Terse Curry communicates with playing time

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

They did neither on Sunday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Apology a critical first step in regaining trust

The relationship with Allen Iverson's teammates is the only thing that bears watching in the aftermath of his Thanksgiving practice no-show. Outsiders might wonder first about Michael Curry - especially as a first-time head coach - and how Iverson's insubordination would threaten to undermine his authority.

But to know Curry and - especially - to know Curry's relationship with Joe Dumars renders such concern moot. Nobody was thrilled about rolling out of bed on Thanksgiving morning - after not getting out of The Palace until nearly midnight after Wednesday's win over New York - to come to practice. But the Pistons were griping good naturedly to each other about it after Wednesday's game - brothers in misery, so to speak.

When Iverson didn't show, he set himself apart from his team. He had said and done every right thing since being introduced to Detroit on Nov. 4, talking from the heart that first day about having achieved every individual honor he could in the NBA - MVP, scoring champ, first-team all-NBA - but having a hole on his resume that could only be filled by winning the title. He convinced Joe D that's all that mattered to him.

Actions trump words every time, though, so sleeping in on Thanksgiving morning while the players with far more equity in this franchise reported for duty taps the brakes on Iverson's Pistonization.

But almost nothing is black or white. One misstep doesn't mean Iverson is destined to fall short of becoming fully vested with the Pistons. The first step was a critical one and he took that Friday morning - apologizing all around, but most especially to his teammates.

Michael Curry will be fine. If anything, his handling of the whole affair underscores the ease with which he's assumed command of the Pistons. There were no histrionics from Curry, no dangerous ultimatums, no bridges burned. He acted swiftly, fairly and decisively.

The only issue here is how Iverson's teammates respond to him going forward. They're a serious group and they properly regard Iverson's no-show as a breach of team ethic. But they're also mindful that the only goal that matters to them is winning a championship. They know that's much more attainable with a focused and productive Iverson as opposed to an alienated and disengaged Iverson. So they'll give him every chance to regain their trust. His apology was a necessary first step.

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AI's a no-show at Thanksgiving practice

The Pistons thought they were getting Thanksgiving day off, but Michael Curry decided that the lack of practice time they've had since acquiring Allen Iverson made that an unaffordable luxury. So he scheduled a 10 a.m. practice and told the team he would keep them only an hour.

They all arrived for work as scheduled - except Iverson. Curry said Iverson would be fined heavily, would not start Friday night's game against Milwaukee and might not play at all.

When Joe Dumars made the trade that sent Chauncey Billups and Antonio McDyess to Denver - McDyess is coming back to the Pistons after sitting on a mandated 30-day period - he said he and Iverson talked at length and Dumars was struck by Iverson's sincerity in proclaiming he was focused only on winning an NBA championship after amassing every individual accolade attainable, from the scoring title to the MVP award.

This won't sit well with Joe D. You can bet that he and Iverson will be having at least one more heart to heart.

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Practice makes perfect - well, almost

Michael Curry is a meticulous organizer and preparer. So when Joe Dumars told him about the trade that sent Chauncey Billups and Antonio McDyess to Denver for Allen Iverson, the initial jolt of adrenaline the news delivered to his system was followed a nanosecond later by the doodling and planning to smooth his integration and make it work.

Curry knew, because of the trade’s timing, it would be two weeks before he could get Iverson on the court for a full-bore practice. A three-game road swing to the East Coast, a quick stopover at The Palace, and a four-game Western Conference road swing, with a schedule that didn’t give the Pistons the separation between games needed to go hard in practice, too, meant it would be Nov. 18 – the Tuesday after the Sunday conclusion of the Western trip – before the team reshaped by the Nov. 3 trade would have its first rigorous practice.

But Curry’s well-crafted plan was derailed by circumstance, as such plans often are by the tumult of an NBA regular season. When the Pistons got back from Phoenix, Rip Hamilton had personal business that required his attention – any businessman who returns home after having been gone for 13 of the past 15 days could empathize – and Iverson’s knee had flared up.

So it was just this past Monday and Tuesday when Curry got to conduct those precious practices he describes as “training-camp mode” – practices where Mike Abdenour tapes up their ankles and they go at it almost like it’s a game.

It was then, for the first time, that Curry got to show Iverson at full speed – not in a walk-through, not on a piece of paper, not on tape – the schemes, the areas of responsibility, the expectations, that he has for his point guard at the defensive end of the floor. Never mind the offense, which remains a work in progress.

“I feel really good after those two days of practice,” Curry said before Wednesday night’s game with the Knicks, after which his team gave him reason to feel even better. “Guys understand and see where we’re at. Where we want to go is going to take a lot of work, but I thought guys worked their tails off this summer and throughout training camp. To start the season and then …” And then, the trade. “You’ve just got to realize we have to start again. They’re willing to do that, and I think over time we’ll be better because of it.”

It was especially encouraging because the 110-96 victory was a team win built on a series of heartening individual performances from a bunch of players who’d been struggling to find their way lately.

Rodney Stuckey, perhaps as critical to the Pistons’ playoff viability as any of them, had his first career double-double with 13 points and 11 assists in half a game. He finally admitted that his struggles traced to getting bludgeoned by Shaquille O’Neal and crashing hard on his right wrist, the pain of which made activities like shooting, passing and dribbling – tasks fairly critical to effective point guard play – difficult, painful or impossible. If the Pistons keep getting the Stuckey of Wednesday night, they’ll have ample reason to give thanks.

Rip Hamilton found his shot, hitting six of his first seven attempts, and took another step in the evolution of getting familiar with Allen Iverson. Tayshaun Prince got 15 shots up – a sign he’s finding the balance Curry wants for him between being a scoring threat and the do-whatever-they-need guy he’s always been.

Arron Afflalo nailed all five of his shots – three triples and two long deuces – and while he’s still valued mostly for his rugged defense and overall tenacity, his growth as a shooter, a natural progression for young players, makes him a much more valuable asset. And Amir Johnson and Jason Maxiell played their roles exactly as Curry might have imagined it when he mapped out the season, combining for 25 points and 18 rebounds.

Now, one great night against a team with its own transition issues doesn’t mean the Pistons are full speed ahead for good. Against more stout teams, there will still probably be stretches where their lack of familiarity reveals itself. But two days of practice cured a lot of ailments. Imagine what two months might produce.

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Smaller foes could signal Amir's return

Mason, the voice of The Palace, has risen above the universal obscurityof public-address announcers through sheer showmanship, making pregame player introductions as much a part of the Pistons experience as his iconic Deee-troit Basketball refrain known worldwide.

But fans might have a reason beyond Mason's dramatic effect to settle into their seats before tipoff when the Pistons host the New York Knicks on Wednesday night. There might be another change to the starting lineup.

"Depending on who they start, we may start Amir against New York and we may start Amir against Milwaukee (on Friday)," Michael Curry said after Tuesday's practice. "Some nights we're going to play Kwame as a starter, some nights it's going to be Amir."

Amir Johnson was elevated to the starting lineup in training camp, replacing Antonio McDyess, whom Curry decided would be best utilized off the bench where his ability to score wouldn't be overshadowed as it was a season ago when he joined the starting lineup. McDyess was traded two games into the regular season in the Allen Iverson-Chauncey Billups trade, but he's due to return to the Pistons - after negotiating a buyout in Denver and passing on more lucrative offers from other NBA teams - within the next few weeks.

Five games after that, Johnson came out of the starting lineup, replaced by Kwame Brown, Curry citing a stretch of games against bigger centers like Andrew Bynum, Shaquille O'Neal and Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

In Brown's six games as a starter, Johnson has picked up one DNP-CD - did not play, coach's decision - and averaged a shade over 11 minutes in the five others. But Curry's thoughts on which player will start alongside Rasheed Wallace haven't been influenced by the performance of either Johnson or Brown, or by the imminent return of McDyess.

"I've said from the beginning, it depends on the matchups," Curry said. "You all see Amir. Why would I put Amir our there and start him against Shaq and Bynum? That's not a favorable matchup for him. As a coach, that's not putting a guy in position to succeed. I don't care about how many lineups we have. That doesn't faze me. It's a matter of putting a guy in position each night to give them a chance to be successful."

When McDyess returns, he'll assume the role he left - coming off the bench, usually in relief of Rasheed Wallace to give the Pistons both a scoring threat in their frontcourt and a big man who can spread the floor and give Iverson and Rodney Stuckey, especially, wider openings to probe.

Johnson has remained remarkably upbeat despite going from starter to not playing on a night he was back home in Los Angeles - the Nov. 14 win over the Lakers that counts as the signature win of the season so far.

"All you can do is stay positive and work hard every day and be ready whenever your name is called," Johnson said. "I never looked down on myself. I always work hard when I get in the game. All I can do is be ready."

If Johnson can grade out well in the areas Curry expects him to contribute most - smothering the pick and roll, harassing ballhandlers in the backcourt, keeping possessions alive with offensive rebounds and hustle plays - the transitioning Pistons would appear to be a better fit for him. Iverson, Stuckey and Will Bynum are all capable of breaking defenses down, which creates the type of chaos in which Johnson should thrive.

"Very much so," he said. "They're quicker point guards. They come off the pick and roll looking to pass. I can either go for the rebound or I could be ready for the pass. It's definitely to my strength to be ready for that."

The Knicks, already playing small under ex-Phoenix coach Mike D'Antoni and his preference for up-tempo basketball, got even smaller with last week's trade that shipped Zach Randolph to the Clippers. In a 122-117 win over Washington on Sunday, they started David Lee at center and Wilson Chandler at power forward. Against that lineup, expect Mason to be calling Amir Johnson's name amid the fireworks and flamethrowers that accompany pregame player introductions.

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McDyess effect: More pep to their step

The loss of Antonio McDyess set off a ripple effect that threw the Pistons out of their orbit for the past few weeks, so the news that McDyess would return to them as soon as the 30-day window that barred his return opens began to set things right.

A day after the Pistons lost at home by 26 to the 2-9 Minnesota Timberwolves, the mood was decidedly upbeat at their practice facility.

"You saw guys had a little more pep to their step today and were a little more talkative," Michael Curry said after conducting a nearly three-hour practice heavy on defensive instruction. "I told them, we've been walking around for a week or so like a cloud was over us. Even when we won in LA and won at home against Cleveland, we didn't have that feel or look like everything was good. So today, they kind of had that look - which was surprising coming off a loss like that but not surprising when you realize that they realize they're getting Dice back."

The loss of McDyess spawned many trouble spots.

• It not only reduced Curry's stable of big men to four - Rasheed Wallace, Jason Maxiell, Kwame Brown and Amir Johnson - but it left Wallace as the only one among them who represents a perimeter scoring threat. That meant heavy minutes for Wallace. The Pistons hope to keep Wallace to about 30 minutes a game. He's at 36, which is the most he's played since he was 27 years old.
• Without McDyess' scoring punch to bring off the bench to start the second quarter, the Pistons were digging a hole for themselves in many games heading into halftime. Through 13 games, the Pistons have been outscored by 49 points in second quarters.
• Because Curry needed to keep another scorer on the floor whenever he would sit Wallace, that meant heavier minutes in many games for Tayshaun Prince, Allen Iverson and Rip Hamilton - at the expense of Arron Afflalo and other bench players Curry is trying to develop and heavy ready for the postseason.
• Without McDyess to spread the floor, the Pistons' new-found ability to break down defenders that Iverson, Rodney Stuckey and Will Bynum provide is muted.

