Big-game wins give transition a foothold

It might not be a substitute for the consistency sought by Michael Curry - or any coach, for that matter - but with their win over Orlando earlier this week, the Pistons must have more big-game wins than any NBA team so far this season.

They beat the Lakers in LA after they'd started the season 7-0 and winning by two touchdowns a game. They beat Cleveland after the Cavs had opened 9-2 and were on an eight-game winning streak. They beat San Antonio on the road with the Spurs at full strength after treading water for the first month without Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. And, finally, they beat Orlando with the Magic at 24-4 in their last 28 games after a 0-2 start and on a seven-game winning streak.

For every good win, of course, there's a bad loss - the 26-point pounding a 2-9 Minnesota team administered at The Palace, the bloodbath at Madison Square Garden on a Sunday afternoon, the squandered leads against struggling Philly and Washington teams.

Again, consistency is the hallmark of great teams, not equal doses of delirious highs and crushing lows. But the delirious highs at least tell everyone that matters - from Joe Dumars to Michael Curry to his players to Pistons opponents - that the Pistons still have the greatness gene somewhere within them.

"It shows we're capable of competing against elite teams in this league," Michael Curry said before the New Year's Eve matinee with New Jersey. "To be an elite team, you have to do it consistently. For the most part, we've played with that kind of consistency. We're oh-and-six on Sundays. If you go .500 on Sundays, more people right now would probably be considering us right up there as well. But we've got to earn that."

The transition from the Billups to the Iverson eras caused enough dislocation to explain some of their mercurial nature, but Curry raises a good point. It really goes beyond just swapping out Billups for Iverson. Even if Billups had remained, the fact so many new players were being asked to shoulder greater responsibility probably was going to yield some degree of unevenness in the Pistons' play.

"We know we have the talent and are capable of getting there," Curry said. "Some of our young guys are growing right in front of our eyes. Their contributions in big games have been well-documented and that's part of it."

Beyond that, even, there's the fact that Curry was in the midst of changing the offense even with Billups to put the ball in others' hands more often, Tayshaun Prince particularly.

"Some of our veteran guys have played in different roles," he said. "I don't know how many games in the past we went down the stretch and Tayshaun touches the ball four out of seven possessions. It's different for him, as well."

Throw out one three-game stretch - blown 15- and 17-point leads to Philly and Washington sandwiched around the Knicks debacle - and the Pistons would be 21-8 heading into the Nets game instead of 18-11. In the big picture, their big-game wins have been sprinkled throughout the schedule, while their troubling losses have been more concentrated.

That bad stretch came more than three weeks ago. The Pistons haven't played poorly since then. The transition - a phase Pistons fans feared would become a tunnel to nowhere - now has a foothold.

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Power forward taxes Tayshaun

Tayshaun Prince is Michael Curry's ultimate good soldier, versatile enough to play four positions and amenable enough to agree to play all of them. The strained groin that's kept Rip Hamilton out the previous two games - and almost certainly will have him in street clothes again for Wednesday's New Year's Eve matinee with New Jersey - has returned Prince to his most familiar spot, small forward, after a run of small-ball lineup games in which he logged heavy minutes at power forward.

Given the glut of marquee small forwards in the Eastern Conference - LeBron James, Paul Pierce, Hedo Turkoglu, Luol Deng, Andre Igoudala, Richard Jefferson, et al - you'd think Prince might have welcomed the break.

But his body tells him otherwise.

He means this not as red meat for LeBron James, but, in fact, guarding him for 40 minutes doesn't grind on Tayshaun Prince physically as much as guarding his notoriously non-scoring teammate, Ben Wallace.

"It's not even close," he said of the difference to his body between guarding a small forward for 40 minutes or playing 40 minutes at power forward. "There's so many more things the big men have to do. Boxing out, your guy setting screens, fighting through screens and also bigs setting pick and rolls and you've got to help the guard and get back to the big and try to box him out. The little things. (Playing small forward) is not so much wear and tear on you as far as body contact. There's a lot of perimeter-oriented stuff. The only thing you worry about at the three is pick and rolls.

"At the end of the day, no matter what, you're going to be tired. But playing the four, or playing against Utah and going double overtime against Mehmet (Okur), those types of games, when you wake up the next day, you're going to feel it as opposed to guarding a strong three man. You just pretty much have to keep him in front of you and make them take jump shots. He's not crashing the boards every time so you have to box him out. When you're at the four, you have to do those types of things."

Prince suspects Hamilton, too, would begin to feel the difference if he spends significant chunks of games defending small forwards who try to post him up to take advantage of Hamilton's slight frame. Curry said he's mindful that it's not just the minutes Prince plays - and he's averaged 40 over the past 10 games, a stretch that began with the lineup switch - but how many minutes he plays relative to the time he spends at power forward.

"There's a lot of wear and tear to bang," Curry said. "It's tough to play 82 games on that low block. Tay gives up a lot of weight when he gets down there, so we have to pick and choose how often we put him there and what matchups we put him in down there. But he's done a good job for us - an excellent job, actually."

Given the defensive success the Pistons have had without Hamilton - a double-digit win at Milwaukee, holding the Bucks to 30 percent shooting to break their three-game win streak; and Monday's win over Orlando to beat the NBA's hottest team, holding the Magic to 40 percent and 19 points under their average - it might portend a return to the more traditional lineup with Prince spending more time at small forward.

Curry, as he did after the Orlando win, again at practice on Tuesday talked about the defensive efficiency of the lineup with Stuckey at point guard and two big men in the game.

"I'm not sure how many games this year we've had Stuckey starting at the one and we've had two bigs on the court and Tay starting at the three," he said. "We've been pretty good. Our defense is how well we defend the ball, first and foremost, and Stuckey is our best guard at defending the ball. Then it comes to the bigs - how they defend the pick and roll and protect the basket. Having two bigs, you're at your best at defending. Even when you do make mistakes, you've got the other one helping clean up at the basket. And Tay is our most versatile defender.

"Those four are the key. And then, whoever we have in at that two-guard spot - sometimes it's been Rip, (Allen Iverson), (Arron) Afflalo - we've been pretty good defensively. When we've had those other combinations, we're not nearly as good and that's what we've got to get better at."

• Hamilton received treatment and worked with strength coach Arnie Kander, but did not participate in Tuesday's practice. Antonio McDyess, who took a hard shot to the ribs in Monday's game and had X-rays taken afterward, went through practice and then received treatment. He's expected to play agaisnt New Jersey.

Magic win stirs talk of potential lineup switch

Rip: Rhymes with Pipp.

Back in a time before the Yankees would spend a half-billion dollars every winter to rebuild their baseball team, they would develop their own superstars. One of them was some guy named Gehrig, who subbed one day for the incumbent first baseman – Wally Pipp – and never went back to the bench. Ever since, nearly a century later, it’s still referred to as getting Pipp-ed when somebody sits because of injury and doesn’t get his job back.

The idea that Hamilton, the Pistons’ leading scorer for each of his six seasons in Detroit and a three-time All-Star, is in any danger of losing his place in the franchise’s pantheon is, of course, ludicrous.

But his place in the starting lineup?

Well … check back tomorrow, or next week, or next month. But Michael Curry at least gave broad suggestions after Monday’s very nice win over Orlando – which came in on a seven-game win streak – with Hamilton in street clothes that he and Joe Dumars have thought about starting two big men again and saving the small lineup for situation-driven moments.

“We’ve looked at our lineup at different times and thought about different guys possibly coming off the bench,” Curry said when asked if Hamilton, who missed his second straight game with a groin strain, would be used in a super-sub role upon his return. “But we haven’t made the decision on that. That’s kind of a tough decision.

“But you look at teams that have done it and it’s pretty effective. The Lakers with Lamar Odom, it’s pretty effective for them. (Andrei) Kirilenko in Utah has been really effective and the same thing with (Manu) Ginobili in San Antonio. It can be effective, and whether it’s any of our perimeter guys, one of them coming off the bench, maybe we have to look at it. But we’ll just cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Amir Johnson gave the Pistons 19 active minutes as the replacement starter, grabbing seven rebounds and blocking two shots, and Curry was right to again point out that with Johnson, the stats reveal maybe half of his net worth. Jason Maxiell was good in his 16 minutes, too, scoring a couple of nice baskets inside and racking up another spectacular blocked dunk attempt.

Antonio McDyess was the player of the game, playing the second and fourth quarters and scoring nine of his 11 points, grabbing half his eight rebounds and handing out three of his five assists in the critical fourth when the Pistons played lock-down defense, holding Orlando to 30 percent shooting.

Orlando shot just 40 percent for the game, well under its .459 average, and was held 19 points under its per-game scoring average – and all that despite superb 3-point shooting from Rashard Lewis and Dwight Howard’s destructive third quarter, when he got inside and made tough shots, scoring 13 of his 18 points.

And that begs the question: Are the Pistons better offensively by a significant enough margin with their small lineup to offset the edge they quite clearly get defensively by going big?

“I think the big lineup makes us better defensively,” Curry said, “and at the end of the day, we’re going to have to make sure we’re good enough defensively. We know we can go to the small lineup if we have to. If we’re playing a team in the playoffs and we have to play small a lot, we feel comfortable going to the small lineup. We’ve played it a lot.

“We’ll be able to play both of them throughout the year and decide game by game what the best lineup is for us to give us the best chance to win that game.”

And that begs another question, a really big one: If Curry decides going big is the best long-term solution, who sits?

He’s gushed about what Rodney Stuckey does for both the offense and the defense as the point guard. It probably won’t be Stuckey. That leaves Iverson or Hamilton. More than bruising an ego, the question that bears asking is should they expect that either of those two can be the same irrepressible scoring force – the thing that most clearly defines their NBA value – coming off the bench, a role neither has experienced?

“You find a way,” Iverson said about the dilemma. “You find a way. That’s what it’s all about. There’s going to be adversity at times. The thing is just getting through it. He’s an All-Star. You’ve got to get him back in the lineup. I think we’re better with him in the lineup, but that just says we have two weapons. We can go big and we can go little. I don’t think it will be a problem. Our whole thing is just concentrating on playing defense, keeping a team to 20 points and under for every quarter and keep focusing on that and I think we’ll be fine.”

Curry said one other thing that would argue for a return to the bigger lineup when he was asked about the all-around game Rasheed Wallace played with 16 points, six boards, three blocks and a defensive presence that was largely responsible for limiting Howard to one first-half point.

“Sheed was excellent,” Curry said. “When Sheed has struggled defensively, it’s without that protection, that other big out on the court, and it leaves him out to protect the paint and be up on pick and rolls. He just seems to be more energized. His defensive level seems to pick up when he has another big out there to kind of help protect him.”

