice on Friday. White played Blue for about 10 minutes, winning 17-9. Then Orange took Blue’s place. Stuckey scored nine of White’s 21 points before taking a seat, Acker switching teams and playing point guard.

Stuckey and Herrmann wound up scoring 11 points apiece. Sharpe added six, but he was the victim of all of Herrmann’s points.

We’ll have more scrimmage impressions tomorrow on Pistons.com.

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Curry's aim: More in less from Prince

No matter how strongly Pistons faithful believe Tayshaun Prince deserves All-Star status, his numbers last year – 13.2 points, 4.9 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 45 percent field-goal shooting – make it a tough sell in an Eastern Conference teeming with quality small forwards. Try these numbers, instead: 18.2 points, 6.1 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 53 percent shooting.

Overlay Prince’s universally recognized defensive capabilities and you’ve got a slam-dunk All-Star.

But we didn’t just pluck that second set of numbers out of thin air. They represent Prince’s totals in the 13 games he played when the Pistons were down at least one starter in the first five months of last season. There were also five such games played in April, but we eliminated them from consideration because Prince’s minutes were drastically reduced as Flip Saunders rested all his key players down the stretch with the Pistons locked in as the No. 2 playoff seed.

Michael Curry noticed that trend, too, as a first-year assistant on Saunders’ staff.

“We want to put him in a situation in which he can be aggressive,” Curry said of Prince after Thursday’s morning practice – the Pistons are set for their open practice at Oakland University 6:30-8:30 tonight. “At times in the past, whenever one of the starters has sat for injury or whatever reason, Tayshaun has been more aggressive. What we want to do is make him try to be aggressive no matter who is on the court.

“Some of that is putting him in a situation where we have more of a free-flowing offense, where we’re not dictating who’s shooting the basketball or who we’re running that play through. We’d rather the offense create that. I think that will help him. And also calling some sets where he can get in position to use his abilities.”

Flip Saunders would also urge Prince to be more aggressive and, at one point in last spring’s playoffs, surprisingly said could it be time for Prince to make the Pistons his team. Saunders would often defend Prince after games where his statistical line was unimpressive, suggesting it was more about Prince, as the fourth option, getting stuck with the basketball late in the shot clock while his teammates stood around waiting for him to create something out of chaos.

Curry’s offense hopes to eliminate those situations by emphasizing more aggression – more motion, more attacking of the paint and more post-up opportunities for perimeter players.

“He feels it’s more important for us to get the ball in the paint more,” Prince said. “So I think you’ll see me and Rip and Chauncey, the perimeter guys, more in the block to try to draw some fouls and not rely on jump shots like we normally do.”

It wasn’t necessarily the design of Saunders’ offense that limited Prince’s opportunities, he said, but the execution.

“You’ve got to be patient through those plays and not just settle for the first and second options,” he said. “So much last year, we just settled for the first option. If we settle for the first option this time around, he’s not going to allow that and we’re going to have to look for the second and third options to move the ball more, to get more screens and do those things so teams will have to expend more energy on defense and not just rely on what we’re doing on the first possession.”

Though Prince’s assists, field-goal and free-throw attempts all were greater in games when the Pistons were missing one or more starters, his efficiency is where the gap was most noticeable. He averaged 13.6 shots in the 13 short-handed games, 11.4 in all games; and 4.0 free-throw attempts in short-handed games, 2.9 in all games. Those numbers wouldn’t suggest a five-point-per-game difference and roughly 20 percent higher totals in rebounds and assists.

The lesson seems to be that Prince has more to offer if the Pistons figure out ways to get the ball in his hands more without diminishing the efficiency of their other All-Star-caliber players – all while facilitating Curry’s intent to deepen his bench.

“What we’ll try to do throughout the season is get more in less from Tayshaun,” Curry said. “Which is hard to ask for a guy to give you more who’s giving you a lot already, but we’re going to ask for more from Tayshaun and try to monitor him and not have him in what I called wasted minutes out on the court. If there’s games in which there’s four or six minutes we can take and give him rest, we’ll try to do that throughout the season.”

• Curry said the Pistons will get in 45 minutes to an hour of drills at tonight’s open practice at OU, then he’ll put 60 minutes on the clock and let his three five-man units scrimmage with a running clock.



• Curry on the break from training camp monotony provided by the OU atmosphere: “Any time we get a chance for the fans, we want to go out and show our appreciation and do what we’re here to do. That’s what the fans expect of us – come out and put on a really good show. And that show is playing hard and really competing and playing with the passion that we know everyone has that plays this game.”



• For the third straight day, Amir Johnson was playing alongside Rasheed Wallace as Curry continued to otherwise mix up the three units.

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Hamilton-Afflalo duels typify intense camp

Michael Curry’s message about playing hard every night hasn’t wavered since his introductory press conference in June. It remains to be seen how the Pistons respond to that message on a snowy December night in Milwaukee or through the dog days of February. But I’ll say this much: The first two days of training camp have been … ummm, intense.

After another three-plus-hour session Wednesday morning ended with another hand-to-hand combat of a scrimmage, Arron Afflalo held his arms out, palms raised, and shook his head, looking at the welts and abrasions on his biceps and forearms. “I’ve got the most scratches of all-time,” he said, “in Pistons history.”