"(McDyess' return) is good for us defensively and offensively," Wallace said. "Dice is another big in there who can shoot it on the perimeter and another rebounding big. It'll help Allen, also, because he's a driver. With that floor being spread, he's got the pick of the litter to go to - myself, Rip, Tay and now with Dice coming back."

Curry and his players aren't deluding themselves into thinking that the return of McDyess solves all of their problems. They've been out of sync offensively since swapping out Chauncey Billups for Iverson and their defense has only rarely been stout. But in addition to dealing with the trade fallout and the significant change that the Billups-to-Iverson transition requires, Curry's been dealing with a travel schedule that made meaningful practices all but impossible.

So ... back to basics on Monday.

"It was funny," Curry said. "Every defensive drill we did, three minutes into it - all of them were 10-minute segments - we started getting really good at it. That just shows how much slippage we had. Normally you can jump right into a drill. A lot of the stuff we're doing defensively, Allen hadn't done and a lot of our guys had slipped. I didn't see that whupping we got yesterday coming, but I did see a lot of slippage and wanted to get practice time.

"We camouflaged it with made shots against LA, Golden State, Cleveland. We just made shots. We still gave up 47, 48, 49 percent shooting and that's not going to be who we are as the season goes on."

Restoring soundness defensively will give the Pistons some margin for error for an offense that right now could use it. Ask Curry where the Pistons are on a scale of 1 to 10 on the continuum of the Iverson transition - 10 being fully integrated - and here's what he says: "I think we're about a 2 or 3 of where we're going when it's all said and done.

"We've got 82 regular-season games so how many more. Sixty-nine? One thing I knew coming into this position, what you're going to be judged on here is what you do in the postseason. You may take lumps doing things a certain way throughout the regular season. The reality is that the addition of Allen, especially having Dice back, the extended minutes for guys like Amir, Afflalo, Stuckey and all of those guys, all of those things are going to help us be better in April, May and June. I feel if they're better, we're going to be better and we can handle situations better. But we can't expect them to step up big at that time if they haven't been given opportunities during the year.

"Are we going to have growing pains when we go through that? Yeah, we are. Guys have to be better. Guys have to keep getting better defensively. Today, with the news of Dice and the practice we had, is a step in that direction."

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ESPN: McDyess coming back to Pistons

Two years ago, Antonio McDyess said he'd retire before reporting elsewhere when his agent tested the water to see how McDyess would react to a potential trade sitting on Joe Dumars' desk. Last year, he told me the same thing - that he wanted to win a championship here, or go down trying.

The Pistons had plenty of reasons to sweat these last three weeks since McDyess was included in the Allen Iverson-Chauncey Billups trade to make it work under salary-cap parameters, but in the end McDyess - according to Andy Miller, his agent, in an ESPN.com report - will re-sign with the Pistons next week.

That should brighten the mood after Sunday's deflating 106-80 home loss to the struggling Minnesota Timberwolves.

Here's what Miller told ESPN.com: "It was a very difficult decision for him. He was weighing good offers financially, along with other variables he thought were important. But going into the year he had a team goal set, and to not finish up with it, he didn't want to do that. He wants to finish the year, finish what he started in Detroit, then re-evaluate after the season is over."

Check back later today for reaction to the news that McDyess will be joining the Pistons again.

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Hitting bottom 1st step to reaching the top

The Pistons still have no idea what their ceiling is with Allen Iverson, but they at least now know where their floor must be. They’d better hope it doesn’t get any lower than Sunday, when the woebegone Minnesota Timberwolves thumped them by 26 at The Palace.

What we’ve learned in the three weeks since the Allen Iverson trade is that right now it’s not about who lines up against the Pistons, it’s about the Pistons. In their first home game since scoring 58 points in the second half to beat one of the league’s most rugged defensive teams, Cleveland, the Pistons scored 34 points in the first half against one of the league’s flimsier defenses, Minnesota’s.

The offense was bad Sunday and the defense might have been worse. And the tendency will be to blame a letdown, the bugaboo that marked the Flip Saunders era, the whole “flip the switch” conversation that drove him crazy.

But you know what it really is? Disorientation. A team that could find its way around with the lights off before has suddenly been plunked down in a new house, blindfolded, and is groping to find its way from the bedroom to the kitchen for something as simple as pouring a glass of water.

Let’s get this out of the way right up front: There’s no way around the fact that Sunday’s 106-80 setback was a bad loss. A really bad loss. The Timberwolves hadn’t won a road game yet. They limped to The Palace at 2-9. They got clubbed at home by Boston two nights ago, losing by virtue of being dominated 35-10 in the third quarter after leading narrowly at halftime. They led by 10 at halftime against the Pistons, too – and then won the third quarter decisively this time, 32-18.

“I stunk up the gym tonight,” Iverson said. “I couldn’t do anything right on the offensive end of the court.”

As if to make the newcomer feel at home, perhaps, Iverson had plenty of company in that stinking up the gym part. Iverson, Rip Hamilton and Rodney Stuckey – the three guards expected to give the Pistons the dynamic edge over their Eastern Conference competitors – shot a combined 5 for 27.

“If they go 5 for 27 and you add (Rasheed Wallace) together, 8 for 37, we’re not going to win many games,” was Michael Curry’s glum assessment.

Tayshaun Prince scored 20 points, dropping 8 of his 13 shots, and he tried to change the complexion of a lifeless game in the third quarter, when he took 8 of Detroit’s 18 shots and scored 13 of its18 points. But he had no help. Jason Maxiell played with verve off the bench, contributing 12 points and eight boards in 23 robust minutes, but Minnesota beat the Pistons soundly on a night the Timberwolves didn’t get anything special from the only guy on their team, Al Jefferson, who would start for the Pistons. Jefferson didn’t even hit his averages, scoring 19 points and grabbing eight rebounds. Randy Wittman only rode him for 32 minutes because he was getting whatever he wanted from everybody else.

The Timberwolves are ranked in the mid to low 20s – the bottom 15 percent of the league – pretty much across the board offensively. Yet they shot 53 percent against the Pistons. A 28 percent 3-point shooting team, Minnesota knocked down 7 of 11 against a porous defense.

“We all know (the offense) is not in sync right now as a group,” Curry said. “Offensively, we can get better. But until we get better offensively, we can’t be bad defensively. And the problem I have right now is we’re allowing missed shots to affect the way we’re defending – and that has to change.”

The knee-jerk reaction is to call that a lack of effort. I’d trace the roots elsewhere, though. That disorientation they’re experiencing in the wake of the Iverson trade has forced them all to start thinking about things they’ve executed by rote for years. In the long run, that’s a good thing. In the short term, well, there are going to be nights like this one.

No reasonable person expected a smooth transition to the Iverson era. Changing point guards two games into the season is extreme even if you’re swapping out one traditional point guard for another. Chauncey Billups and Allen Iverson could hardly be farther removed from one another on the continuum of NBA point guards.

But maybe the wins over the Lakers and Cavs, foremost, convinced others that they could warp this process, or at least capture enough lightning-in-a-bottle moments to routinely beat the Minnesotas of the NBA and hold their own against the elites until they gain their footing.

They’re home now for the first time approaching an extended stay this season and Curry has his practice schedule mapped out for the next two weeks. Sunday’s dreary performance should assure him his team’s full attention for the two days of workouts before the Knicks – another team hit with major dislocation with Friday’s blockbuster trades of Zach Randolph and Jamal Crawford – come to The Palace.

They know they have work to do, in other words, and for the first time since the trade, the schedule is giving them a fair chance to get that work done.

“We’ve got no choice,” Hamilton said. “We’ve got to figure it out. It’s very disappointing. You want to get a game on your home court. They’ve been struggling and we knew that. … Very frustrated. Just the simple fact that where we want to get to and where we are now … it hurts. The way we’ve been losing lately, it’s tough.”

A 26-point home loss to a winless road team? Yeah, that’s pretty tough. It’s one of those scores they’ll notice in other NBA cities and start asking questions about what’s wrong with the Pistons. It’s the type of cold water to the face that rivets the attention of a chastened team. The Pistons have found their floor. Starting with Monday’s practice, they’ll all start the quest to find their ceiling with a little more urgency.

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Figuring it out, game by game

A lifetime ago, in the first year I covered the Pistons on a consistent basis - the 1986-87 season when they'd traded for Adrian Dantley and drafted John Salley and Dennis Rodman - I asked then-Milwaukee Bucks coach Don Nelson how long he thought it would take Chuck Daly's team to find its identity and settle in after the significant turnover in personnel.

"Quite a while," he said, or words to that effect. "We've only made one big change, trading for Jack Sikma, and I told our team it would take us half the season to really get comfortable."

It should be noted that the Sikma trade happened on July 1, giving Nelson all summer to doodle plays on cocktail napkins and his team all of training camp and the preseason to figure out how to play, all of a sudden, with a center more comfortable facing the basket from 22 feet than posting up with his back to the rim from 10 feet.

The Pistons just underwent an even more radical transition. Changing point guards is like changing quarterbacks. The offense Michael Curry spent his summer imagining and implementing was designed with a physical, big, strong point guard whose strengths were perimeter shooting, controlling tempo and executing the called play so precisely that it would work seven times out of 10 even when the defense knew it was coming. The point guard he's inherited is slight, slithery and at his best when a gust of wind blows the script away and chaos is the order of the day.

The Pistons, the NBA's model of consistency for the new millenium, were about to undergo their most significant facelift since the 2002-03 season - the year Chauncey Billups was signed as a free agent and Jerry Stackhouse was swapped for Rip Hamilton - even before Joe Dumars shipped Billups and Antonio McDyess to Denver for Allen Iverson two games into the season.

The Iverson trade took the degree of their makeover from a 3 to a 7 on a 1-10 scale. Toss the timing of the trade atop the heap - not just that it happened two games into the season, but in the midst of perhaps the most trying stretch of schedule they'll face all season - and you can ratchet it up to a 9.

Long way of saying: Take the loss to Boston on Thursday night with a chunk of salt. The hand-wringers will say two blowouts to the Celtics this year proves the Pistons can't compete with them, but there's no more logic in that than to say the Pistons proved their superiority over the Lakers and Cavs - by many accounts, the best teams in the West and East so far - by snapping their respective seven- and eight-game winning streaks within the past week.

The Pistons were at a significant disadvantage in each of their two games with Boston. In the first, Iverson had been with the team for all of one game and one practice. In the second, the Pistons had played the night before - and played Cleveland, the league's hottest team - while the Celtics were home resting and, oh, by the way, the transition to Iverson is still in its infancy.

NBA regular-season games are fun and entertaining, and when you look at a representative sample size of them, they're meaningful and often predictive of playoff success. But to draw ironclad conclusions from any single one of them is foolish. There are just too many variables to take into account to extrapolate anything of substance from an isolated November matchup.