There’s no easy answer for Curry. Hamilton has to play 35 minutes a night. As much as the Pistons need the defense and rebounding they get from using a steady diet of their deep stable of big men, they need the coldblooded scoring Hamilton provides, too. But you could look at it another way, too. Maybe there’s no wrong answer here for the Pistons. Maybe in the quest to find out which lineup works better, the big or the small, the Pistons will wind up, as Allen Iverson suggests, with two distinctly different looks that can pull their fat from the fire on alternating nights.

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Amir grabs another chance by the horns

It looked like Amir Johnson cracked his own glass ceiling almost two years ago now, his second NBA season, when he went down to the D-League and dominated, flirting with triple-doubles consistently.

It looked like he was poised to grab a spot in the Pistons' rotation in the summer of 2007, when he hit restricted free agency and immediately drew the attention of several well-stocked NBA teams, none more prominent than the San Antonio Spurs, fresh off of their third title in five seasons, eventually re-signing with the Pistons for three years at a price that raised eyebrows for someone who'd appeared in all of 11 games in his first two seasons.

It looked for all the world that he had arrived midway through last season, when Flip Saunders threw him into the fray one night in Philadelphia and kept coming back to him in subsequent games with Johnson always stuffing a stat sheet out of all proportion to his minutes played.

And it really looked like the education of Amir Johnson was complete when Michael Curry scanned his roster over the summer, considered his options and decided what Johnson had to offer - the uncanny speed and athleticism - was the perfect additive to a veteran starting group that sometimes needed a kick-start, not to mention a way to return Antonio McDyess to the second unit where he'd anchor the scoring and not get caught in Rasheed Wallace's shadow so much offensively.

But something always shoved Amir back past the middle, if not fully to the end, of the Pistons' bench. A penchant for fouling in bunches, the signing of Theo Ratliff, the trade for Allen Iverson. Always there was a need to tweak the lineup, and always it was Amir who was first in line to be tweaked.

So all parties, Amir Johnson included, would be well-advised to take his Friday night performance against Oklahoma City for what it was - a bright second-half cameo that might well have spared the Pistons from a perplexing loss to the NBA's least successful team - rather than a sign of things to come.

Actually, Amir is probably the last one who needs that reminder. He's managed to keep an upbeat perspective through all the ins and outs, remarkably so, really. Young players who do everything they're asked and perform up to and beyond expectations when called upon understandably are quick to frustrate and backslide when their roles are diminished for reasons outside their influence.

But after playing precious little since the Dec. 7 debacle in New York - when the Pistons dug a huge early hole for themselves at Madison Square Garden and lost to the Knicks - Johnson was ready when called upon against OKC. On a night the Pistons were palpably lethargic - predictably so, after taking two logy days off for Christmas - Johnson lit a fuse when he bounded into the game in the second half.

So even on a night Allen Iverson was every bit the fourth-quarter Answer, Curry was moved to say, "I thought as great as Allen was, the player of the game was Amir Johnson, by far. While he was in the game, we were able to get stops."

"It's all about staying ready," Johnson said with his typical earnestness after the game. "Just staying after practice and shooting around. I was just ready whenever the coach was going to call my name. When I got in, all I could think about was playing hard and help our team get stops."

Curry can't always count on Johnson playing error-free or flawlessly, but he can count on his 21-year-old - and that bears keeping in mind, too; Johnson is still younger than many players who'll be discussed as lottery picks next June - to be appreciative of every opportunity to play.

"He knew I was ready," Johnson said of Curry. "I always stay focused in practice, and stay after and get shots in. When a coach sees that he is going to know that you're ready. So you have to do the little stuff and always stay after practice, so that the coach will always have faith in you."

A young player showered with the accolades Johnson has elicited might have grown disaffected by this point, looking for an out, to an organization that, in his mind, would have recognized his greatness by now and carved out a role for him without having to earn it every day.

The Pistons have always been struck by Johnson's passion for the game, dating to the day they brought him in for his predraft workout in 2005 and he was in the gym at 8 a.m. - 5 a.m. to his California body clock - dunking. Big guys are rarely described as gym rats. Johnson fits.

One of these days, he'll seize an opportunity like he has so many times in the past - and won't let go. Maybe that day happened Friday night in an otherwise unremarkable win.

• It's still a little early to start seriously considering the ramifications, but the disappointing seasons they're experiencing in both Minnesota and Toronto could pay dividends for the Pistons come draft day. The Pistons own both teams' second-rounders - Minnesota's for the trade of Ronald Dupree, Toronto's (and a 2011 second-rounder, as well) for the Carlos Delfino deal - as well as their own first- and second-rounders. As of today, Minnesota's pick would be the second in the second round and Toronto's would be the 10th, giving the Pistons three picks in the top 40.

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In draft do-over, no way Pistons get Stuckey

Michael Curry is giving the Pistons two full days off. Really, truly, fully off. No travel. No strength and conditioning work. No watching videotape. No shooting free throws. Off. Feet up and laid back. Some of them are heading out of town to family. Some are bringing family home to them.

Rodney Stuckey's in the latter camp. The crew from Seattle has arrived. And mom's doing the Christmas cooking. Which is only right. Because Stuckey did his cooking Tuesday night with heaping portions for 22,076 appreciatively hungry guests.

The kid scored 40 points and the Pistons needed practically every one of them to hold off the Chicago Bulls, still too talented to explain a sub-.500 record for the second straight season, on a night Allen Iverson limped off three minutes into the third quarter and never returned.

Which got me to thinking: How many of the 14 teams picking ahead of the Pistons in the 2007 draft are still kicking themselves over the events of that night?

Let's put it another way: Stuckey has shown enough to be considered a future All-Star at the position that has emerged in the last half-decade as the most critical to success, point guard, that there can't be even one team among the 14 who doesn't look at their guy and wonder if the team might be better off with Stuckey instead.

Even Portland and Oklahoma City (then Seattle), which went 1-2 in the draft and got the two players everyone was certain were the cream of a rich draft crop, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant.

It's tough to fully evaluate either player so far for very different reasons, Oden because he hasn't been able to show enough yet - due to first injury and then rust and Portland's depth - and Durant because, on a bad team, he's had too much responsibility thrust on him too soon.

Oden plays 22 minutes a game this year, after missing all of his rookie season with an injured knee, and has unspectacular numbers: 7.7 points and 7.3 rebounds. He shows in brilliant flashes why many still see dominance in his future, but it's fair to say there isn't anything close to unanimity on predictions of greatness for Oden any longer. And there are real concerns about his durability, going back to the broken wrist at Ohio State and lingering doubts about his back's tolerance for wear and tear.

Durant's numbers are everything anyone could have expected: He's averaging 23.3 points and shooting 46 percent overall and 47 percent from the 3-point arc. He's going to contend for scoring titles before long. But it's impossible to gauge yet if he'll ever contend for MVPs or really help a team win games. OKC has won three games all season. The Thunder hope they got their point guard of the future in the 2008 lottery with Russell Westbrook, who physically is close to Stuckey.

It's fair to say OKC chose wisely with Durant and wouldn't swap him for Stuckey today. It's also fair to say a point guard as dynamic as Stuckey would have won more than three games so far for the Thunder.

After those two, all bets are off.

Atlanta picked third and grabbed a winner in Al Horford, who could be a 15 and 10 guy for the next decade - and maybe more than that. He's a latter-day Buck Williams. But he doesn't have Stuckey's ceiling. Nobody could knock Atlanta for picking Horford No. 3. But check back. We'll knock Atlanta plenty in a minute.

Now it really gets gruesome. Memphis went No. 4 and took Mike Conley, an undersized point guard, one year after hitting nicely with a late first-round undersized point guard, Kyle Lowry. In 2008, Memphis wound up with O.J. Mayo, and many think his best position will eventually be point guard. Can you imagine what the future in Memphis would look like with a big backcourt of Stuckey and Mayo, interchangeable at the 1 and 2, with Rudy Gay on the wing?

Seattle went fifth, courtesy of shipping Ray Allen to Boston, and tookJeff Green. He looks solid, not great. A clear win for Stuckey. Yeah, the Thunder could have had both Durant and Stuckey. The three wins would be tripled, at least.

Milwaukee was next with the selection of Yi Jianlian, and all the ensuing international diplomacy it took to appease him and his Chinese official handlers for steering him to a small market light on Asian influence must double the Bucks' pain now at the enormity of the gaffe. Ex-Pistons vice president John Hammond must look at the Bucks and wonder what they'd be with Rodney Stuckey at the point. Of course, if Larry Harris had taken Stuckey instead of Yi, he'd still be the GM and Hammond might still be at Joe Dumars' right hand with the Pistons.

Minnesota had the seventh pick and took Horford's teammate at two-time defending NCAA champ Florida, Corey Brewer. Coming off a hugely disappointing rookie season and now a torn ACL, Brewer's NBA future is, at best, murky. In the 2006 draft, Minnesota took Brandon Roy and shipped him to Portland for Randy Foye. The T-wolves could today have a backcourt of Stuckey and Roy. Yikes.

Golden State swapped Jason Richardson to Charlotte for the eighth pick and took Brandan Wright after one season at North Carolina. Some still think Wright could be a big-time player. But Stuckey? If the Warriors had taken him, they'd have been shopping Baron Davis in trade a year ago - instead of getting blindsided by his departure in free agency - and could have a Western Conference contender today instead of another lottery team.

Chicago went ninth and took Joakim Noah, who projects as nothing more than a semi-useful role player at this point, sort of a poor man's Anderson Varejao. If the Bulls had taken Stuckey, they could have either used the No. 1 pick they stumbled into in the 2008 draft - though Stuckey might have been enough to move last year's Bulls out of the lottery - on Michael Beasley or gone ahead with the selection of Derrick Rose and fielded one of the most athletic backcourts in the league.

(A word about that: The Pistons were one of the few teams who viewed Stuckey as a point guard, which in large measure explains why he fell to 15. But Stuckey is really an old-fashioned guard, capable of playing either spot with equal aplomb, and the thought of he and Rose, say, or he and Mayo together isn't at all far-fetched.)

Sacramento had the 10th pick and grabbed Spencer Hawes, a 7-footer with one year at Washington under his belt. Hawes has the tools to be an effective offensive player. There will be a market for his skills for a very long time. But nobody will be building a franchise around him.

Here comes the killer: With the 11th pick, and with a roster that at the time included the likes of Tyronn Lue and Speedy Claxton at point guard, the Atlanta Hawks addressed a need they could have solved two years prior but instead passed on both Chris Paul and Deron Williams to select Marvin Williams by taking ... Acie Law. They wound up trading for Mike Bibby midway through last season. Law is barely in the rotation for a young team that would be talked about as the Eastern Conference's version of Portland if Atlanta had taken Stuckey No. 11.