(Somewhere, John “Crash” Mengelt is challenging that assertion.)

The scratching and clawing between Rip Hamilton and Arron Afflalo is hardly the only battle within the battle of Curry’s first training camp. Kwame Brown took it into the paint, throwing the ball through the basket with his left hand while nearing throwing Cheikh Samb through with his right. Somebody hits the floor on every other possession. Every whistle brings a howl of protest. Breakdowns that lead to easy baskets – rare occurrences – draw immediate huddles to assess the cause.

But Hamilton’s perpetual feistiness and Afflalo’s off-the-charts competitiveness make their matchups perhaps the most compelling of camp. If you had no sense of basketball’s code or no understanding of Hamilton and Afflalo’s utter team-first attitude, you’d swear that after practice they’d be planning a shootout at 40 paces.

Instead, they’re each other’s biggest supporters, throwbacks to a time before statistics, enormous money and an agent’s exhortations drove a wedge between individual and team goals.

“I always tell him, I’m trying to mold him and teach him so when he gets out on the floor, it’s just him and an opponent,” Hamilton said after Wednesday’s morning session. “I don’t want him to look to the sidelines. So it’s important in practice to push him to the limit. I know if I push him to the limit, in games he won’t be looking to the sidelines, being lost.”

“You’ve got to respect Rip just for the way he competes every day,” Afflalo said. “He doesn’t come in one day and doesn’t want to play. He’s going to be Rip Hamilton every day. That’s enough said. It makes me mentally tough. I feel I’m a mentally tough person already, but to compete against a guy like that who challenges you not only physically but mentally, that’s part of the game. There are a lot of physically gifted players in the league, but if you’re one of the more mentally tough, you can compete with them.”

Somebody asked Afflalo if there was a boundary he maintains that he won’t cross in his ultracompetitive practice jousts with the three-time All-Star with whom he’ll job share the shooting guard position this season.

“Not on this court, I don’t,” he said. “Rip is a player I watched growing up, he’s been an All-Star many times – I respect him. And I watch him when he’s not paying attention. But when we get on the court, it’s my time to shine and battle against him. For me, there’s no place to get better than playing against Chauncey, Rip and Stuckey and Tayshaun every day. I don’t think I’m going to get that competition (in games).”

Hamilton came into the league nine years ago as a top-10 pick off of UConn’s 1999 national champions, playing on a Washington Wizards team whose leading scorer, Mitch Richmond, manned his position. Nobody offered to play a mentoring role for him.

“I just never wanted to be ordinary,” he said. “So I always pushed myself and motivated myself and I always said, when I get the opportunity to be a veteran, the next guy coming up, I’m going to prepare him. When I leave the floor, I don’t want to see a dropoff. And when I see a dropoff, I’m going to let you know it. That’s why I always tell Arron, regardless of who’s in the game, you’ve still got to play at a high, high intensity.”

With Hamilton and Chauncey Billups both three-time All-Stars and Rodney Stuckey and Afflalo each capable of commanding more minutes this season, it’s more than likely that any combination of three of them will be on the floor at the same time this season – which means Hamilton is going to get minutes at small forward. Curry reiterated that Wednesday when he said Walter Herrmann wouldn’t get all the backup small forward minutes because “I envision times having Rip, Stuckey and Chauncey on the floor together.”

Hamilton’s competitiveness rears its head when he considers that possibility, despite his 190-pound frame.

“It’s not what you see,” he grinned, “it’s what’s inside. I’ve got the heart of a lion.”

He recalled advice longtime NBA center Tree Rollins provided when Rollins, then a Washington assistant, talked to him as a rookie.

“He always told me, ‘Rip, the more positions you learn, the more time you’ll be on the floor.’ I always told myself I can play the one, I can play the two, I can play the three.”

That’s if he and Afflalo don’t maim each other during practices.

• OK, before I get another flood of “how tall is Amir” questions, I asked him the other day and he said during pre-camp physicals they told him he measured in at 6-foot-11 and 226 pounds.



• Curry mixed up the three five-man units from the first day to the second, never with more than two starters to a unit, but the constant from Tuesday to Wednesday was the big man pairing of Rasheed Wallace and Johnson. I asked him if there was anything to read into that regarding the fifth starting spot.
  
  “They work well together,” he said. “When you’re trying to balance out the team, you look at trying to have one of our younger guys with the veterans.”
  
  Kwame Brown and Antonio McDyess were teammates today, as were Jason Maxiell and Cheikh Samb. On Tuesday, it was Brown and Maxiell, McDyess and Samb.



• The defense has won more than its share of battles with the offense, but Walter Sharpe had a nice moment when he grabbed an offensive rebound, then hit a half-hook from about 12 feet over Tayshaun Prince.



• Curry wrapped up the practice but putting the offense in situations where they’d have to go the length of the court, down by two points, in eight seconds. Then inbound the ball at half-court, down three points. Rasheed Wallace designed a play for his red team that netted him a potential tying 3-pointer. He missed, but Johnson made a spectacular play that saw him get fouled while almost tapping the rebound in.



• Curry only scheduled one session Wednesday after going hard twice on Tuesday. The schedule for Thursday calls for another three-hour morning practice, then the popular open practice at Oakland University 6:30-8:30 p.m.

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