The Pistons looked sluggish and confused in the first half against Cleveland, then dynamic and certain in a 58-point second half to win going away. They looked sluggish and confused against Boston pretty much all night.

You know what? It's going to be that way for a while. It's going to come and go. Momentum is almost always an elusive thing in the NBA. It's especially going to be true for these Pistons for the next 15 or 20 games.

But game by game, practice by practice, they'll figure it out. All of them. Curry will discover playing groups that click better than others - perimeter combinations, frontcourt pairings and the melding of one with the other. Iverson will get a better feel for when to probe and when to pull back. Rip Hamilton will begin to sense how to exploit the openings Iverson creates for others. Iverson will know where and when to look for Rasheed Wallace and Wallace, too smart to not make this work, will find the soft spots Iverson's creativity manifests. Tayshaun Prince, as intuitive as Wallace, will grow more and more into his role as the facilitator.

And all those useful parts off of Curry's bench - Rodney Stuckey and Arron Afflalo, Jason Maxiell and Amir Johnson, Will Bynum and Walter Herrmann - will continue the gradual, sometimes painful, process of finding their niche within the evolving bigger picture.

To a great extent, all of that uncertainty is invigorating - for the Pistons and for their fan base. The sameness that gave this team a certain comfort level was both good and bad. The hard work of making this transition is something that will require a certain mental focus that might have been beyond their reach before the trade. Now, shaken out of their comfort zone, no longer able to go by rote, they're using brain muscles and drawing on inner strengths they haven't had to exercise in a very long time.

They survived the grueling 12-game stretch to start this season - the one that looked daunting even more the dislocation caused by the Iverson-Billups trade - and now get to spend some time at home, allowing more and better focused practice time. Better than survived it really, coming out the other side with an 8-4 record.

They get eight of their next 12 games at home, a stretch that covers the next month, a much gentler pace than the 12 games in 23 days they've just experienced. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy. It's going to come and go for a while. But it should come more often, stay a little longer when it does, and go less frequently. And after these next 12 games, then we might be ready to make some meaningful assessments.

• Walter Herrmann took a hard shot to the head late in Thursday's game, suffered a slight concussion and stayed overnight for observation in a Boston hospital. He returned home Friday morning and is listed day to day. If the Pistons hold him out of Sunday's game with Minnesota, they would activate Walter Sharpe. Since the trade of Billups, McDyess and Cheikh Samb, the Pistons are operating two players under the 15-man roster limit.
• Curry said he got to Boston in the wee hours of Thursday morning after the Cleveland game, turned on the TV and was jolted to see a report that Antonio McDyess was considering an offer from Charlotte. That one doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Beyond the mutual affection McDyess and Larry Brown hold for one another, Charlotte wouldn't satisfy McDyess' desire to compete for a championship. The Bobcats are also not known to throw money around and have been suffering badly at the gate this season. The teams that make the most sense for McDyess are Cleveland and San Antonio, but the overwhelming industry consensus remains that McDyess is waiting out the 30-day window to sign with the Pistons on Dec. 7.

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Offense, defense both have room to grow

Allen Iverson knows the Pistons' offense is going to play better as he and his teammates begin to grasp the other's tendencies and preferences. Michael Curry knows the Pistons' defense is going to get tougher once they hit a friendlier stretch of schedule that has them sleeping in their own beds for a few consecutive nights.

It won't always look like it did in the second half of Wednesday night's dynamic win over Cleveland, when the Pistons outscored the NBA's hottest team 58-40, erasing a 13-point deficit to win by seven after leading by 13 with a few minutes to go.

But in that second half, and in their win last Friday over the NBA's then-hottest team, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Pistons have seen their possibilities. They've snapped winning streaks of seven and eight games inside of five days, and they've done it while the transition to the Iverson era was still in its infancy, while adjusting further to the loss and sometimes the struggles of Rodney Stuckey and to the absence of Antonio McDyess.

The point is this: The Pistons have the room to grow now that many didn't think existed before. (See what Magic Johnson has to say here, all the way to the bottom of his AOL interview: http://nba.fanhouse.com/2008/11/20/magic-johnson-talks-about-books-business-barack-and-basketball/.)

Nothing is guaranteed, of course. Maybe it's fair to say the Pistons have a higher ceiling but a lower floor than they did a few weeks ago, when Chauncey Billups' steady hand was on the offense and the Pistons led the league in familiarity.

The Pistons hit the Cavs with a 30-point fourth quarter with Tayshaun Prince and Rip Hamilton on the bench. That speaks to their depth, of course - Stuckey and Arron Afflalo were marvelous at both ends - but it also speaks to their potential. Prince has already discovered some of the joys of a new role that puts the ball in his hands more often, but Hamilton hasn't yet found his passing gear while playing alongside Iverson.

It's going to happen. It's tough to remember now, but Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton couldn't always anticipate each other's movements, either. It took them about a half of a season to make even Joe Dumars and the people who believed in them most think that they could become the second-best backcourt in franchise history.

Give Iverson-Hamilton another month, then see where we're at.

"You want to win (the Lakers and Cavs games) just for the confidence," Iverson said. "That measures us and gives us an idea what type of team we are, when everybody is putting those teams so far ahead of us and you go out there and knock 'em off. And knowing we haven't had a lot of time to practice and play games with each other, the feeling is we can only get better and, right now, that's our whole thing - just trying to find a rhythm in how we're playing our offense, just flowing like it was in the fourth quarter."

Before the game, I asked Curry how he measured defensive performance beyond his individual ratings system. The Pistons have ranked among the NBA's elite in things like points allowed and field-goal percentage defense since the Rick Carlisle days, but opponents were shooting .464 against the Pistons through 10 games, where they were at .437 last year - that's a significant difference.

"It's always a goal to make sure we're in the top 10," Curry said. "I know we're up right now. We've been on the road. You go back and check any 10-game stretch, if you play seven of them on the road, your field-goal percentage defense is going to be high. I expect for it to continue to get better at home. At the end of the year, it will all balance out. We'll be a top 10 field-goal percentage defense team. ... I would like to get back where we were toward the end of training camp. I thought we were pretty good defensively. We're not at that stage right now, but the only way you can get there is time and practice."

• An update on the two Pistons' second-rounders who signed to play in Europe:

Trent Plaisted got his feet wet in Italy, then experienced a disc problem in his back and returned to the United States, where he has undergone treatment in Los Angeles. Pistons VP Scott Perry told me he's doing well and readying to return to Italy.

Deron Washington, meanwhile, is playing very well in Israel. He's starting at small forward. In four games, he's averaging 12.0 points (third on his team), 6.5 rebounds (tied for first) and 2.5 steals (first) while playing 29.8 minutes (third). He's wowed his teammates and Israeli fans with his athleticism and leaping ability.

"All reports we've gotten on Washington have been very positive," Perry said.

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A daunting double-double for Tayshaun Prince

Where some see imminent catastrophe, others see opportunity. We could be talking about the immediate future of the American automobile industry - or Tayshaun Prince's All-Star candidacy.

In a little more than a 24-hour period, the Pistons' would-be, almost, near-miss All-Star gets a chance to stake his claim for a berth on the Eastern Conference's 2009 All-Star team - although the challenge is enough that some would instead be trying to stake their claim to an emergency federal bailout.

Tonight, you see, Mr. Prince gets to guard the early frontrunner for the 2009 MVP award, LeBron James, and tomorrow night, while suffering the after-effects of bumping and grinding for 40 minutes with the 260-pound Cleveland sledgehammer, he gets to go up against the 2008 Finals MVP - and, perhaps, James' nearest competitor for this year's award - Boston's Paul Pierce.

Nice double-double, huh?

Compounding matters, making the East All-Star team at small forward this season will be like trying to make it back in the 1960s as a center, when Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain could be penned onto the roster in August. Except worse. Because there are 15 teams in the East today - more than twice as many as there were 40 years ago.

Look at the East this year. Danny Granger has exploded in Indiana, which is exceeding expectations. He'll get credit for that. Richard Jefferson, no longer overshadowed by Jason Kidd and Vince Carter in New Jersey, is going to get plenty of chances to put up big numbers in Milwaukee. Hedo Turkoglu, coming off a Most Improved Player award in Orlando, will draw heavy consideration. Shawn Marion is new to the East this year and Miami is poised for a significant recovery. Joe Johnson, though technically a shooting guard, can easily play the position at 6-foot-8 and is the likely beneficiary of Atlanta's resurgence. Caron Butler commands great respect in Washington. Andre Igoudala will merit consideration in Philadelphia.

And they're all likely scrapping for one spot, assuming both Pierce and James are in one piece come mid-February.

But Prince is putting up career numbers: 16.9 points, 7.7 assists, shooting .464 and knocking down a preposterous .591 percent of his 3-point attempts - all while spending more and more time facilitating Detroit's offense.

Remember this, though: Coaches tend to reward success. Prince doesn't have a chance to win the fan vote, not with James and Pierce on the ballot. But coaches are drawn toward winning teams in filling out the rest of the All-Star roster. And with Prince emerging more prominently than ever with the Pistons, if they stay in the thick of the race for the No. 1 seed, they're going to notice Prince's numbers and they're particularly going to notice his versatility.

Against Cleveland, for one relevant example, he'll spend a considerable portion of his night as the de facto point guard on offense and as the power forward on defense. The Cavs' new look includes using James at power forward for 12 to 15 minutes a night. Prince will guard him for virtually every minute James is on the floor.

The difference will be that James will have to defend Prince, too, at his new position - and James, Pierce and other small forwards aren't necessarily accustomed to guarding players in the middle of the floor.

Prince doesn't think that plays greatly to his advantage, but he does think he has an edge as a 6-foot-9 point guard peering over the top of defenses.

"I just think I can read the defense a lot better to get the other guys open shots," he said. "A lot of times if Allen (Iverson) or (Rodney) Stuckey is at the top of the key and those guys are coming off screens down there, it's tougher for them to make passes over the top if they see the bigs open at the rim or if there's miscommunication or a bad defensive play by the other team. That's the only object I have as far as running (the offense) up there, but at the same time I have the opportunity to make a play."

Prince was going to have that opportunity this season regardless of the Iverson-Chauncey Billups trade, but it was going to be more when Billups was on the bench and Prince was running things with the second unit to start the second and fourth quarters. Now? It's close to becoming the staple of the offense.

"Allen and Rip (Hamilton) are so pivotal on those wings as far as where they like to create," Prince said. "With the addition of Allen, I think that was why you see it a lot more now. But I think coach Curry was going to give me the opportunity to make it happen anyway, just to give teams different looks and at the same time just for our offense to be more efficient."

Cleveland and Boston, in a little more than 24 hours, get a chance to see firsthand that different look Prince provides. And Prince gets a chance to put the NBA on notice that his All-Star candidacy deserves full consideration.

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Crash course continues for road-weary Pistons

Rip Hamilton and Allen Iverson got on the same page Tuesday - neither one practiced. Hamilton had an excused absence to deal with a family matter, while Iverson worked on the side with strength coach Arnie Kander to give his body a break from the pounding it took while playing heavy minutes on last week's four-game Western road swing.