Philadelphia went 12th and took a player who was very much on the Pistons' radar, Georgia Tech freshman Thaddeus Young. If they do the draft over, Young definitely goes in the top five. There are probably some GMs who would take Young over Stuckey today. But the consensus? Have to believe it's Stuckey.

New Orleans had the 13th pick and grabbed Kansas sophomore Julian Wright, a freakishly good athlete who is one semi-reliable jump shot away from being an impact player. But right now, his future isn't nearly as clear as Stuckey's appears. And, again, the thought of a Stuckey-Paul backcourt ... whew!

The LA Clippers had the 14th pick and, as far as the Pistons were concerned, neither the Clips nor the Pistons could go wrong by this point. The Pistons loved Al Thornton. In fact, a month or so before the draft, he was the guy they hoped might fall to them. But they didn't think it would happen, and they zeroed in on Stuckey, and by draft day, Stuckey was the one they were hoping would fall. Thornton has been a very, very good player for the Clips, a relentless presence with a scorer's mentality, just as Joe Dumars imagined.

But the Pistons are as happy Rodney Stuckey parachuted to them at 15 as at least a dozen teams ahead of them are crestfallen they didn't have the foresight to see a dynamic NBA point guard when they scouted the high-scoring kid from Eastern Washington.

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All losses aren't created equal

For Joe Dumars, the easy way out would have been to stand pat after a training camp and preseason that exhibited largely positive signs, never mind the 2-0 start to the regular season, before he pulled the trigger on the Chauncey Billups-Allen Iverson trade.

For Michael Curry, the easy way out would have been to stay conventional with his starting lineup, bringing Rodney Stuckey off of the bench and keeping Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince in their comfort zones at shooting guard and small forward.

I don't know what the Pistons' record would be if the trade hadn't been executed or the lineup switch enacted, but chances are it would be somewhere north of the 14-11 they woke up with Monday after two tough losses to two good teams over the weekend, the double-overtime game with Utah on Friday and the derailed comeback at Atlanta on Sunday.

The hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing currently common among Pistons Nation isn't unexpected. This is a fan base now conditioned to 50-win seasons and playoff runs that don't conclude until the kids have been let out of school for the summer.

And that's the point behind the moves - Joe D's trade and Michael Curry's lineup switch. They'd very much like to continue those traditions. If that means taking a step back in November and December to better prepare for the running start they'll need to make a charge at Boston and Cleveland come spring, so be it.

As Dumars told me a few weeks ago, losing games he thinks the Pistons should still be winning - adjustments or not - disappoints him, but it's hypocrisy to pass judgment on this team for wins and losses in December when the standard for judging them during all those other 50-win seasons was the final chapter, not all the beautifully constructed ones that came before it.

In that light, you can look at the Utah and Atlanta losses and say "step back" - in fact, Tayshaun Prince and Rip Hamilton called it that Monday - but many of the components that made up those losses counted as steps forward.

"The Utah game was a tough game to lose," Hamilton said. "They played great; we played great, but they ended up getting the win. Atlanta, we slipped a little bit. We took a couple of steps back."

"Definitely some positives out of the games," Prince said, "but we did take a step back."

These losses are frustrating for them, too, probably to a greater degree than they are for Dumars and Curry. Players aren't conditioned to look at the big picture. For so long, the Pistons' familiar starters have had well-defined roles and knew not only what was expected of them, but what they could expect out of the guy next to them. All that's been changed. It's as if these players who know the game so well are relearning it on the fly. And that's disorienting, and frustrating, in itself.

But wins help them see the legitimacy of the logic behind the change. The bursts of offensive potency they've often exhibited over the last few weeks can be galvanzing. Even those last two tough losses, I'd argue, are going to be seen in retrospect as positive steps in that regard. Hamilton wasn't exaggerating when he said both teams played great in the double-OT thriller. The Pistons came out of that game bitterly disappointed, of course, and flat-out exhausted and set up for the thankless task of playing another hot team on the road barely 36 hours later, but also a little exhilirated to see the possibilities their revamped roster allow them.

"We had some good moments in those games," Curry said after Monday's practice. "The Utah game ... one shot and we win it. It was a game Stuckey didn't play really well. Stuckey bounced back against Atlanta, a team that's only lost twice at home, 10-2 going into that game. Stuckey had a great bounce-back game and we held them to 42 percent shooting. I thought it was a really good game for us other than the fact we didn't defend Mike Bibby very well."

That's the way it is with struggling teams, of course, or teams, as Dumars characterized the Pistons, that are trying to find themselves: There's usually one thing that trips losing - and it's almost always something different than it was the game before. That's where the Pistons are at right now: plug one hole in the dike, another one pops open.

But the leaks aren't gushing any more, only trickling. And they're getting repaired with more dispatch every time.

"We're getting better," Curry said. "That's the positive thing. As we look at the tape, we're getting better and we've shown signs. But we're not there yet."

Which is OK when the finish line hangs over June.

• The Pistons see another old friend when Chicago comes to town: Lindsey Hunter.

"Very weird. Strange," Hamilton said of the thought of seeing Hunter in Bulls red. "We've been having a lot of battles with Chicago, and now to see him on the other side of the fence. To see him in a Chicago uniform is going to feel very odd."

• The Pistons' small lineup won't be in much danger of being overpowered by the Bulls, who lack a dominant post presence and could be without both Drew Gooden (sprained ankle) and Tyrus Thomas (concussion). In Chicago's win on Saturday over Utah - the Jazz, too, felt the effects of the double-overtime game - the Bulls often went with four perimeter players around second-year 7-footer Aaron Gray, and sometimes with five perimeter players.
• Since going to the small lineup six games ago, the Pistons have been outrebounded by almost seven per game. That's a fairly alarming number if it continues, and Curry isn't conceding the rebounding battle, but he hopes to close the gap and expects to make up for it in other areas.

"That's one of the things we knew going small we'd give up," he said. "They're probably going to beat us on the boards a little more because of that. But we've started games better. We've been efficient scoring with that small group. We've just got to get better defensively with that group and I think we'll be OK. We definitely still want to use our bigs more. In a perfect world, I woud love to play 16 to 20 minutes small" - the first eight to 10 minutes of each half - "and play the other minutes big."

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Amid the ruins, a bright ember glows

The Pistons moved beyond moral victories very early in the Joe Dumars reconstruction, so nobody was in a mood to celebrate the 120-114 double-overtime loss to Utah on a night four of Michael Curry’s best players ended the game with the same perspective as he had – from the bench, watching, tagged with six fouls apiece.

That makes seven straight losses to the Jazz, which at least makes the notion of taking a stake to drive through their collective heart on the trip to Utah for this season’s rematch tempting.

But in the ashes of this smoldering defeat, you don’t need an arson expert to detect the signs of an offense about to combust and a team inching closer to the vision Dumars had when he pulled off the Chauncey Billups-Allen Iverson deal two games into the season.

“I would rather both of us not score at all and get a win than have good games like that in a loss,” Allen Iverson said after establishing a personal best as a Piston with 38 points on a night Rip Hamilton tossed in 30, the first time two Pistons crested 30 since Hamilton and Billups did it in March 2003. “But it keeps you positive and lets you know we can get it done and we can be effective, both of us, in one single game.”

Remember when the prevailing wisdom was that these two couldn’t play together, couldn’t share the ball, couldn’t strike the balance necessary for the Pistons to realize the on-paper potential of combining two of their generation’s most irrepressible scorers?

Well, scratch that.

You could nitpick a lot about this game to find the one play that would have enabled the Pistons to win it in regulation, or in the first overtime, before the zebras sidelined three more of them – Hamilton, Rodney Stuckey and Antonio McDyess early in the second overtime – after Rasheed Wallace had been banished in the first overtime. But the losing side can do that in every game.

The inescapable truth about this game was that it took a great performance from Utah on a night the Pistons would have beaten pretty much all comers. It was that good. Who’d have guessed that on dollar hot dog night, the best bargain would turn out to be the basketball? No matter what a seat cost at The Palace for Friday night’s pulsating double-overtime thriller, it represented Black Friday value.

If they could have captured the heat this one generated, they wouldn’t have had to bother with plowing the parking lot for the foot of snow that got dumped on Detroit earlier in the day – it would have melted in a flash. Presciently enough, the souvenir giveaway was a snowbrush. Michael Curry might have used his to sweep away the disappointment that clung to him unmistakably, yet Curry vacillated between hurt and hope, clearly believing that many things he saw from his team on a night that showcased the NBA at its best will translate into the future he believes will validate them all.



“I’m pleased with what our guys did,” he said. “We made some mistakes, but overall I thought our guys tried to play to their strengths and played unselfish and continued to attack.”

With the first real test of the small lineup since Curry swapped out Kwame Brown for Rodney Stuckey in the starting lineup, the Pistons played one of the NBA’s top rebounding and toughest teams to a virtual draw on the boards – Utah won 50-47 despite Wallace and McDyess both fouling out – and held the Jazz to 40 points in the paint, five under their average despite the 10 extra minutes.

And let’s make this clear: Deron Williams and ex-Piston Mehmet Okur were sensational, and if they had been merely exceptionally good, the Pistons would have walked into the Currier & Ives night winners. Williams knocked down 11 of 18 shots despite mostly stout defense played on him all night, and his turnaround jumper that twisted Stuckey into the ground with 2.3 seconds left in regulation would have won it if not for Hamilton’s coldblooded 17-footer to tie with four-tenths of a second left.

Williams finished with 29 points and eight assists, Okur with 26 and 12 boards. Paul Millsap, standing in for the 16th straight game for the injured Carlos Boozer, kept his remarkable streak of double-doubles alive at 14 – though he needed both overtimes to do it – as he scored added 24 points and 13 rebounds.

Okur and Millsap combined for nine points in the second overtime when the Pistons had to go with Jason Maxiell and Walter Herrmann as their big man combination. The Pistons were whistled for 34 fouls to Utah’s 21 and the Jazz shot 17 more foul shots.

The Pistons had a shot to win at the end of the first overtime, but Stuckey missed an open triple from a few feet beyond the spot where Hamilton had drained his shot to force overtime. It was Iverson’s play to make, but Utah knew that as well as anyone and was determined to make someone else beat them.

“I wanted to take it,” Iverson said, “but I looked at the way the defense was playing, I knew everyone on their team knew I was going to try to take the shot. They packed in so much, that’s how Rodney got the look he got. Out of 100 shots, I’ll take that one 100 times.”

Ten days ago, when the Pistons were dealing with the rare franchise-disorienting three-game losing streak, Joe D said he saw a team trying to find itself. Get big leads, lose them. Get down big, come roaring back.

They were this close to winning their fourth straight game on Friday night, and would have with a little less heroics from Williams or Okur, a little more favorable whistle, a little better bounce here or there. No one’s calling off the search party just yet, but the bread crumbs are getting a little closer together.

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Stuckey ready for a measuring-stick game

In tempering expectations for Rodney Stuckey, coming off of his tour de force stand-in performance for Chauncey Billups in last spring's playoffs and even after Billups' return against Boston in the conference finals, Michael Curry often pointed out in the preseason that Stuckey had yet to play a full season - remember, he missed the first 25 games of his rookie year with a hand injury.

Stuckey is still four games shy of the full 82-game load. But his ascencion to Curry's starting lineup has warped the timeline on his transformation to stardom. And if it needed any further nudging, Stuckey's 79th NBA game - Friday night against Utah - should help.

Because Utah means Deron Williams is coming to town, and if there is anyone among the NBA's cadre of blossoming star point guards Stuckey most resembles, it's probably Williams. Both are blessed with plus size (Williams is listed at 6-foot-3, 210 pounds; Stuckey at 6-foot-5, 207) for the position, but what really elevates them to a different plane is that they're also stronger and quicker than pretty much everyone they come across.

Except, perhaps, each other.

"Size-wise, the fact they're both aggressive drivers, very quick despite having good size, I think they are similar in build and in some ways in the way they attack the game," Curry said. "Deron is tough. He's emerging as one of the elite point guards in this league. It's a good matchup for Stuckey. It's a guy he can pick things up from as well as a good challenge for him. Knowing Stuckey the way we do, he loves to meet those challenges."

If he meets that challenge the way he's addressed that of becoming a young starting point guard surrounded by four able scorers, the Pistons have a shot at snapping their six-game losing streak to the closest thing they have to a nemesis in today's NBA. In the four games since Curry shuffled the lineup and brought Stuckey into the mix, he's averaged 15.5 points and 10 assists while shooting 62 percent. There are only two point guards in the NBA averaging double figures in assists - Chris Paul and Williams.

"I'm a good passer," Stuckey said after Thursday's practice, one night after his nine-point, four-assist fourth quarter enabled the Pistons to break open a close game and win going away over Washington. "When I see my guys open, I'll give 'em the ball."

The Pistons are 5-1 this season with Stuckey as their starting point guard - he started two games early after Billups was traded and before Iverson was cleared to join the team - with their only loss coming at Washington in the first game after the lineup switch. He's mindful, as the starter, of the scorers surrounding him and the need for everyone to get touches so they stay plugged in. To that end, his year serving as Billups' apprentice has paid dividends, for Billups was masterful at controlling the tempo of a game and making sure his teammates got scoring chances to keep defenses honest.

"Just watching him the past year, that's one thing he's always done well - just getting everyone involved and setting up the offense and creating for his teammates and then getting his stuff off," Stuckey said. "Just watching him, that's something that I learned from him. Whatever the defense gives me, I'm just playing off of them. When I see an opening, I take it."

Stuckey's success hasn't really surprised Curry, who said he expects his new point guard to average "at least eight" assists, but he's been pleased at how seamlessly he's taken to the role of orchestrating a game and understanding its rhythms.

"We play at a faster pace," with Stuckey in the game, Curry said. "He's able to push the ball, but what I like more than anything is he pushes the ball and then he recognizes when we need to walk it up and run a set and do something in the half-court. He's being very disciplined in the way he's attacking the game."

Stuckey will be challenged by Williams at both ends, especially in the way he has proven a worthy successor to longtime Jazz point guard John Stockton at manipulating defenses with his ability to work the pick and roll. But Curry has been as impressed with Stuckey's impact on the Pistons' defense as on their offense.

"I thought from the (2007) Summer League, he did some things defensively that were really good and I always thought as he got in better shape and was able to stay down in a stance longer, because of his quick feet and his strong chest area, he could bump guys and keep guys in front of him."

And for as much as Curry has tried to manage expectations for Stuckey, he can't help himself sometimes as he projects the future, adding up all the elements of Stuckey's game - his playmaking ability, his rapidly expanding shooting range, his defensive presence and his mental approach and toughness.

"He's so unselfish, it's amazing the amount of points he scored in college," Curry said. "When you have a guy like that, that's the makeup for a guy who has a chance to be really special in this league. A guy who has the ability to score and defend and he's unselfish and he's self-motivated in what he wants to do and be as a player."

Almost one full season into what Curry expects to be a career that could have his jersey hanging in The Palace rafters, the evolution of Rodney Stuckey will take another step when Utah and Deron Williams come to town.

• Allen Iverson told Arnie Kander after suffering a knee-to-knee blow in Wednesday's win that he expected it "to be on fire" when he arose Thursday. But Iverson went through practice as usual and is good to go against the Jazz.
• Utah's Carlos Boozer had hoped to be back this week after missing time with a strained left quadriceps tendon, but he had a setback Wednesday during a workout and was scheduled for an MRI Thursday. He's now missed 15 games. Boozer made some headlines Wednesday when he told ESPN.com that he intends to opt out of his contract following the season. The Pistons will be one of a handful of teams with the cap space it would take to land a player of Boozer's stature. Among the others are Memphis, Oklahoma City and Portland, although if Darius Miles plays 10 games with Memphis - which just signed him - then he goes back on Portland's cap at close to $10 million, eliminating the Blazers from pursuit.
• In Boozer's absence, third-year player Paul Millsap has put up an amazing 13 consecutive double-doubles, including a 32-point, 10-rebound performance at Boston this week. Millsap was drafted in the second round in 2006 and, as such, will be a restricted free agent after the season, giving Utah protection at the position should it lose Boozer.

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Iverson finds the spotlight - and shares it

Arron Afflalo picked up his third foul seven minutes before halftime and went to the bench. Rodney Stuckey followed two minutes later, also saddled with three fouls. Rip Hamilton’s shot had already shown signs of betrayal by then. Rasheed Wallace had yet to find the bottom of the net.

Allen Iverson has spent most of his first six weeks as a Piston trying not to step on toes, but all of a sudden there weren’t that many toes in the pool. So for about three wildly entertaining minutes, he did what he’d done for his first 12 remarkable NBA seasons: strap an entire NBA franchise to his wiry little frame and drag everyone along for the ride.

He wound up with 28 points – just one more than he’s averaged over his career, but just two off of his best in his 19th game since the trade that transformed the Pistons.

“I’ve never been on a team where you start five guys and the coach calls plays for all five guys,” Iverson said, his eyes wide with the wonder of it still. “That says a lot about our offensive ability. But it’s different for me and it’s just something I have to get used to – something I’m willing to get used to because I just see the big picture.”

It’s still fair to argue the merits of the trade, whether Iverson’s explosiveness vs. Chauncey Billups’ steady hand will push the Pistons over the hump or push them out of their comfort zone, but about that last thing – Iverson’s willingness to subvert the scorer in his soul for the betterment of the team – there really are no doubters.

Even on a night he scored 28 and supplied plenty of highlight-reel fodder, his night was every bit as memorable for the simple as the spectacular.

Let’s start with the spectacular, late in the second half with the Pistons nursing a three-point lead.

It began with Iverson darting from left to right, his favorite flight path that starts on the left wing and swoops across the lane toward the basket on the other side of the rim, faking a pass to Antonio McDyess that froze the Washington defense while Iverson continued, unmolested, for a layup between trees JaVale McGee and Antawn Jamison.

The next minute he was in transition, in the middle of the floor, the ball in his hands, McDyess cutting to the basket from the right wing, Iverson taking the ball with his right hand behind his back – again, making everyone in the building think it was coming out the other side, a pass to his left – but stopping it there by bringing his left hand around his back, too, then redirecting it to his right, to McDyess, for an easy layup.

If you can’t picture it, don’t worry. “SportsCenter” will be playing it all day.

In those final minutes before halftime, he put up six points and spoon-fed McDyess another two, fueling a spurt that saw the Pistons score 25 percent of their first-half points in about half that percentage of the minutes.

Some of it is just settling in, feeling enough like one of the guys finally that he’s told himself it’s OK to be Allen Iverson even when it’s Rip Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace running with him, not Kevin Ollie and Samuel Dalembert. But most of it is the ease he feels now playing off of the ball with Rodney Stuckey on a freight train to stardom at point guard.

“Lineup change,” Michael Curry answered immediately when I asked him which was the bigger influence in the more-at-ease Iverson we’ve seen over the last week, the 19-game experience or the lineup change. “When you look back at it, he hadn’t strictly run the point in some years. It’s been a long, long time since he did that and we were asking him to do that when he first got here. So he never was able to get going into games a lot of times. Just by having Stuckey out there, it relieves him of that.”

Which brings us to the simple.

Iverson had 20 points by the midway mark of the third quarter, then spent the next few minutes resting to get ready for the fourth. The Pistons led by only three after three. Iverson had to be hearing the little voice in his head telling him it was now his time, his place to take over.

But Stuckey, who had played a little unevenly to that point, got it going early, hitting a 20-footer and getting to the foul line twice for six quick points.

So a few possessions later, Iverson fed Stuckey, posting up against Juan Dixon, against whom he owns an overwhelming physical advantage. But Washington double-teamed and Stuckey kicked it back out to Iverson, whose every instinct at that point must have screamed at him to attack the basket while Washington’s defense was on the move. But he stayed with it, dumping the ball back in the post to Stuckey, who this time lowered his left shoulder, got inside the lane, drawing three Wizards defenders with him, and found Tayshaun Prince for a dunk and a seven-point lead.

Later still, he hit McDyess for another layup – and, ironically enough, McDyess, a part of the trade that netted Iverson, has quickly developed a very nice chemistry with him – and an eight-point lead, then drove baseline and found Prince for a wide-open jumper to stretch it to 10.

Stuckey wound up with another bulging stat line: 18 points, 11 assists and only two turnovers, nine of his points and four of his assists coming in the fourth quarter, Iverson perfectly content to dance into the spotlight when called upon, and slide one-half step to the side when it shone brightest upon Stuckey’s shoulders.

“I’m definitely getting comfortable,” he said. “I understand my role. I understand when it’s going to be time for me to try to dominate games and when it’s going to be time for me to sit back and let somebody else do it. Over time, it’s going to get better and better.”

Makes you wonder where they’ll be in another 19 games.

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Lineup change had as much to do with defense

Even coaches who save their X-and-O doodling time for offense understand this much: When your defense is stifling, points come easier at the other end. Flip Saunders was regarded as one of the NBA's most clever offensive coaches, but he consistently maintained that the offense functioned more efficiently if you weren't always reduced to taking the ball out of the net on the other end.