So the furthering of the familiarity process between Iverson and the Pistons will continue as it has pretty much since the trade was made 16 days ago - in games, not in practices.

Partly because the absence of Antonio McDyess has thrown Michael Curry's frontcourt rotation out of whack, partly because of the unavailability of Rodney Stuckey for the first two games of the road trip and mostly because practice time has been precious little since the Iverson-Chauncey Billups trade was made, Curry has had to make the Pistons battle ready by throwing them into the teeth of the battle.

Tayshaun Prince is averaging 37.2 minutes a game and averaged 42.3 for the first three games of the West Coast trip before scaling back to 35 in the lopsided loss to Phoenix to complete the trip. Rip Hamilton, despite his shooting struggles, is averaging 35.8 minutes. Iverson averaged more than 40 a game during the West Coast swing and 12 of the 26 total minutes he sat in the four games came in the Phoenix loss. Rasheed Wallace, who at 34 was expected to average around 30 minutes a game this season, has played 35 or more minutes in seven straight games and is averaging 35.6 in the eight games since McDyess was included in the trade for Iverson.

Curry is trying to balance the desire to win games and hasten the integration of Iverson with the need to give his core veterans appropriate rest and his emerging young core necessary exposure. He'd like to moderate the minutes and he will.

"Eventually - once we get some practice time," he said Tuesday, the Pistons' first practice at home in 17 days. "Until you can practice, you're not going to be as sharp as a team. While you're still trying to win games and get guys going, it's kind of tough."

McDyess' absence hasn't only affected the frontcourt rotation, either, but has influenced the perimeter group as well because of the need to keep more scorers on the floor to make up for the lack of punch when Curry goes to frontcourt backups like Jason Maxiell or Amir Johnson.

"I always thought the biggest reason early we were able to play a lot of guys and a lot of minutes was because we had that scoring big coming off the bench," he said. " I've said it once, I've said it a hundred more times: We miss Antonio McDyess more than anything. He kind of changed the makeup of our team. If McDyess is out on the court with Rodney Stuckey, you can leave one starter (out) and have two other subs and you can play the whole quarter. We can't do that right now.

"In trying to move guys around to make sure we keep guys in a position where they can be successful, it's kind of tough. Sheed's minutes have gotten up; Tay's minutes have gotten up. But hopefully ... we can get Dice back whenever he makes his decision when he's going to do. If not, we're going to have to figure out a way within this group to get some more scoring in the frontcourt off the bench."

McDyess took a buyout from Denver four days after the trade was announced and cleared waivers last week. McDyess can't rejoin the Pistons for 30 days from the buyout settlement with Denver, which occurred on Nov. 7. Other teams have until then to woo him with promises of more money than the Pistons can offer and a significant role for a title contender. But Celtics president Danny Ainge told Boston media he didn't see much hope in swaying McDyess and most NBA insiders feel it's highly likely he'll return to the Pistons.

That day can't come soon enough for Michael Curry and the young players displaced by the rotation dislocation - and probably not for the overtaxed veterans picking up the slack, either.

• The Pistons have played seven of their first 10 games on the road, including seven of the last eight, but they're getting only the briefest opportunity to catch their breath. They took the rest of Monday off after getting home in the predawn hours from Phoenix, went back to work on Tuesday and now face a daunting back-to-back at home Wednesday against Cleveland and Thursday at Boston.

"The schedule is what it is," Curry said. "At the end of the year, we're going to play 82 games - 41 on the road, 41 at home. We've got to take care of business. Last time out (Nov. 9 against Boston), we had a poor home performance and we've got to make sure we come out and take care of home court."

• Rodney Stuckey didn't take any physics classes at Eastern Washington, so when I asked him if he appreciated Shaquille O'Neal's physics lesson in describing the violent spill Stuckey took after Shaq clobbered him in mid-air - drawing a flagrant-two foul and automatic ejection - he didn't seem especially impressed.

"It's just his explanation," he shrugged. "I'm good, though. It's over with. The refs called it how they saw it."

Stuckey wore tape around both wrists at Tuesday's practice. He got both hands down to break his fall, so the wrists bore the brunt of it.

"Look at these wrists," he said, holding his hands out. "They're taped. If it wasn't for me putting my hands on the ground, my whole grille would have been messed up. My wrists are sore. That's it.

"I haven't been hit like that, but I'm going to continue to take the ball to the basket. Shaq's a big dude. Whatever he said, it was right. I know he didn't do it on purpose, but I'm going to keep going in there."

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Rising in the East: Balance of power shifting

Two years ago NBA Western Conference teams were plus-64 in games against teams from East. Last year, despite an off-season that saw a virtual All-Star team of talent head from West to East - Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Jason Richardson, Zach Randolph and Rashard Lewis all switched sides - it actually got worse. The West was plus-66 against the East in 2007-08.

It's a long way from conclusive, but the first three weeks of this season suggest that not only has momentum been stemmed, it's turned 180 degrees. With a little more than 10 percent of the interconference schedule completed, the East holds a 31-15 edge over the West.

Some of that owes to the fact that the East teams have played a few more home games than the West. Some of it is attributable to the fact that Oklahoma City, which appears to be the weakest team in the league, has played seven of its 10 games against Eastern teams - and is 0-7 in those games - while the weakest team in the East so far, Washington, has played only one game against the West, although the Wizards' only win so far came against West power Utah.

Even though you couldn't prove it by the discrepancy totals, the gap really started to close last year if you measure it by legitimate title contenders and quality playoff teams. The minus-66 was mostly attributable to the impotence of the East's bottom feeders. The Knicks alone accounted for more than one-third of the 66-game deficit, finishing an imponderable 3-27 against the West. Miami, decimated by injury, was 7-23. Chicago and Milwaukee combined to go 26 below .500 against the West.

It's worth remembering that Boston's least challenging playoff series last year came in the NBA Finals against a Lakers team that wasn't seriously challenged in getting out of their conference.

This year there wouldn't appear to be any gap - at the top, at the bottom or in the middle.

Detroit, Boston and Cleveland are as strong as any threesome the West can mount. The Lakers got out of the gates looking dominant, but the Pistons went into the Staples Center with a scheduling disadvantage - they'd played the night before and had to travel to LA, while the Lakers were off and home - and won by double digits.

Beyond the Lakers, it's tough to identify the West's other legitimate title contenders as of mid-November. Utah has been wobbled by Deron Williams' ankle injury and Mehmet Okur's absence. San Antonio is trying to tread water until Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker get back. Houston has had mixed results integrating Ron Artest while it waits for Shane Battier's return. New Orleans is a mere 5-4.

The next tier of East teams looks to be Orlando, Toronto and Philadelphia with Atlanta slipping a little since its hot start as it copes with Josh Smith's absence. They represent an upgrade over last year's middle class for the East. In the Central Division alone, all three 2008 non-playoff teams - Chicago, Indiana and Milwaukee - look significantly more formidable than they did a year ago.

Miami and New York lost 126 games between them last year. It's possible they'll shave 50 games off of that total this season and challenge for playoff berths. Charlotte has personnel issues, but Larry Brown gives the Bobcats a chance at respectability. Even Washington has to believe that the pending return of Gilbert Arenas will allow the Wizards a shot at a turnaround.

The ugly numbers that teams like the Knicks, Heat, Bucks and Bulls put up last year against the West could this year be assumed by Western lodge members like Oklahoma City, Memphis, Minnesota and the LA Clippers. Those teams are a combined 6-32, just the type of starts that overwhelmed the teams at the bottom of the East a season ago.

• The Pistons' 7-3 start has them just one game behind Cleveland in the Central Division and one game behind Boston in the loss column for the No. 1 seed in the East despite playing a far less favorable schedule so far. The Pistons have had seven of their 10 games away from The Palace, while Cleveland has been home for six of its 10 games and Boston for six of its 11. Only two other Eastern Conference teams have had so few home games - Atlanta, which is 6-3, and Washington, 1-6. Five of the Pistons' next six games are at home, including four straight after they play at Boston on Thursday night.

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If Pistons still love a challenge, here's a doozy

The Goin' to Work Pistons, an era now in rapid transition to something else with Chauncey Billups having joined Ben Wallace as expatriated Pistons, would have loved this: Their next four games, coming in a dizzying week ahead, are against teams with a combined record of 28-6, a tidy .823 winning percentage.

But wait, as someone selling you a miraculous set of kitchen knives might say, there's more. The first of those games comes tonight at the undefeated Los Angeles Lakers. They're not just 7-0, they're winning games by a preposterous average of 18 points a game. ESPN's research gurus say only two teams in NBA history - the 1971-72 Bucks of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (22.6) and the 1966-67 76ers of Wilt Chamberlain (19.0) - ever had a wider winning margin through seven games.

It gets worse. While the Lakers were home watching the TNT doubleheader Thursday night, the Pistons' key players were logging unusually heavy minutes for the second time in three nights as they again had to come from behind, this time to beat Golden State. Tayshaun Prince played 46 minutes two nights after playing 43; Allen Iverson played 43 two nights after playing 46; Rasheed Wallace and Rip Hamilton were on their heels both nights.

After the Lakers game, they'll drag themselves to Phoenix for Sunday's finale of a four-game road trip that surely feels like the last of an eight-game trek - and an emotionally draining one, at that. It started, really, 11 days ago in Charlotte - the day news of the Billups-Iverson trade broke. The Pistons played that night and two nights later in Toronto without either Billups or Iverson as the trade moved through the pipeline. Iverson made his debut a week ago at New Jersey, having all of one practice with the team under his belt, then came to Detroit for his Palace debut on Sunday against the reigning NBA champion Celtics.

That made two games, one practice for Iverson. No wonder the Celtics had the Pistons appearing so out of sorts offensively. It didn't help any that whatever rotation ideas Michael Curry had drawn from Iverson's debut, the loss of Rodney Stuckey two quarters into the Boston game forced him to adjust on the fly again. And when the Pistons got up Monday morning after losing to the Celtics, they had to head back on the road again 48 hours after coming off the previous trip - and Stuckey stayed back in Detroit to undergo another battery of tests to determine the cause of his dizzy spell.

So it'll be a weary bunch that gets back to Detroit in the wee hours of Monday morning. They'll get one more practice in before an unforgiving back-to-back Wednesday and Thursday - hosting the red-hot Cavs (7-2 and on a six-game winning streak) and then heading to Boston, where the Celtics will be off on Wednesday and no doubt goading the leprechauns into all sorts of dirty tricks.

That looked like a really tough stretch of games when the schedule came out last summer - before the Pistons knew they'd be enduring the inevitable transitional bumps the trade presented, before dealing with the uncertainty of Stuckey's condition, before the Lakers established their dominance and the Celtics and Cavs got off to streaking starts.

Now it looks sadistic. No wonder Curry poured so much into those wins at Sacramento and Golden State. Joe Dumars has said he's not going to monitor the regular season for wins, necessarily, but in the mind-set his team adopts on a game-in, game-out basis. But the reality of their straits surely wasn't lost on the Pistons when the Iverson era began 0-2 and the next six games stretched out before them. If the Pistons had lost to both the Kings and Warriors - and neither of those places ever allows for easy wins under the best of circumstances - they could have been staring down the barrel of an eight-game losing streak.