Michael Curry made his chops as an NBA player at the defensive end, so you don't have to guess how he feels about the relationship's balance.

And it was with defense in mind as much as offense that led Curry to reshuffle his starting lineup and insert Rodney Stuckey at point guard, despite the analysis that has focused on Stuckey's influence as a point guard helping Allen Iverson and Rip Hamilton find a common ground to launch their individual successes within the team framework.

"I thought Rodney would be great in the starting lineup, first of all from a defensive standpoint," Curry said. "He's our best defender on the ball and to be a really good defensive team, you have to be really good at defending the ball. ... We're starting to turn the corner and become a better defensive team."

The Pistons have some alarming defensive stats on their resume through the first quarter of the season - they rank 22nd in field-goal percentage defense - but Curry has been encouraged by what he's seen since the lineup change. And part of the motivation for the amped-up defensive intensity might be the impact players see it can have on their impact to get easy points the other way.

"Guys are starting to realize as long as we defend really well, offensively we're going to be fine," Curry said. "If we defend, we're going to score. What happens is when you're not defending well and you get into all half-court sets, everybody is trying to see if it's their turn to score. When we get into defending, we get out in transition, we get more possessions in the game and having Stuckey out there has opened it up for Allen and Rip to get going offensively. When we get more possessions, when we get stops and get out and run, all the guys are getting their reps and touches."

The ascencion of Stuckey to starter was motivated by what he would mean to that unit's and the team's success, but it's also been a boon to Stuckey's play. That hasn't surprised Curry for any number of reasons:

• He saw the success Stuckey had as a starter in the playoffs last year for an injured Chauncey Billups and again in the two games early this season when the Iverson-Billups trade left the Pistons without either one.

"I just think he's comfortable starting," Curry said. "I've always thought that. Maybe he never came off the bench before he came here, but he's always appeared to me to be very comfortable when he's started."

"When Chaunce first got traded," Hamilton said, "the two games he started, he was awesome. He played great both games and we got two wins. Nothing he does right now surprises me. I expect that of him. I don't expect him to come out and play like a second-year player."

• Playing with four bona fide scoring threats has spread the floor for Stuckey and put his penetration skills back in play.

"I don't think he felt any pressure to score even when he was coming off of the bench," Curry said. "I just think the game opens up for him. When you didn't have (Antonio McDyess) out there with that second group when he was coming off the bench, the floor just shrunk for him and he was forced to shoot all jumpers. No one wants to make a living shooting all Js. We've been confident in his jump shot and we love his ability to get to the basket. So now he can pick and choose a lot better."

• It fits Stuckey's aggressive nature to be out there to start games and appears to be accelerating his emergence as a take-charge leader.

"I think his demeanor is what helps separate him from a lot of players and a big part of why he's going to become a great player in this league," Curry said. "His demeanor fits right along with his ability and desire to work hard and be great."

Curry knew some things might suffer at first, the record included, as he went about implementing any number of changes this season, everything from the inclusion of more young players in the rotation to altering the playbook to demanding more in the way of physical conditioning early in the season. He wasn't figuring on a dramatic early-season trade compounding the magnitude of change. But the payoff, he believes, will be a more resilient and deeper team over time. Rodney Stuckey is helping him shrink the time frame.

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Thumbs up in early returns on lineup switch

The sample size is still too small to draw ironclad conclusions about the genius of inserting Rodney Stuckey in the Pistons' starting lineup, but so far, so good. Through three games, the numbers of Stuckey, Rip Hamilton and Allen Iverson suggest the Pistons are on the verge of becoming the dynamic offensive team Joe Dumars envisioned when he pulled the Iverson-Chauncey Billups blockbuster two games into the season.

Hamilton is averaging 25 points and shooting 54 percent in those three games, up from 16.3 and 43 percent prior to the lineup switch. Iverson's scoring average is virtually the same pre- and post-switch, but his efficiency is up significantly. A 39 percent shooter before Stuckey joined the lineup, Iverson is shooting 50 percent over the last three games and had a 12-assist performance in one game. And his 20-point game at Charlotte on Saturday was his highest-scoring game in his last 11.

Stuckey, too, has seen his numbers jump to 14.7 points and 9.7 assists while shooting a remarkable 68 percent.

The win-win to the move is that while it has appeared to have liberating effects on Hamilton and Iverson and allowed them to flourish by playing off of Stuckey and even Tayshaun Prince in his unique role as a playmaking power forward, it has emboldened Stuckey to be the take-charge leader that's easier to achieve as a starter than a sixth man.

Without the burden of being a point guard needed for his scoring punch on a second unit not dripping with scorers, Stuckey hasn't had to force scoring chances out of highly contested shots at the rim, instead probing those openings more judiciously. And with every game, Stuckey flashes eye-catching bullet passes that must make NBA scouts who viewed him as strictly a shooting guard cringe.

"With Stuckey at the point, it frees up Allen and Rip from having to initiate the offense a lot of times," Michael Curry said after Monday's practice. "We want them to be able to initiate sets at times, but not all the time and maybe not all the time at the beginning. Stuck does a great job of running sets, putting guys in position to score and I also like Stuckey starting out on the ball defensively."

In the first quarters of the three games since Stuckey became a starter, the Pistons have held teams to 17.7 points a game and have led after one quarter by an average of 10.7 points.

Tayshaun Prince's numbers have gone the other way - he's averaging 6.7 points and shooting 34 percent, compared to 15.1 and 45 percent pre-switch - but his shot attempts per game haven't been affected much (11.9-10.7) and it's more likely a bad shooting weekend (7 of 19 against Indiana and Charlotte) more than anything.

As Curry said after Prince's 3 of 12 against Indiana, in which Prince had a number of open jump shots rim out, "Tay had great looks tonight. If Tay has those looks tomorrow, he'll go 8 for 12 or 9 for 12." He didn't, but nobody is concerned about Prince - at least not coach or player. Prince, in fact, seems to be embracing the added responsibilities of being the de facto point guard at times when Stuckey is out of the game and moving to power forward to start halves.

"I'm at the point right now where whatever can get us on a winning streak here, we're going to keep it that way," he said. "Me being at the four has been creating things for Rip, for Stuckey and for Allen. So if that's going to work, we're going to stick with it."

When Curry considered the lineup switch, he did it fully believing it would benefit all three guards offensively. Defensively, he knew Wallace was fully capable of guarding at either interior position. He liked having Stuckey on the ball and moving Iverson off of it. And he saw enough of Hamilton defending small forwards last season to be confident of that matchup. The one that had him a little concerned was Prince guarding bigger, stronger power forwards.

"Sometimes bigger and heavier guys, they will cause Tay a problem," Curry said. But in those games - perhaps one like this Friday's with Utah, if Carlos Boozer is back from his thigh injury by then - "our first sub will be another big and bump Tay back to the three." And even if moving Prince to power forward lessens his opportunities to post up against smaller threes, with "some of those bigger guys, Tay is able to (isolate) from the elbow or get into pick and rolls. So I like what he can do because of that, plus I think at the four Tay really rebounds the ball well for us."

To finish most games, Curry sees Prince more often at his more customary small forward position with Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess up front to put scoring pressure at both spots on the opposition. In the backcourt? Interesting answer: "It's a hell of a dilemma, but I cherish it that at the end of games, you're looking at three for the two perimeter guys - Rip, Stuckey and AI, whoever is rolling."

It's a measure of the confidence Curry has in Stuckey, and the belief that to be the team Curry feels they can become it will pay to accelerate the second-year point guard's development, that Stuckey is a candidate to finish games over either the player who's led the Pistons in scoring for six straight seasons or the player with the third-highest scoring average in NBA history.

"We're going to have a good guy sometimes sit out the last six minutes of the fourth quarter or the whole fourth quarter sometimes," Curry said. "That's just how it's going to be. It doesn't mean that guy isn't playing well. It just means that we've got a really deep team, especially in certain areas. On the perimeter we're really deep. If teams are big, we're going to need Dice and Sheed out there. If Dice isn't out there, we'll just go with our starting lineup and finish games like that."

He's right. Not a bad dilemma.

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The art of building a basketball team

On the art-science continuum, basketball is way over there on the left, the art end. Basketball is the most elusive of sports to quantify numerically. Oh, sure, you can crank out field-goal percentages and points in the paint and various and sundry other numerical categories, but none seem very accurate predictors.

Putting a winning team together, too, is much more a function of gut feel than statistical analysis. I thought about that after talking with Joe Dumars the other day and getting his perspective on evaluating the Pistons since he traded Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson.

There's no way to tell for sure, but chances are the Pistons would not have hit the NBA quarter-pole flirting with .500 had Joe D stuck to the status quo. They might not be abreast of Boston and Cleveland in leading the charge atop the Eastern Conference, but chances are they would have won at least twice as many as they'd lost.

But Dumars said something that struck me: "I watch how we play more than anything else. There have been times we've been winning games and I don't like the way we've played and there are times we've hit some struggles and I say, I like the direction we're heading. Right now, it's probably neither for me. Right now, it's watching a team trying to find itself. Get down big, can come back. Get up big, can lose a lead. That's a team trying to find itself and that's what we're working through right now."

Last year's Pistons - and the year before that, and the year before that, and ... - never had to search far to find themselves. Dumars could have stood pat with this team and been virtually assured of at least a top-four seed in the Eastern Conference yet again. The Billups-Wallace-Hamilton-Prince nucleus - even if not quite as durable and irrepressible as it had been two or three years ago - still gave the Pistons a puncher's chance of winning it all because a blossoming young nucleus behind them could seal whatever fissures were threatened.

But then this intriguing proposal comes along: Denver offers Allen Iverson, one of the most mercurial scorers in NBA history. Dumars weighs the pluses and minuses. Surely he realized the trade carried the risk of lesser than what has become the customary success here at Six Championship Drive. Surely he grasped that the breathtaking talents of Iverson, if folded adroitly into the recipe here, could yield a product with a higher potential for changing the address yet again.

On top of that, the cherry for Dumars was the chance to dramatically alter the mix next season with the increased payroll flexibility that shedding the long-term commitment to Billups entailed. If he chooses, Joe D will have the Pistons at or near the front of the line for two very desirable free agents next July with the $22 million he'll have available to him under the salary cap.

But let's set that aside for the moment and focus on this year and the unpredictability of plugging star personnel into stable lineups. The biggest free-agent move of last summer was Philadelphia adding Elton Brand to a team that closed the regular season in a rush and made the No. 2 seed Pistons sweat in the first round. It looked like a near-perfect match: Brand, a drop-dead post scorer, on a team that otherwise struggled to find half-court offense but was proficient in nearly every other area.