That would have tested the resolve of all of them. There isn't anything remotely approaching a sure win over the next four, either, but the Pistons proved something to themselves to start this West Coast trip, no matter how the next week plays out. A few of the names have changed, but these Pistons don't back down from a challenge any more readily than the more familiar cast of recent vintage did.

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Bynum: 2nd choice making 1st-rate impression

When the Pistons were putting together their Summer League roster in the days leading up to and just after the June NBA draft, finding a No. 3 point guard was a priority. They wanted somebody young. They wanted somebody cut from a different cloth than Chauncey Billups and Rodney Stuckey, two big, physical point guards. They wanted somebody, in essence, who would approximate a young Lindsey Hunter.

They identified that player and were all but certain he would be joining them in Las Vegas - where, if all went well, they would sign him to a modest NBA contract, bring him to training camp and let him open the season on the 15-man roster.

But at the 11th hour, the Washington Wizards swooped in and gave Dee Brown that modest NBA contract without having to prove himself in Las Vegas.

It took the Pistons about a nanosecond to move on to Plan B - the B stands for Bynum, Will Bynum.

Fast forward four months. Both incumbent point guards are no longer available to those teams - Chauncey Billups was traded for Allen Iverson two games into the regular season and Washington's Gilbert Arenas had a third surgical procedure on his injured knee that will keep him out another month or so.

So both Dee Brown and Will Bynum have had opportunities presented to them. And, so far, Bynum is seizing his chance with a far warmer embrace.

They've both played in four games. Bynum has played 67 minutes, Brown 35. Bynum is averaging 8.5 points, 2.5 assists and shooting .583. Brown is averaging 0.5 points, 2.0 assists and shooting .200 - one basket in five tries for the 1-5 Wizards, who rank as one of the NBA's biggest disappointments so far.

What the Pistons wanted most out of their No. 3 point guard was someone capable of coming in for brief spurts to harass the opposition's point guard with in-your-face defense - think Hunter at his frenetic best.

Bynum has done that, too. The offense has been a pleasant surprise, even though Bynum rose to playground legend status in his native Chicago for his scoring exploits and was recruited to Arizona - he would eventually transfer to Georgia Tech - for his offense more than his defense.

Michael Curry took to Bynum immediately in Las Vegas, though Curry already was familiar with him. When Curry's career was winding down in Toronto, Raptors star Chris Bosh told him about his former Georgia Tech teammate. When Curry was working in NBA Operations three years ago with duties in the Development League, he was impressed with Bynum's positive attitude and tenacity. He was aware that Bynum had spent the last two seasons playing overseas and grooming himself to become an NBA role player.

The day Summer League ended in Las Vegas, Curry let Bynum know he wanted him on the Pistons.

Pistons personnel director George David said when he looked at the roster of other NBA teams, he felt fully confident that Bynum matched up well with other No. 3 point guards.

So far, he's matching up well with other No. 1 and No. 2 point guards, as well. So well that in a game Curry wanted to win badly enough that he played Allen Iverson for 46 minutes and Tayshaun Prince for 43 - Tuesday's game at Sacramento - he had Bynum out there for the first 8:28 of the fourth quarter, during which time the Pistons went from two down to six up and Bynum got to the rim three times, scoring twice, while spearheading an attacking defense that held the Kings to 15 points.

The thing that struck me most about Bynum when I talked to him in Vegas was his overwhelming and sincere gratitude to Joe Dumars and Curry for giving him the chance to return to the NBA, where he had a cup of coffee with Golden State three years ago as an undrafted rookie.

He was still in Israel, just finishing up his season, when he got the phone call a few days after the draft. He came home to Chicago and started working out three times a day in the week leading up to gathering in Vegas for his NBA audition.

Beyond the gratitude, it was clear Bynum knew exactly why he was there, too. Somewhere in Will Bynum is a guy who still believes he could score 30 points a game - scorers are scorers are scorers - but he understood he was in Vegas to hound the ball and set up the offense. And he focused on that. In fact, Curry had to remind him that they also coveted his ability to break down defenses and get inside the paint. Be aggressive, Curry told him.

When Bynum got his second big break last week after the trade, when for two games neither Billups nor Iverson was available, he began opening eyes with his devastating crossover and slick manipulation of pick-and-roll defenses, getting effortlessly to the rim in wins over Charlotte and Toronto.

And when Rodney Stuckey was struck with lightheadedness near halftime of Sunday's loss to Boston and stayed back in Detroit during the road trip-opening win at Sacramento - Bynum's third big break - he again seized the moment.

Curry joked before the Boston game that even if a play didn't call for a high pick and roll - Bynum's specialty - he'd find a way to get the Pistons into that set, pounding the ball up high until one of his big men got the message and came out to set the pick.

In his stocky build, his explosive change-of-direction ability off the dribble and in his knack for finishing in traffic against bigger bodies, Bynum calls to mind one of the most effective NBA little guys of the past generation. Fittingly enough, he'll play tonight - Stuckey needs another day or two to get his legs under him before returning to action - on the home court where Tim Hardaway had his best NBA moments.

Were the Pistons a little lucky that Washington offered Dee Brown that guaranteed contract before Summer League? Maybe. But somebody once said luck is the residue of design and opportunity. The Pistons had done their homework on Will Bynum, too, and he's grabbed opportunity by the throat.

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Gritty win gives Pistons a little breathing room

Joe Dumars executed the trade for Allen Iverson to give the Pistons a decidedly different look and a potentially better shot at this year's NBA title because of it. He did it because it gave him an overwhelmingly better shot at positioning the Pistons for future sustained success for the salary-cap flexibility it created.

He didn't do it to sell tickets - winning is still the surest way to sell tickets - or souvenirs or even to steer Internet traffic to Pistons.com, as much as I would like to believe that swayed him. And he certainly didn't do it so the Pistons would have a better chance to get off to a smoking hot start to this season.

The timing of the trade was tough for the Pistons, coming as it did two games into the regular season with a road-heavy schedule that included two games with Boston, one with the Los Angeles Lakers and one with Cleveland in the first two weeks of the Iverson era.

It was a trade with the future - near-term (this year's postseason) and long-term (the next several postseasons) - in mind, not the here-and-now present.

But even Joe D had to let out an imperceptible sigh of relief Tuesday night when the Pistons got up off the floor from an early 15-point deficit, came back and beat the Sacramento Kings on the road to start a four-game road trip.

He wasn't alone.

Michael Curry had to feel a little unburdened by the Kings win, as well. Iverson ... that goes without saying. Rip Hamilton endured another shooting nightmare - 4 of 16 following his 0 of 8 against Boston - but the win diverts attention from his struggles and mutes the questions that were already arising about the viability of an Iverson-Hamilton backcourt. Iverson's 30 points, nine assists and seven rebounds should snuff out any whispers that, at 33, he isn't the same package of nitroglycerine he's always been.

It's hard to conceive that a 4-2 team would face a November regular-season game fraught with heavy meaning, but the Sacramento game approached that description.

A loss to Sacramento would have ratcheted up the pressure to win at Golden State before closing the Western road swing with a nasty 1-2 punch against the Lakers and Phoenix Suns. A 0-3 start to the Iverson era would have made it possible that the start would stretch to 0-6 coming back home to play LeBron James and the Cavs - a game which comes 24 hours before the road rematch at Boston to complete a brutal stretch. When that Nov. 20 game in Boston concludes, the Pistons will have played 10 games since trading Chauncey Billups and Antonio McDyess - eight of them on the road, five of them against bona fide NBA title contenders.

The external skepticism would have been oppressive had the losses continued to mount and, sooner or later, that sort of thing threatens to penetrate even the hardened shell of a self-confident, veteran team like the Pistons. The questions would have kept coming: Why did the Iverson trade backfire.? It's like a guy being asked when he stopped beating his wife. You lose by having to entertain the question, but there's little chance to escape it for a professional sports team.

It's still possible, given the cramming they're all doing now to hasten Iverson's orientation and learn how to play with him, that the Pistons are going to emerge from this stretch a little bruised.

But things look considerably brighter today than 24 hours ago, when they were coming off seven straight dreary quarters since Iverson first donned his Pistons jersey and Rodney Stuckey's mysterious condition had yet to be resolved.

Stuckey, cleared medically before Tuesday's tipoff, rejoined the team today in San Francisco, arriving just as practice was ending. But he told reporters he wasn't yet prepared to play in Thursday's game, though he said it had nothing to do with his lightheadedness but that he needed to get his legs back under him.

Without Stuckey - and this should tell you how Curry viewed Tuesday's game - Iverson played 46 minutes, Tayshaun Prince 43, Rasheed Wallace 38 and Rip Hamilton 37 despite his wayward shot.

Along the way, we got a little more insight into Curry, further proof that he has no fear of breaking with convention despite his status as a first-time head coach. When Sacramento hurt the Pistons with an oversized frontcourt that included 6-foot-11 rookie Jason Thompson at small forward, Curry countered by going small - using Tayshaun Prince at power forward for about 15 minutes, letting Hamilton and Arron Afflalo play small forward and pairing Iverson with Will Bynum in an undersized backcourt that Sacramento had great difficulty containing.

It's making do. In the grand scheme, a little adversity is a good thing - but too much can be suffocating. The Pistons gave themselves - from top to bottom - a little breathing room with Tuesday's gritty win at Sacramento.

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Iverson's orientation builds day by day

Think about starting a new job. No matter how certain your ability to handle the nuts and bolts of it, there's always the great unknown. What's your new boss really like when something goes wrong? Are your co-workers pulling in the same direction or protecting their own interests? Is the support staff eager to help or more likely to undermine?

Just because there are more zeroes on the paycheck, it's no different in professional sports. Guys come to new teams uncertain how they'll fit. When you're an Allen Iverson, and you've been in the league 13 years and own all the personal hardware that adorns his mantle and command a salary that automatically implies a certain leverage, some of those questions are mitigated. But not erased. And not all of them.

So when I got five minutes with him at the end of his hectic first day as a Piston last week and asked him what thoughts were running through his mind, it struck a cord when he replied like this: "I haven't been thinking about anything but getting on the court with (his new teammates) and just going through the whole process - going through the ups and downs, if there are going to be any downs. Just going through them and trying to get these days to go by as fast as possible. Just for the fact that I can say I've been here a week or I've been here a month and I'm well into what's going on.

"I know the system, I know what we're doing on both ends of the floor, settled in to where I'm staying, my wife and kids. That's what I've been thinking about - just trying to get to that point."

Doesn't everybody think that way? A month into your new job, most of those uneasy feelings have disappeared. Maybe all the answers don't come back exactly the way you wanted them to, but at least you know what the challenges are and how to adjust and move on.

Well, Allen Iverson has been here a week now. It wasn't the easiest week. He had his debut delayed, and then when it happened things started out too easily - that first quarter at New Jersey, running out to a 14-point lead - before reality arrived and it ended in a loss. Then the home debut - first the warm and loud ovation he'd hoped would greet him - and running into the brick wall of Boston's defense.

Now the first extended road trip ... but the cloud of Rodney Stuckey's mysterious lightheadedness and absence hanging over all of them.

But at least he's been here a week. The terminology is starting to become familiar. Maybe it only takes two seconds to recognize the play being called instead of five. He's learned a few things about playing alongisde Rip Hamilton, about where Rasheed Wallace prefers his entry passes to arrive, about how Tayshaun Prince anticipates his movements.

He's not sure exactly how long this learning process will take, probably, but he feels that much better just for the fact that it's begun.

Now a win would help. Sacramento might appear vulnerable with leading scorer Kevin Martin sidelined by an ankle sprain, but the Kings are 3-0 at home. It's the first game of a road trip but it probably feels like the fifth game after last week's three-gamer followed by the short stopover at The Palace to play the Celtics. However closer Michael Curry was to finding a rotation that works with all the tumult of the past week, Stuckey's absence upsets the applecart again.

But a week is a week, and it's that much closer to two weeks or a month. He doesn't know everything he needs to absorb about becoming a Detroit Piston just yet, but at least Allen Iverson has started down that road.

Part of the acclimation process is gaining equity in the fraternity that is a team's locker room. After Sunday's Boston game, Iverson - as he's done since early in his Philadelphia days, when the daily swarm of reporters encircling his locker made his teammates' lives miserable - held his own postgame press conference in the same room where Curry addresses the media. When Iverson got back to his locker and readied himself to hit the shower, Hamilton was just toweling off and getting ready to address his own set of questioners.

Iverson grinned over at him and reminded him that reporters were waiting for him, Hamilton grinning back at him knowingly.

A small thing, perhaps, but Pistons fans worried that Hamilton is somehow going to hold Iverson's at arm's length because the trade Joe Dumars executed cost him his close buddy Chauncey Billups should know athletes don't think that way. The Hamilton-Iverson backcourt will sink or swim on its own merits, not on bruised feelings or grudges.

So far, Iverson has said and done everything right in that regard, highly complimentary of Hamilton to the point that when somebody asked him after Sunday's game if he would take it upon himself to get his new backcourt partner going after Hamilton's 0 for 8 outing against the Celtics, he gave an answer that made it clear he considered Hamilton his equal.

"When I don't play well," Iverson said, "I don't look forward to somebody else getting me going and that's not something I have to worry about with Rip. Rip knows what he has to do to get it done. He's an All-Star-type player."

That's the kind of thing that will resonate with Hamilton, who in kind has said Iverson "has the heart of a lion."

Those are other things that happened in his irst week. More than just the pages flying off the calendar, it's the little building blocks like those that make the transformation complete. Allen Iverson is on his way to becoming a Piston.

• Nothing new on Stuckey as of early Tuesday afternoon. The Pistons still hope he can join the team at some point on their West Coast road trip.

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For Curry and young bigs, opportunity knocks

As if Michael Curry didn't have enough on his plate as a first-time head coach of a team approaching a crossroads - still with championship expectations but transitioning from a familiar nucleus to the next generation - now this.

For all the buzz generated by the Allen Iverson trade, the reality is that the timing could hardly have been more challenging for Curry. Two games into the regular season is one thing, scrubbing the chance for immersion that a full training camp would have granted. It also came with the Pistons in the middle of one road trip, with another staring them in the face - sandwiched around a visit from the reigning NBA champions, and all of it stacked so closely together that the meaningful practices needed to smooth the transition have been rendered impossible.

The first impression of the Iverson trade was great. It's been the second and third impressions that have lost their fizz. For one quarter of Iverson's debut at New Jersey, the Pistons were superb. Especially eyebrow-raising was the last four minutes of the quarter when Rodney Stuckey joined Iverson and Rip Hamilton - and the thought of those three, in sync with each other and fully functioning indivudally, remains wholly tantalizing.

But when the first quarter ended and it was time for Hamilton and Iverson to cool their heels ... well, the Pistons haven't found anything approaching an offensive rhythm in the seven ensuing quarters.

This just in: Michael Curry really misses Antonio McDyess. Pistons fans are predictably wringing their hands over the loss of Chauncey Billups, given the offensive dislocation they've witnessed in the last two games, but the loss of McDyess has created a frontcourt imbalance.

Not only are they down two bodies from their six-man contingent of big men - Cheikh Samb was also sacrificed in the Iverson trade - but three of the four left standing are erratic scoring threats from anywhere but inside the paint. You clearly saw Boston's lack of concern for the damage-wreaking potential of Amir Johnson, Kwame Brown and Jason Maxiell in the way they defended Detroit's pick-and-roll offense and baseline and elbow screens for Rip Hamilton throughout Sunday's game, which was an offensive catastrophe after a ragged first quarter.

Here was Curry before Sunday's game: "As I said when we made the trade, that's a big void we're missing. Our last two games, you can tell when Dice is not out there. Whenever we take (Rasheed Wallace) off the court, we always had a veteran guy out there who could spread the floor and allow Rodney Stuckey to be able to get to the basket. Right now with Max and Kwame, you don't have that shooter. These guys have strengths in their own areas, but they're not Dice. We have to change our rotation around to make up for that extra scoring and the ability Dice had to spread the floor for us in the beginning of the second and fourth quarters."

Here was Curry after Sunday's game: "The first quarter was good. The second quarter is what I've been concerned with since we made the move. We've got to find a way to get something going in that second quarter when we take our scoring big out, Rasheed. We've got to find a way to get things going with other guys. We'll do that. We'll get better. ... By moving Dice to the bench, he became that scoring forward so whenever Sheed was out of the game, Dice was always in. So we always had a big that could spread the floor and really shoot the basketball."

The Pistons headed out to Sacramento today to begin a four-day West Coast trip that further complicates their transition to the Iverson era. If they looked sluggish in the loss to Boston, it might have been more than just the acclimation process to the dramatic personnel change. They'd just returned home after a three-game road trip, making Sunday's home game seem like just another stop along the mid-point of what is essentially an eight-game road trip, and now the Western leg squeezes them further for practice time.

"I would like to have about three or four practice days," Curry said. "I wish we didn't play until Thursday. But it is what it is."

Curry decided immediately after the trade that the loss of McDyess meant he needed to add another reliable scorer to the playing group that starts the second quarter. So he and Tayshaun Prince agreed that Prince would be the first starter to check out, somewhere around eight minutes into the game.

But when the promising first quarter in New Jersey ended in Iverson's debut, the group that began the second half was Rodney Stuckey and Prince - out of position - in the backcourt with Walter Herrmann, Brown and Maxiell up front.

Curry quickly concluced he needed to stagger the coming and going of Iverson and Hamilton so that their time together out of the game was infrequent. Before Sunday's game, he said he would take Hamilton out when he removed Prince, then bring both back along with Stuckey to start the second quarter.

But that doesn't solve the issue of not having a big man beyond Wallace who can step outside as a credible scoring threat and provide Iverson and Stuckey the chances to attack a spread-out defense.

In the best case, McDyess will return to the Pistons 30 days after the waiver process plays out. In the meantime, expect Curry to keep experimenting with lineup combinations and preaching the message of opportunity to Johnson, Brown and Maxiell. The 20 minutes a game the Pistons had set aside for McDyess are now up for grabs. This is the chance for one of those three to stake his claim to an increased role, whether McDyess returns or not.

A coach has no choice but to believe and preach that adversity creates opportunity. That's true for Michael Curry, a first-time head coach dealing with a smorgasbord of issues all of a sudden, and it's true for the three young big men who no longer have the safety net Antonio McDyess represented to protect them.

They'll all come out of it knowing a little more about themselves - and each other.

• Postscript: As expected, the Denver Nuggets just announced that they have waived McDyess. He now has 48 hours to clear waivers. By Wednesday afternoon, he will be free to sign with any of 29 NBA teams. Only the Pistons are prohibited from signing McDyess then. They have to wait another 30 days - assuming McDyess is still unsigned by then. It'll be an anxious 30 days for the Pistons. Or, more likely, an anxious three weeks. If he hasn't signed with anyone by the end of November, chances are pretty good he's just waiting for the pages of the calendar to turn so he can return to the Pistons.

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Curry's offense made deal more attractive

The trade for Allen Iverson has produced reams of speculative analysis for what it means to the Pistons in the four days since news broke. Actual data begins accumulating tonight, when Iverson makes his Pistons debut at New Jersey.

The dynamic that will be watched perhaps more closely than any other is the effect Iverson will have on Rip Hamilton’s game. But one of the driving forces for the trade from Joe Dumars’ perspective was how the Iverson-Hamilton combination fits with Michael Curry’s offensive vision.

Dumars suggested this was a trade he wouldn’t have entertained if not for Curry and the less traditional offense he’s installed that emphasizes more movement and a greater sharing of ballhandling, playmaking and decision-making, an offense Curry believes will make the Pistons a less predictable offensive team in the playoffs.

“I do see him as a major component of being less predictable,” he said. “Also, go back to Mike’s (offense) with a lot of motion. The reason that fits so well with someone like Iverson is because the traditional offense has a point guard standing up top, the play is running and he just stands there and passes. There’s no sense trading for Allen Iverson if you’re going to just have him standing there. But if you have a lot of movement, cutting, slashing, that plays right into his game. That’s another reason we think it will get him in position to do what he does best.”

The question I put to Joe D the day after the trade: How would Hamilton’s game, predicated on movement without the ball and heavy use of screens, fit with Iverson’s freelancing genius?

“They both have great basketball instincts,” Dumars said. “That’s the key. It’s not so much how you run plays or what the set is, it’s do you have basketball instincts. (Iverson) has incredible instincts. He’s averaged seven, seven and a half assists.”

Iverson echoed his thoughts, saying “I think it will be easy for me to mesh with Rip because of our style. I played against him somuch and they run a lot of the things coach Brown ran with us. I know about Rip coming off screens and where to get him the ball on the curls and flares. I don’t think it will be a problem.”

After Iverson took part in his first Pistons practice in New York on Thursday, he told reporters that he was amazed at how Curry’s offense used him in ways he’d never been used in his 13 NBA seasons.

When I talked to Iverson the other day, before he’d had a chance to talk to any of his new teammates, I told him that Curry had been consistently preaching since the first day of training camp that he wanted the Pistons to be the aggressors. Could there be a more appropriate mission statement for Allen Iverson than to be aggressive?

“That’s what I want to hear,” he said. “That’s the best song I’ve heard all day.”

Joe D couldn’t help but laugh when I asked him how he saw the Iverson-Hamilton backcourt fitting with Curry’s vision.

“Him and Rip? Hah!” he said. “I would think so. Him and Rip together in the backcourt? That will be a real aggressive backcourt right there and that’s what we’re shooting for.”

• A sign of things to come: The day after the trade was made – the day before Iverson would have debuted at Toronto had all the trade paper work been completed – the Toronto Raptors’ Web site featured Iverson’s picture with a link to ticket sales. On Thursday, the New Jersey Nets’ site also was using Iverson to promote ticket sales.
• The NBA’s paper All-Star ballots were already in print when the Iverson trade was made, so he’ll appear on the Western Conference side of the ballot and Billups on the East side – but their votes will be tabulated in their current conferences of residence. So if you want to see Iverson in the All-Star game for the Pistons, vote for him as one of the Western Conference guards. When the NBA makes its online ballot available, though, Iverson will be listed as a Piston and Billups as a Denver Nugget.