In Philadelphia, despite the benefit of an off-season and a training camp to integrate Brand, they're struggling more mightily than the Pistons to find themselves. Go figure.

In baseball, if you have trouble scoring runs, you go get yourself a few bats - a couple of guys with high on-base percentages, a slugger or two with triple-digit RBI histories. In football, if you can't stop the run, you direct your draft and free-agent resources to landing a 320-pound nose tackle and a linebacker with a forward gear.

In basketball, the equations are never that linear. The link between offense and defense is inexorable and complex. Trying to solve a weakness often undermines a strength. A trade might upgrade the talent yet degrade the product.

Joe D said something else: It might take all 82 games for the Pistons to figure this thing out. And he'll be watching, looking for signs the rest of us probably won't see, invisible to the masses way down on the art end of the team-building continuum.

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McDyess: 'Things are going to come along'

The month away did Antonio McDyess good, mentally and physically.

"I feel good now, I must say," McDyess said Thursday after breaking a hard sweat for his second day of practice in his second tour of duty with the Pistons. "I haven't played this well in practice since I was a rookie, it seems like. That vacation was great. It was lovely. Hopefully, down the stretch, it pays off."

While he sat home counting the pages as they flew off of the calendar toward the 30-day minimum he needed to be idle before the Pistons could re-sign him, McDyess caught as many Pistons games as possible on TV. And he saw them through a different lens.

"It was tough to see those guys struggle the way they did against teams I felt like they could have won the game against," he said. "I look up and see us lose to Minnesota, Philly, New Jersey - normally, they couldn't even stay in the gym with us. It was sad to watch that happen to these guys when they're trying to make adjustments and get a win. Not that the effort isn't there - it's just things not clicking the way they normally do."

The dislocation was especially jarring to him when he returned for Tuesday's game at Washington, without having had the benefit of a practice under his belt, saw the Pistons - his Pistons - take a 17-point lead and then ... pffft! It disappeared.

"Sometimes, we kind of put our heads down because we aren't used to losing games like we have or getting down on ourselves. It's like a shock to us. Looking at it from that first game in Washington when I came back, it was just a shock and everyone kind of put their head down and it seemed like it was over. We've just got to get ourselves going. We can't let that bother us. We've got to to out and play a different game, knowing it's a different team."

Getting McDyess back makes them a little less different, of course, and McDyess brings with him an inherent stability that should further serve to put the Pistons back on course.

"Antonio McDyess brings a very mature, calming effect to our team," Joe Dumars told me in part II of the Q&A I did with him that will be posted on Pistons.com on Friday. "This is beyond just basketball. Always the voice of reason. Always the guy that's never going to do things off of pure emotion. The guy that from a coaching standpoint you can trust to battle every day and you know that he's not going to get sidetracked with anything. ... It's a really good feeling to have him back in uniform and with us."

McDyess has been through 12 previous NBA seasons and knows all about comebacks, including from three devastating knee injuries. When he urges patience and perspective, it's worth heeding the message.

"We're early in the season and we've got a chance to just bounce back," he said. "The first 20 games haven't looked so good for us, but we've got a chance to bounce back. ... It was a huge trade. Playing with Chauncey for so many years, being so used to each other and then making a big trade like that, it's going to take time. It's just not going to happen overnight. We've got a long season and things are going to come along slowly."

• Michael Curry made his chops in the NBA as a fearless defender who took on the opposition's top-scoring wing nightly. So I asked him what he thought about Carmelo Anthony going off for a record-tying 33 points in one quarter Wednesday against Minnesota.

"Wow," he said. "How many free throws did he take? I would have had to put him at the line a lot of times. Carmelo is an explosive scorer. I'm sure once he starts going, his teammates really start feeding him the ball. These guys can really get going and you have to lock in to them. If they start knocking down threes and getting to the free-throw line, that's tough."

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It's confirmed: The sky isn't falling

Interesting day. The Pistons pushed practice back a few hours after playing and traveling last night and they did a lot of tape review before getting on the floor. But if you think the sky is falling - and I hope I conveyed in my blog posting earlier today that there just isn't that sense inside the building - you should know that neither Michael Curry nor Joe Dumars see it that way.

I talked with Joe D at length after practice and we'll be posting both the audio and text of that conversation on Pistons.com at some point on Thursday. But here are some snippets of what he said:

• I asked about the past week's three losses to struggling teams and how he assesses them against the big picture. A part of his answer: "My perspective is I'm disappointed we've taken some of these early-season losses to teams we should beat, I expect some rough patches, but even knowing there are going to be some rough patches, I have been such an adamant opponent of excuses that I have to be careful how I answer so it doesn't sound like an excuse. But I can't sit here and pretend that we're not going through a transition, especially at that particular position."
• On what he sees when he watches his team: "There have been times we've been winning games and I don't like the way we've played and there are times we've hit some struggles and I say, I like the direction we're heading. Right now, it's probably neither for me. Right now, it's watching a team trying to find itself. That's what I'm seeing. I'm just watching a team trying to find itself. Get down big, can come back. Get up big, can lose the lead. That's a team trying to find itself and that's what we're working through right now."
• On the give and take he had with Curry in discussing the pros and cons of going small and putting Rodney Stuckey into the starting lineup: "We did talk about being careful not to have this starting group become a first-quarter, all-jump-shooting team and not having a postup presence. And I think that's why you saw a concerted effort last night to go to Sheed in the post."

There's a lot of other interesting stuff in there, too, on what he and Curry have told Iverson, what he likes about the new starting lineup, the return of Antonio McDyess and what his thoughts are on the $22 million in cap space the Pistons can exercise next summer.

I asked Curry what he saw in the revamped lineup and he pointed out that the new starting unit not only had a tremendous first quarter, but rebuilt the lead to nine points in the third. And in assessing the unit, he came back to the playoffs - something Curry has kept in the forefront of every decision he's made.

"I knew we would be able to score the ball," he said. "I thought Stuck would be able to get us into some sets and I thought Allen and Rip would be able to run freer. The problem you have with that unit is that you do miss some size and everybody's not going to be able to score all the time. And what we've said is that guys just have to work through the games and when their time comes to carry the team a little bit, guys have to step up and do it. I still think overall that formula is going to be better. We're going to be better going into the playoffs. Tay is better at making plays for us, Stuckey's better at making plays, so add that with posting up Rasheed and adding Allen Iverson to the mix, we've got more guys that can make plays. Against really good defensive teams, you're going to need that."

• And, finally, how about the Phoenix-Charlotte trade that ESPN.com has just reported: Phoenix gets Jason Richardson, Jared Dudley and a No. 2 from Charlotte for Boris Diaw, Raja Bell and Sean Singletary. If you set aside the salaries, I like it from Phoenix's perspective - Richardson has two years left at about $28 million total beyond this year. If you include the salaries, I really like it from Phoenix's end - Diaw has three years after this one at $9 million a year. Richardson would have really prospered under Mike D'Antoni, but his shooting range and speed should mesh nicely with Steve Nash's ability to push and find open shooters and Shaq's need for space to be created. A lot of firepower on that team.

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Like it or not, a major transition takes time

The U.S. economy is in a bad place right now. On an intellectual level, everyone accepts that. When it arrives on your doorstep, through the loss of a job that invites bill collectors and a visit from the banker attaching a foreclosed notice to your front door, there is little emotional tolerance for actions so far beyond your control that undermine a lifetime of good intent.

A little of that is in play with the Pistons, too. Intellectually, fans can wrap their heads around the fact that the trade for Allen Iverson, the subtraction of the only point guard the franchise has known for six solid years, the sudden loss of Antonio McDyess, the search for a rotation that works with all the new moving parts, the tweaking of the playbook necessary to take full advantage of Iverson's creative genius and the introduction of Rodney Stuckey to the starting lineup are changes significant enough to take a commensurately significant amount of time to take hold.

Emotionally, when they see them lose a 15-point lead at home and fall to a struggling Philadelphia team, dig a 29-point hole and fall to a flailing Knicks team, and squander a 17-point first-half lead and lose by 13 to a three-win Washington team ... well, there's a two-for-one sale on panic buttons in Motown.

Fans don't want to hear that the Billups-Iverson trade caused a sea change in the way this basketball team does business. Is it possible that when the final analyses of the trade are written, it will be deemed a mistake? Sure - there is that possibility with virtually any trade, even the clear salary dumps that appear overwhelmingly lopsided at their onset.

But it's not prudent to offer anything more than a speculative first draft on this trade yet. The Pistons have too much individual talent remaining and too many players with a history of achievement to say that after five weeks the trade was a mistake.

Even in the ruins of the Washington loss, you could see signs of what the Stuckey-Iverson-Hamilton perimeter can do and what value there is in moving Tayshaun Prince to power forward. The 17-point lead they opened by the midway point of the first half wasn't a mirage. The Pistons simply aren't far enough along in their metamorphosis to seal those moments in wax and preserve them. They simply happen for them these days, mercurial stretches of basketball, and then dissipate as quickly as they formed.

It's not for lack of effort or interest, it's not because any turmoil exists in the locker room, it's not pangs of loss over seeing Chauncey Billups traded. There was always a delicate nature to the chemistry that made the Pistons an elite team, requiring all five parts to move as one, and that's not there for them with the necessary degree of consistency.

Yet.

But Michael Curry and his staff are burning the midnight oil, not to mention the rewind button on their digital tape video screens, to accelerate the process, to lengthen the duration of those magical stretches and limit the frequency of their dissipation.

It's like Iverson said when he arrived here, just wanting to put some distance in his rear-view mirror, to get all those firsts out of the way and start settling in and feeling at home.

They're getting those firsts out of the way now. As the last week has proven, it's sometimes an uneasy process. On an intellectual level, it's pretty easy to accept that January will be better than December and February better still, and by the time the playoffs arrive, the Pistons will be an interesting and dangerous opponent. On an emotional level ... well, that's another thing.

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McDyess, Stuckey and a return to Zen

In trying to explain why the return of Antonio McDyess, a sixth man counted on to play no more than half of a 48-minute game, has been so eagerly awaited by the Pistons, it's instructive to recall what made the Pistons a champion in the first place.

When the Pistons won the 2004 NBA title, they raised an immediate debate about whether the formula for building championship teams had been changed. History - both pre- and post-2004 - would suggest the only sure way to an NBA title is to land an undisputed superstar and build smartly and compatibly around him. History, in other words, suggests the Pistons were the aberration, not the rule.

(It's a story for another day, but Joe Dumars knows that. He'd love to get the chance one day to show he knows how to construct a championship team around a superstar. But fate hasn't dropped one into his lap yet. What's he supposed to do in the meantime? Exactly what he's done - keep making shrewd signings, drafting well and not overpaying so desperate mistakes don't hamstring him down the road.)