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The Iverson Effect: Net gains all around

As John McCain would attest, people vote with their pocketbooks. In the deluge of responses I've received, both in the live chat we did on Pistons.com on Monday night hours after the Allen Iverson trade for Chauncey Billups and Antonio McDyess was announced and via Pistons Mailbag, sentiment has been fairly evenly split - for every person who loved what Iverson adds to the Pistons, there was another who lamented the loss of Billups and wished the trade could be rescinded.

But the more telling response is what's going on elsewhere - the way tickets are moving, the thirst for Allen Iverson Pistons jerseys, the traffic numbers on Pistons.com.

• In the first three days since the trade, 5,000 individual game tickets were sold each day. That made them the top three ticket-selling days since 2008-09 tickets went on sale. More than 100 full season-ticket packages were sold. Those would be remarkable numbers if cars were selling and people weren't losing their homes and jobs at levels not seen in decades. In this climate, those numbers are cannon shots.
• In the days surrounding last week's season opener, Pistons.com averaged a little more than 84,000 page views per day. In the three days following the Iverson trade, they averaged almost 500,000 daily views. I'm no math major, but I believe that's nearly a 600 percent increase.
• Even before we knew what number Iverson would wear - the league wouldn't let him take his trademark No. 3 because Rodney Stuckey could not change numbers in mid-season, so Iverson winds up with No. 1 - pre-orders of his new Pistons jersey started trickling in. In three days, more than 1,000 orders were placed.
• The Pistons had 15 national TV dates selected by ABC, ESPN and TNT when the schedule came out. Expect that number to start inching steadily upward. Less than 48 hours after the trade was announced, TNT already has decided to switch its schedule for next week. On Thursday, the Pistons game at Golden State has gone national. You can expect a steady stream of similar announcements in the months ahead.

"It's been, frankly, amazing," Pistons CEO Tom Wilson said. "We've had such a run of success under Joe Dumars these last six years that we're accustomed to some level of national attention. But the response this has gotten is a testament to the star power of Allen Iverson. He's probably one of the five most recognizable basketball players on the planet. As hard as we all had to swallow in seeing a couple of all-time good guys like Chauncey Billups and Antonio McDyess leave to make this possible, the response we've been getting from both our fans and from people who probably didn't have any allegiance to the Detroit Pistons before this week has certainly helped to lighten the mood. This place has been pretty electric all week."

Larry Morris, who manages merchandising and oversees the Locker Room stores at The Palace and elsewhere, is in his 14th season. And the only thing that compares to the Iverson rush was the 2004 NBA championship.

"We got some buzz when Rasheed came and, actually, we got a little more when Chris Webber came, at least initially," Morris said. "But the number of phone calls, the Web orders, the inquiries, no. Nothing close to this. We got 300 jersey orders the first day when we sort of put it up on the Web without any fanfare. Today was the first day we've really promoted it and it's been one order after another coming in steady."

Fans who come for Sunday's game for Iverson's Palace debut will find the Locker Room stores fully stocked with Iverson jerseys and T-shirts. Other items - key chains, hats, dog tags, etc. - will eventually be available, as well.

Fans clamored all summer for the move they thought they heard Joe D promise was coming. When it actually cost them one of the players they held most closely to their heart, it stung. I can't tell you how many e-mails I got that began "Say it ain't so, Joe" or "Why, why, why?" or "Please tell me that the trade I'm hearing about is just a rumor."

Quite a few of them e-mailed back a few hours or a few days later to say, basically, "The more I think about it, the more I like the idea."

And there was always a group that quickly envisioned Iverson in a Pistons uniform and imagined every possibility.

My guess is even the players who called Chauncey Billups a teammate for the last six years experienced a similar process to even more pronounced emotional degrees. Losing a terrific co-worker and trusted friend isn't easy in any line of work, but professional athletes become a part of each other's lives to a far greater extent than accountants in adjoining cubicles.

They travel together for seven or eight months a year. They go to dinner together, sweat together, get dressed next to each other in cramped road locker rooms, spend hours on airplanes and buses and - the most inexorably bonding experience of all - take part together in pitched competition about 100 times a year for many consecutive years, at least if they've been a part of the Pistons and their extended playoff runs this decade.

So if you haven't heard Rip Hamilton yet voice his emotions, take a step back and think about it. Chauncey Billups was his backcourt partner for six years. They came to Detroit in the same summer and lifted the franchise back to its Bad Boys glory. They developed remarkable chemistry together, shared their first championship together and went to three straight All-Star games together. They became known as the NBA's best backcourt.

And then, in one breathtaking moment, it evaporated. It says nothing about Hamilton's feelings about Iverson or his trepidation for what's ahead and everything about his bond with a brother that's been changed - not severed, for sure, but radically changed.

But you know what? That will wear off, too. Chauncey Billups is going to get to Denver, be universally celebrated in his hometown and no doubt help the Nuggets become a better team. He'll be happy. The Pistons are 4-0 and have played two games without either Billups or Iverson. They're going to continue to be good with the promise to get better. They'll be happy.

The electricity that's running through The Palace - the result of frantically busy customer service representatives filling ticket orders, merchandise reps stocking Iverson jerseys, Web moderators monitoring Pistons.com traffic - is going to run through the Will Robinson Locker Room of Champions, too.

The Iverson aura extends beyond sales and ratings. On any number of levels, he promises to invigorate the basketball product, too. Learning to play with him and off of him will galvanize the focus of a team that has been able to do things almost by rote for years now. Michael Curry's different touch and new offense were a big step toward addressing that, but adding Iverson carries the process further down the track. Curry's desire for a more aggressive mind-set fits Iverson like a glove and can't help but spark the progress of young players like Amir Johnson and Rodney Stuckey.

The Iverson Effect isn't likely to stop at the ticket booth, the Locker Room stores, Pistons.com or Nielsen ratings. Iverson himself was asked the other day what it meant to him that the news of his trade had seemed to breathe life into Pistons Nation. He said it meant everything to him, because as someone who plays with so much energy, he feeds off fan reaction. Well, the fan base is inflamed. Allen Iverson isn't going to be the only one who'll notice when the Pistons take the court for his first home game, Sunday night against ... the Boston Celtics, reigning NBA champs. Not a bad way to debut, huh? Eventually, the Iverson Effect is going to wash over the basketball product, too.

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They'll take a piece of Detroit's heart with them

Fifteen days ago, a wry smile pulled at Chauncey Billups’ face as he thought about what the next day would bring – a preseason visit from Ben Wallace and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

It still doesn’t sound right: Ben Wallace and anybody but the Detroit Pistons.

“Ben,” Billups said, “will always be a Piston to me.”

Less than two weeks later, he was left to the same view of the Pistons as his old teammate and fellow captain – an outsider’s perspective.

Except to Pistons Nation. For them, it’s Billups who will always be a Piston. Big Ben left as a free agent, and that closed a curtain for a significant portion of Pistons fans. It’s been two-plus seasons now and Wallace still hears a smattering of boos upon his return to The Palace from fans who felt jilted, never mind that Chicago made an offer that Joe Dumars simply could not have matched without sacrificing somebody else from that hallowed core that carried the Pistons to the 2004 NBA title.

But Chauncey Billups didn’t leave of his own choosing. When it became evident last season that Rodney Stuckey was destined for big things, it became unlikely that Mr. Big Shot would finish his career in Detroit. That’s the nature of the game these days, a byproduct of the salary-cap system that puts a premium on every dollar. When you find someone younger and cheaper capable of similar production, the goal of building a champion practically demands the choice of the cheaper alternative so resources can be directed to other needs.

The silver lining for Billups is where Joe Dumars sent him. When he saw the handwriting on the wall, he asked Joe D if it came to that, and it was at all possible, he could send him to the Nuggets, whose need at point guard was pronounced. Denver is home to Billups, where his extended family still resides and where they have never forgotten the greatest high school player in Denver history. Or the favorite son who stayed home to play college basketball at the University of Colorado, taking a bereft basketball program to the NCAA tournament in his sophomore season before entering the NBA draft and becoming the No. 3 pick in the 1997 draft.

“Bittersweet,” Chauncey told Joe D when he told him of the trade – and where he was going. Leaving Detroit is bitter for him. He adopted it as his second home. But going to Denver is sweet.

All his successes with the Pistons were celebrated nearly as much in the Mile High City as they were in the Motor City. The Denver newspapers followed Billups throughout the great playoff runs he captained over his six seasons as the point guard Joe Dumars chose to restore the Pistons to glory – and all six of those seasons ended with the Pistons no worse than one of the last four teams standing.

That’s a remarkable record of achievement for the man who became the face of the franchise.

And he became that not only for what he did on the 94 feet of hardwood at The Palace. He became that for how he wove himself into the fabric of Detroit. Chauncey Billups took his role as one of Detroit’s most recognized and celebrated faces seriously. He plunged himself into civic work, setting up charities here and buying thousands of Pistons tickets a season so underprivileged kids could come see the team they otherwise knew only as larger-than-life TV characters. Whenever the reporters who follow the team wanted a reaction or an explanation, it was Billups who unfailingly stood up and voiced his teammates’ perspective.

Champions always earn a special place in the heart of the city where they lay claim to greatness, and Detroiters hold them nearer than most. Which is why it’s equally remarkable how Pistons fans came to view Antonio McDyess – also sent to Denver – because McDyess became a Piston one month too late to celebrate that 2004 title.

He came within a heartbeat of winning one of his own the following June, but the Pistons lost Game 7 at San Antonio in 2005, McDyess’ first season as a Piston. The last three years, the train has stopped at Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals for the Pistons and nobody has felt that anguish quite like McDyess, a man whose heart is permanently attached to his sleeve. Pistons fans anguished right along with him. All their other favorite players – Chauncey and Rip, Sheed and Tay and Big Ben – at least they had their title. Dice didn’t – and Pistons fans felt his pain. How could you miss it? It was there on his face, heartfelt pain impossible to miss.

The guy you didn’t get to know, Cheikh Samb, was a truly gentle soul with kind eyes whom his teammates immediately warmed to. Rasheed Wallace, the Pistons’ unofficial welcoming committee, called him “Cheeks,” which caught on, and he was one of those players who made everybody smile. He grew up in Senegal and was discovered by Pistons international scouting guru Tony Ronzone. Tony told me that when he visited Senegal, he could not believe how warm and friendly everybody in the country was. That was Cheikh Samb. Nobody knows how good he can become, but he’ll have people rooting for him every step of the way.

The Allen Iverson era starts tonight. And Pistons fans are rightfully excited to see how it plays out. Iverson is pure electricity, one of those exceedingly rare athletes who causes eyeballs to Velcro to his every movement.

But before he pulls on Chauncey Billups’ old No. 1 tonight, it’s worth a minute to remember what the players the Pistons sacrificed to get him meant to the Pistons – and to the place the Pistons call home.

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They'll be watching in Boston and elsewhere

There are many ways to analyze a trade, but the one that often gets short shrift is the perspective of the teams affected but not directly involved. Let's find an example. I don't know ... have any recent trades popped up in the NBA?

You might have heard that the Pistons pulled off a fairly earth-shaking deal Monday, sending their All-Star point guard and captain, Chauncey Billups, to Denver along with Antonio McDyess and Cheikh Samb in exchange for future Hall of Famer Allen Iverson.

And the initial impulse is to assess the deal from the perspectives of Detroit and Denver. Here's the consensus on those analyses: Pretty much a win-win deal. Most people believe Billups helps Denver because he'll give Carmelo Anthony room to operate, both literally and psychologically. Billups' shooting range and playmaking will spread the floor, and without Iverson - the No. 3 scorer on a per-game average in NBA history - he'll go back to being the clear focal point of Denver's offense.

As for the Pistons? Most analysts think Iverson's creativity as a scorer will make the Pistons a more dangerous team offensively. And what they gave up in floor leadership by trading Billups can be made up by the combination of loosening the leash on Rodney Stuckey a little and letting Iverson be ... well, Iverson.

But here's a perspective on trades that always cuts to the chase: What do the teams in direct competition with the trade partners feel about it? More specifically, how do the Pistons' closest competitors - Boston and Cleveland in the East, and, beyond them, Toronto and Philadelphia and Orlando, Chicago and Washington and Atlanta - feel about facing a Pistons team that just added one of the most explosive scorers in the NBA.

And Iverson remains all of that. Last season he finished No. 3 in the league in scoring behind two guys you might recognize, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. Iverson put up 26.4 points a game, even though he was sharing the floor with Anthony, who averaged 25.7. He actually averaged more assists per game than Billups did a season ago, 7.1 to 6.8, which speaks partly to Denver's faster pace but also to Iverson's distribution skills. Yeah, he's a flat-out scorer, but his ability to penetrate opens up scoring opportunities for others.

There are growing pains ahead, more than likely. Iverson and Rip Hamilton will need a significant chunk of games to get a feel for each other's tendencies and preferences. So much of Hamilton's game is predicated on movement without the ball - but you can't score until the basketball finds you. So much of Iverson's offensive genius comes out of freelancing - and when he's freelancing, what will that do to the timing necessary for Hamilton to come free and get off a shot while the defense is still trying to fight through the myriad picks he employs to get open?

But what do you suppose Boston, Cleveland and other potential playoff opponents are thinking? The Pistons for years have been the NBA equivalent to the old Green Bay Packers of Lombardi. You knew the power sweep was coming, Paul Hornung or Jim Taylor taking turns running and blocking behind pulling linemen, but the trick was stopping it.

Well, the Pistons have been running that power sweep for so long, NBA opponents began having a little more success stopping it every year. Especially in the playoffs, when they get to see it dozens of times every game, game upon game, and focus all of their practice time and attention to one team.

Michael Curry has done a brilliant job so far of both hammering the need to live in the moment to emphasize the importance of the regular season while positioning the regular season as a means of honing every mental, physical and emotional edge in preparation for the postseason.

He changed the offense this year, stressing the need for players other than Billups to make decisions and handle the basketball, with an eye toward making the Pistons a less predictable playoff opponent. We'll never know how that would have played out now, but it's safe to say that injecting Iverson into the mix achieves that end in one fell swoop.

Now, becoming less predictable doesn't necessarily equate to becoming more effective. There is an undeniable air of uncertainty over how Iverson affects the recipe.

But the Pistons' internal curiosity over the move will be matched by that of Boston, Cleveland and everyone else in the increasingly competitive East that views themselves as a contender.

And a word about that uncertainty and curiosity: A little goes a long way. Every member of the Pistons' core except Tayshaun Prince has been traded at least once, and a business or not, you could see the hurt and hint of trauma in the eyes of Rasheed Wallace, Prince and Hamilton as they talked about their separation from Billups and McDyess from Charlotte on Monday. But after the initial shock ebbs, the sheer newness, the curiosity and the possibilities that adding Iverson to the mix represents will seize and invigorate them.

They were already absorbing Curry's new offense and now they absorb a superstar scorer. For a team so accustomed to sameness, this steady and sudden dose of change should rivet their focus. Not much will be second nature to them for a good long while, and there's something to be said for the effect that can have on the competitive fire of a team so accustomed to the status quo.

For sure, they'll be watching with rapt attention in places like Boston, Cleveland and beyond.

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Joe D swings for the fences

Make no mistake about it: This is Joe D’s home run swing.

Even he would admit that trading Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson isn’t the slam dunk that getting Rasheed Wallace five seasons ago represented. That deal cost him nothing of his present and not much more than that of his future, two late first-round picks.

This one cost him an All-Star point guard and the team’s captain for a cold-blooded scorer who’ll be a no-brainer first-ballot Hall of Famer. Antonio McDyess was thrown into the mix to make it work for cap purposes, though McDyess told me two years ago and reiterated last season that he would retire first if it meant leaving the Pistons.

Billups was integral to those six straight trips to the Eastern Conference finals and there’s no question the chemistry changes without him.

But also make no mistake about this: At its optimum – if this trade works the way Joe Dumars and Michael Curry envision it – adding Iverson to this team gooses the product and increases its possibilities to the same magnitude that adding Wallace to the 2004 Pistons did.

“He embodies a lot of what Joe has established here over a long period of time,” Pistons vice president Scott Perry said. “He’s a fierce competitor, he’s going to bring tremendous energy to our basketball team and he’s a proven All-Star in this league. He’ll add excitement not only to our basketball team, but to the community at large.”

Joe D looks for three things in players: talent, obviously; strong desire to win; and good character. Iverson is off the charts in the first two categories. Some would argue the third, but Iverson’s issues have been almost exclusively personality clashes with strong-willed coaches.

On that score, Joe D is perfectly comfortable banking on Michael Curry – on the instant respect Curry commands and on his first-time head coach’s acute communications skills.

Prediction: Curry and Iverson will connect like Iverson hasn’t with any coach dating back to John Thompson at Georgetown. Whatever the best of Allen Iverson at 33 might be, the Pistons are going to see it.

Iverson gives the Pistons one of the most irrepressible scorers in the NBA. In the lonely moments of the playoffs, when offenses inevitably bog down, players who can create their own shots – no matter what play is called, no matter what defense is deployed – are invaluable.

Think about the running-in-mud Pistons offenses of critical junctures of the last three playoff exits – in 2006 against both Cleveland and Miami, in 2007 again against the Cavs, in 2008 at times against Boston – and now imagine Iverson in the mix.

If there was a general sense that the Pistons had been passed by in the East – surely by Boston, maybe by Cleveland, with Philadelphia moving up fast on the outside, you should know that nobody inside the NBA had written off Detroit. But the hunch is that news of Iverson joining the Pistons is going to make them catch their breath in Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia and anywhere else they harbor title aspirations.

It’s going to take a while to see how Iverson fits in a backcourt with Rip Hamilton and Rodney Stuckey. Iverson’s recent coaches – Larry Brown, Mo Cheeks and George Karl – have felt Iverson works best playing off the ball and paired with a pass-first point guard like Eric Snow or Steve Blake.

Iverson and Hamilton will make for a dynamic scoring backcourt. But is there a playmaker? Well, Iverson has averaged better than six assists per game for his career. So we’ll see. Is it possible, even, that Curry would start Stuckey and Hamilton, then bring Iverson off the bench? I doubt it, but it bears consideration.

“You’re talking about a top-tier player,” Perry said. “He knows how to play with other good players and good players will figure out how to play with him. He’s a smart, intelligent player and you all know what his strengths are. He can score, but he’s much underrated as a passer. We fully anticipate him fitting in quite well.”

At 33, there has been little evidence of slippage in Iverson. If he’s lost a half-step in his 12 seasons, that still leaves him a half-step ahead of the field. Whatever issues he’s had have stemmed from being a little too headstrong sometimes, but no one has ever questioned his toughness or desire to win.

And maybe Iverson at 33 – and playing for his next contract – plays to the Pistons’ advantage. Certainly, he hears the clock ticking on his career. Surely, he knows he’s never been blessed with such a talented cast of teammates. Inarguably, there is stability and leadership here like Iverson has never known in the NBA.

No one knew how it would work two years ago when Iverson was shipped to Denver from Philadelphia. They were saying some of the things then that are going to be said now – this is Iverson’s best chance, he’s never had a teammate like Carmelo Anthony, the change of scenery will do him good.

But the Denver and Detroit situations are pretty well separated. The Nuggets were a weak defensive team top-heavy with scorers but with little in the way of role players. Iverson and Anthony never really meshed, as if they were fighting their instincts to be the team’s dominant scorer for fear of stepping on the other’s toes.

The Pistons will make it pretty clear to Iverson that they covet him for his pure scoring ability. Though Hamilton has been the team’s leading scorer for six years, he gets his points within the context of the offense. Hamilton, in fact, might become a more efficient scorer paired with Iverson for the way Hamilton exploits defensive breakdowns – and nobody this side of Kobe or LeBron breaks down defenses as consistently as Iverson.

It wasn’t easy for Joe D to part ways with Billups. That 2004 NBA championship banner keeping company with the two No. 4 helped win with the Bad Boys never happens if Dumars doesn’t identify Billups as the point guard to run his team in the summer of 2002.

But Dumars has always been drawn to Iverson. The first major deal he attempted would have brought Iverson to Detroit in time for the 2000-01 season. It got shot down because Matt Geiger refused to waive a clause in his contract needed to close the loop on the trade. Iverson went on to win the MVP that year and took Larry Brown’s 76ers – there’s a healthy dose of irony in there somewhere – to the NBA Finals.

This deal was done with that – the NBA Finals – in mind, of course. Dumars doesn’t make this trade if he didn’t think it makes the Pistons a more formidable playoff team. But I doubt he does this deal if he thought it imperiled the Pistons’ future, either.

He knows Iverson is on the last year of his contract. Either things go extremely well and a happy Iverson signs on to continue his run as a Piston or the two parties split company at season’s end – in which case the Pistons have Rodney Stuckey as their point guard of the present and future and an enviable cap situation to facilitate another significant deal or allow the pursuit of a marquee free agent.

So this was Joe D’s home run swing, almost five months after he said it was his intention to shake things up. When no fireworks were ignited by the Fourth of July, a significant chunk of Pistons Nation grew restless.

But early July, when free agency opens and teams looking to remake themselves begin seriously exploring their options, is only the first pathway to a window of opportunity that doesn’t slam shut until late February.

All along, it made sense that better chances to recast the Pistons would present themselves once the dust settled and many of those teams that went into the summer with bold ambition wound up disappointed.

Denver, surely, was one of those teams. Which explains why Allen Iverson is on the verge of pulling on a Pistons uniform at the cost of Mr. Big Shot, Chauncey Billups. It’s the most significant personnel move the Pistons have undertaken in almost five years. And it carries the same potential to expand their possibilities as that deal for Rasheed Wallace did.

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