The list of undisputed superstars is never as long as the list of players who get paid as such. It's a mighty select group, which is a major reason why so far this season there are three runaway favorites to win the NBA title. Two of them are teams centered around Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. The third is defending champion Boston, which has three future Hall of Famers.

I always thought the Pistons' amazing collective was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that they weren't beholden to the health, mood or whims of one person.

The curse, such as it is, is that the Pistons always have to find their Zen in order to be at their best. When they found it in the past, they were a joy to watch. But it always took real work to find it. The Pistons had to explore on a nightly basis how the mix of their five starters - Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton at guard, Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace up front with Tayshaun Prince on the wing for the nearly three seasons they were the NBA's most stable starting unit - could be put to greatest advantage.

That meant not only figuring out who had his mojo going on that particular night, it meant figuring out which individual matchup could be exploited to the greatest degree within the sometimes delicate framework of their five-man collective.

The Cavaliers and the Lakers might have their own issues, but that's not one of them. They go into every game knowing that the mission is to get LeBron or Kobe into their comfort zone, to keep it close on nights they're not superhuman from the opening tap so that they can exert their will in the fourth quarter.

One hundred percent of their playbooks are designed with what works best for LeBron or Kobe in mind - first to finding ways to defeat the gang defenses they'll face to put them in position to score, second to finding ways to exploit the overcommitment opposition defenses will make to limiting their damage.

Michael Curry, and Flip Saunders and Larry Brown before him, had to figure out how to milk the offensive potential out of five - or four, if you start from the premise that Ben Wallace was never a scoring option - capable scorers.

And always at work was the human dynamic of pecking order. That, too, is not an issue with the Cavs and Lakers. Everybody knows the overwhelming majority of plays are called with LeBron or Kobe at the epicenter. When three or four players are of relatively equal station, a coach has to be mindful of keeping them all involved - and not primarily because of soothing egos, either, but because to get the best out of those players requires exercising their abilities often enough to keep them honed. Put another way, the Pistons couldn't have succeeded leaning on Chauncey Billups, say, or Rip Hamilton, in quite the way the Lakers do on Kobe Bryant, and let everybody else try to play off of one player.

The only way the Pistons were going to get the benefits of their collective model was to have all components operating at full capacity.

Which is where the return of Antonio McDyess comes into play.

If there was anyone more responsible for steering the Pistons to their Zen place than the rest of them, it was Billups, of course. Since losing Billups, it's no secret the Pistons have struggled finding it consistently. They've been erratic, winning against elite teams like the Lakers, Cavs and Spurs and losing to struggling bunches like Minnesota, Philadelphia and New York.

The insertion of Rodney Stuckey into the starting lineup at point guard is one step toward achieving more stability. Stuckey was going to inch his way toward 30-plus minutes a game regardless of his role; starting him accelerates the process and, on more than a symbolic level, stamps him as the heir to the Billups role of taking the Pistons to their Zen place. That's a whole lot easier to do as a starter, at a point in a game where it first takes on a character, then it is off the bench, when often the chore becomes reversing momentum instead of establishing it.

But the return of McDyess also helps restore some familiarity to the Pistons. As the Pistons learned when he left, McDyess' absence had a ripple effect. The most obvious effect was on Rasheed Wallace, who took on more minutes because without a scoring big man on the floor - and Wallace and McDyess were Curry's only options - the offense struggled. But McDyess' loss also rippled through the bench. Without McDyess assuming a scoring burden, Curry was limited in the combinations he used that didn't include other scorers, whether they were frontcourt or backcourt players.

After a month of upheaval, the Pistons have two reasons for encouragement going into tonight's game at Washington: The commitment to Rodney Stuckey as a starter moves him closer to filling the Billups role that's gone unfilled since the trade - finding someone in charge of sensing the Zen order of the night - and the return of Antonio McDyess helps stabilize both the frontcourt and bench rotations.

• Fans can welcome McDyess back 7-8 p.m. Thursday at the Moose Preserve Bar & Grill in Bloomfield Hills, 43034 N. Woodward Avenue. McDyess will be the special guest on "Off the Court," which airs on the Pistons’ flagship station, WDFN 1130.

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It's official, finally: McDyess back with Pistons

All the i's are dotted and the t's crossed - Antonio McDyess has signed with the Pistons in time to be in uniform for tonight's game at Washington. And Michael Curry said that "if he signs Tuesday, we'll use him Tuesday" - so look for McDyess probably in the late first or early second quarter, subbing for Rasheed Wallace.

It's exactly the dose of good news the Pistons could use coming off of two disheartening losses. After squandering a 15-point lead late in the third quarter to lose at home against Philadelphia, the Pistons went to New York on Sunday and dug a 29-point hole in the first half, rallied to within five points late but lost to the Knicks.

That game prompted Curry to change his starting lineup, inserting Rodney Stuckey at point guard and moving center Kwame Brown to the bench. The ripple effect moves Allen Iverson to shooting guard, Rip Hamilton to small forward, Tayshaun Prince to power forward and Rasheed Wallace to center.

But the return of McDyess enabled the move, too. With McDyess available, there is less need to protect Wallace from early foul trouble that he now risks by always starting games guarding the opposition's top post scoring threat.

McDyess was the premium the Pistons had to give up to make the salaries match in the Chauncey Billups-Allen Iverson trade for cap purposes. But McDyess negotiated a buyout with Denver four days after the trade was announced. He had to wait 30 days before being allowed to re-sign with the Pistons. He could have signed with any other NBA team in the interim, but his agent, Andy Miller, announced after the Pistons' Nov. 23 game with Minnesota that he was passing on other offers to return to Detroit.

And some of those other offers had the potential, at least, to be far more lucrative. The Pistons were limited to offering McDyess their $1.9 million binannual exception, while other teams - Cleveland, for one - had the full mid-level exception of roughly $5.6 million to offer. McDyess was signed through the 2009-10 season with the Pistons, but his new deal is only for the remainder of this season, meaning McDyess will be an unrestricted free agent after the season.

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Stuckey as starter influenced by many factors

Michael Curry made it official Monday: Rodney Stuckey is in as a starter, Kwame Brown is out. Digging the 29-point hole in Sunday's narrow loss to the Knicks no doubt pushed Curry to the decision, but there are two other factors at play, too.

One is the return of Antonio McDyess. The other is the schedule. Take a look at the 11 games left in December, and the new lineup - Rasheed Wallace at center, Tayshaun Prince at power forward, Rip Hamilton at small forward, Allen Iverson at shooting guard and Stuckey at the point - makes sense.

The Pistons just aren't exposing themselves to much risk that they'll be overpowered by any of the opponents lined up in December.

They get Washington twice over the next eight days. The Wizards are starting a rookie center, JaVale McGee. Antawn Jamison is a perimeter, finesse power forward. Caron Butler plays relentlessly, but he's not a physical mismatch for fellow UConn product Rip Hamilton.

On it goes. Indiana's frontcourt of Rasho Nesterovic (Wallace), Troy Murphy (Prince) and Danny Granger (Hamilton) isn't physically imposing. Charlotte lines up with Gerald Wallace, Sean May and Emeka Okafor - and while May is strong enough to present Prince with problems and Wallace has a size-athleticism package that could trouble Hamilton, the defensive matchups have to be even more daunting for Larry Brown. May chasing Prince? Good luck.

With Carlos Boozer out, Utah goes with Mehmet Okur at center, physical but undersized Paul Millsap at power forward and smallish C.J. Miles at small forward with Andrei Kirilenko coming off the bench. If Boozer is back for the Dec. 19 game, Prince would be hard-pressed guarding him on the block. But Boozer would be equally challenged defending in space.

Atlanta (Marvin Williams, Josh Smith, Al Horford), Chicago (Luol Deng, Drew Gooden, Aaron Gray), Oklahoma City (Jeff Green, Kevin Durant, Chris Wilcox), Milwaukee (Richard Jefferson, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Andrew Bogut) and New Jersey (Bobby Simmons, Yi Jianlian, Brook Lopez) come after that. Nothing there to deter Curry's lineup tinkering.

Plus Orlando. On paper, that one might give Curry pause. Or maybe not. Wallace and McDyess have always fared well against Howard. Prince's classic block on Hedo Turkoglu iced the second-round playoff win last year and was symbolic of his ability to guard one of the most versatile small forwards in the game. Would Prince continue to guard Turkoglu or slide over to Rashard Lewis, leaving Hamilton to Turkoglu? The more pertinent question might be Orlando's to answer: Whom between Turkoglu or Lewis guards Hamilton?

It figured all along, even before the Iverson-Chauncey Billups trade, that Curry was going to put his five best players on the floor to end games, and that Stuckey was going to make a strong case that he was one of those five. And it's that lineup - the one on the floor at the end of close games, not the one at the start - that will be more revealing, more pertinent to how this season plays out.

When McDyess returns, he'll be in the mix for that finishing group, too. Curry doesn't want to start him for sound reasons. The Pistons have struggled offensively without Wallace on the floor since losing McDyess in the Iverson trade. The times when Wallace or McDyess won't be on the floor from this point forward will be rare. And having McDyess in reserve lessens the effect of exposing Wallace to quick foul trouble on nights he has to start games, in the newly configured lineup, guarding the likes of Howard, Tim Duncan or Shaquille O'Neal.

If it wasn't for the prospect of McDyess returning, giving Curry the luxury of allowing Wallace to pick up a few early fouls, this lineup change probably doesn't happen. It probably doesn't happen if the next week included games against Cleveland, Boston and the Lakers. And it probably doesn't happen if the Pistons didn't go 29 down in the first half to the Knicks two days after letting a 15-point second-half lead slip away against Philadelphia.

But it never would have been considered were it not for the fact that in Rodney Stuckey, the Pistons have a point guard worthy of starting - and, more to the point, finishing - NBA games.

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Hold off on declaring a trade winner just yet

Two nights after the Pistons went to San Antonio and won by 12 points, the Spurs went to Denver and whipped the Nuggets by 17. Does that prove that the Pistons got the better of the Chauncey Billups-Allen Iverson trade?

Nope. But neither does the fact Denver is 12-4 since Billups has suited up with the Nuggets and the Pistons are 7-6 going into Friday night's game with Philadelphia since Iverson first tugged on their No. 1.

The full effects of this trade can't be fairly judged for years, actually - not until the ramifications of the salary-cap space Joe Dumars cleared for the future are weighed. But even for its effects on this year's title pursuit, the Billups-Iverson deal can't be judged with any degree of certainty until the snow begins to melt, and not with any finality until the postseason unfolds.

To be sure, they're thrilled in Denver with the deal. George Karl joked on ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" this week that his assistants are telling him he has to stop gushing about Billups to the Denver media lest people think they're having a romantic liaison. Chauncey remains the most celebrated and best basketball player Denver has ever produced, and his civic-mindedness is as visible and valued there as it was here. Of course they're thrilled to have Chauncey Billups back home and helping the Nuggets win games. Why wouldn't they be?

But Denver doesn't have to lose this deal for the Pistons to win it.

Remember what Joe Dumars said when he made the deal. It was done with the postseason in mind. That meshes with everything Michael Curry has implemented. When Curry talked about changing the offense in training camp - even with Billups here, the idea was to do more collective playmaking and decision-making rather than cling to the predictability that characterized the Pistons these last few years - it was with becoming a more difficult team to defend in the playoffs in mind.

Iverson gives the Pistons that element. When Pistons sideline reporter Eli Zaret asked Joe D in San Antonio the other day if he thought he had traded for the Iverson who's a career 27-point scorer or somebody else, Dumars referenced the game Portland's Brandon Roy played at The Palace last Sunday - getting everyone else involved for three quarters, taking over with the game on the line. The Pistons have lacked that type of player even for all of their success this decade.

Iverson emphatically says he's still that guy, but he's doing his best to ease his way into the mix first. Despite the swings the Pistons have endured in the month since the trade was made, their highs have been dramatic - breaking the seven- and eight-game win streaks of the Lakers and Cavs and overwhelming the Spurs on the road in the fourth quarter. Denver really has one signature win since Billups arrived - beating Boston on the road.

Denver has been steady, steady, ever so steady since infusing their lineup with Chauncey Billups. The transition from Iverson to Billups wasn't all that tough for the Nuggets, though it helped greatly that the schedule has been pretty forgiving for them this past month.

But that figured all along. The Nuggets were reverting to the conventional, inserting a pure point guard into a lineup that had essentially been operating without one - a quality one, at least - since trading Andre Miller away to get Iverson.

The Pistons have Rodney Stuckey, whose responsibility will continue to expand, to fill that role. But they also now have something they starkly lacked previously, even for all the 50-win seasons and conference finals appearances.

It's going to take a while for it to show in full effect. They might have a few more traumatic lows to match their dramatic highs before the ship is finally and fully righted. But hold off on emphatic pronouncements about this trade's winner and loser at least until the season's most meaningful games are played.

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Iverson's new, old teams enduring change

If the Pistons had any urge to feel a little sorry for themselves over the inevitable growing pains that have accompanied Allen Iverson's acclimation, the arrival of his old team, the Philadelphia 76ers, on Friday night should lift their spirits.

Because for the ups and downs they've had in the month since trading Chauncey Billups and Antonio McDyess to Denver for Iverson, at least the Pistons are doing better than treading water. They've won almost twice as many games as they've lost, they account for two of the five combined losses of the Lakers and Cavaliers and they're coming off a win at San Antonio that provided another drop of evidence that the finished product here has title potential.

Philadelphia, meanwhile, coming off of the first-round scare they threw into the Pistons following a closing rush to the 2007-08 season before an off-season that saw the 76ers add Elton Brand to the lineup, is bumping along in last place in the Atlantic Division at 8-11 - not challenging Boston at the top, as expected.

And you can make a pretty compelling case that the Pistons' challenge was more daunting, both in timing and degree.

The 76ers had all summer to plan for Brand - who, to add injury to insult, will miss Friday's game after straining a hamstring in Wednesday's loss to the Lakers. The Pistons made their move for Iverson two games into the regular season. And while Brand added a completely missing element - low-post scoring - from a team that had little it could hang its hat on offensively, Iverson was stepping into a lineup filled with double-figures scorers and All-Star credentials.

"Both are very dominant scorers," Michael Curry said after Thursday's practice, "and any time you add a dominant scorer that's a little different than you how play, it takes some adjustment. Brand is a low-post scorer that goes to the low block, demands the ball and is very effective. Allen is a guy who demands the ball on the perimeter and scores more in a freelance setting. We've had to adjust to being able to play in transition and play more a freelance game, but then when we have to play a half-court set, we have to be disciplined enough to do it. At times, we've been able to do that, but regardless - for them and for us - the constant has to be the defensive end of the floor."

The disappointment in Philadelphia, which has lost five of its last six, has dampened the enthusiasm generated by the strong finish and the $80 million contracts both Brand and restricted free agent Andre Igoudala signed over the summer. Attendance in Philly has lagged accordingly, but you can bet TV ratings there for Friday's game will be high, thanks to Iverson, who remains a compelling figure in a city that both deifies and crucifies its athletes.

"I definitely want this game," Iverson said. "But I want them all. It's going to be special tomorrow night, just to play against them again."

The win at San Antonio gave the Pistons ample reason for optimism that they're beginning to get a handle on how best to exploit Iverson's ability - and that Iverson, similarly, is starting to grasp how and when to pick his spots.

They're rarely going to ask him to play 45 minutes or take 25 shots - a typical night for most of his first 12 years in the league - but they'll be thrilled if that guy emerges in the final five minutes of games hanging in the balance. Iverson made one play in the fourth quarter in San Antonio that wouldn't make any highlight shows, but spoke to his value. He had the ball on the wing, where he loves to launch his attacks, and drew the defense to him before flicking a laser to Rasheed Wallace in the corner for one of his three huge fourth-quarter triples.

"He's not going to have the same numbers that he did (in Philadelphia)," Curry said, "but he does the same things for you. He puts a lot of pressure on an opposing team's defense and he creates a lot of open shots for your guys. Our guys are starting to get used to playing with him and because of that, we have guys being able to shoot wide-open, spot-up 3s and we've got some pretty good guys to do that."

That's the logic of it, and the Pistons are seeing enticing glimpses of it play out often enough - and against championship-caliber teams like the Lakers, Cavs and Spurs - to believe fully in the possibilities. But the logic was sound in Philly, too: Give an athletic team that can play defense, rebound and extend the court one elite half-court scoring option and everything else falls into place. They're still waiting for a glimpse in Philly, for something to believe in.

• Rasheed Wallace went through Thursday's practice wearing powder blue Nike high tops, a vestige of his allegiance to the North Carolina Tar Heels. Wallace was seated behind North Carolina's bench at Ford Field on Wednesday for UNC's 35-point demolition of Michigan State and took a shot at Pistons TV analyst Greg Kelser, a Michigan State alumnus.

"I've got to talk to Kelse," he said. "Had us come all the way up here for that practice. We could have stayed in Chapel Hill and had practice."

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Stuckey forces way into finishing five

Rodney Stuckey played 31 minutes in Tuesday's big win at San Antonio. That's notable for a few reasons. It's one off his season high - which came in the two-game interim between the Chauncey Billups and Allen Iverson eras when the Pistons played shorthanded. But maybe more important than the number of minutes was the timing of them. When the game was on the line, when the Pistons dominated the Spurs through the middle stage of the fourth quarter, Stuckey was on the floor. Detroit finished the game 12 points ahead when San Antonio had been 10 points up past the midway point of the third quarter.

Once again, the Pistons were a better team with Stuckey on the floor than on the bench. Once again, it was Stuckey who posted the best plus-minus numbers of the night - they were 16 points bettter than the Spurs when he was in the game.

It's becoming increasingly clear that Stuckey is one of Michael Curry's five best players. It's also becoming pretty obvious that Stuckey is best at producing scoring chances for others.

That's no rap on Allen Iverson. Iverson does what he does better than anyone, perhaps better than anyone who's ever played the game. To criticize him for not being an elite playmaker in addition to being one of the league's most indefensible one-on-one scorers is like ripping Ichiro Suzuki for not hitting 50 home runs while chasing a .400 batting average. To compare Iverson to someone who grew up in his neck of the Virginia woods, Michael Vick at his best took the Falcons to the NFC championship game as a devastating combination quarterback. As a pure passer, he was never in the company of Manning, Brady or Favre.

But Stuckey is showing flashes of being a creative and efficient playmaker. Over his past four games, he's averaging seven assists and 12.5 points in 26 minutes a game. His minutes figure to keep rising, too. For the season, he's still under 22 a game, less than what Curry had planned over the summer. Part of it is the dizzy spell that kept him out a few games and limited his time upon his return, part of it is the hard spill he took against Phoenix that damaged his right wrist and limited his effectiveness for about a 10-day span.

And part of it is the need to keep Iverson out there with Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince for extended minutes to force feed the acclimation process of the guy the Pistons must have as a focal point of their offense.

But all of those considerations are at some stage of resolution now, and even if they weren't, Stuckey's four-game stretch has pretty much rendered them moot.

The unit that finished the San Antonio game for the Pistons had Rasheed Wallace at center, Prince at power forward, Hamilton at small forward and Stuckey and Iverson together in the backcourt. There are fewer and fewer finishing fives in the game that can make the Pistons pay for going small that way.

And for those that can, the Pistons have a solution about to be delivered: Antonio McDyess. Against teams with two legitimate scoring threats inside, Curry in another week or so can finish games with Wallace and McDyess up front.

The only question will be which one among Iverson, Hamilton, Prince or Stuckey sits. The way he's playing right now, don't assume it's going to automatically be Stuckey.

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Overlook Pistons and Spurs at your own risk

The Pistons visit San Antonio tonight, the teams looking enough like the 2005 NBA Finals opponents to rekindle memories of the only Finals to go the full seven games in the past 14 years. That should be enough to get this game listed first on the NBA marquee.

But with NBA attention riveted on the runaway starts by the Celtics, Lakers and Cavaliers - a combined 45-6 through Monday's games - Pistons-Spurs feels like the "Hey, What About Us?" game.

When Manu Ginobili started the season on the inactive list after having surgery to repair ankle damage exacerbated by his Beijing Olympics experience, and then Tony Parker went down with a badly sprained ankle of his own, pundits wondered if the Spurs - whose every-other-year cycle of winning NBA titles comes due again in June - would even make the playoffs this season. But they're sitting at 9-7, Parker and Ginobili are back, and you can bet nobody will be happy to see the Spurs come the playoffs.

Same for the Pistons. When Joe Dumars stunned the basketball world with his month-ago trade of Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson, some saw it as a move made more with the future than the present in mind and wrote off the Pistons' chances of lasting into yet another June.

You can bet that there won't be a skeptic on either side tonight, though. The Pistons and Spurs hold each other in the highest esteem, from the top of the organizational flow chart to the 15th man in street clothes at the end of the bench.

It's no accident that these two teams have managed to sustain success, even though they haven't used quite the same blueprint.

It starts with the key decision-maker in each franchise. That's Joe D for the Pistons, of course; for the Spurs, it's their coach, Gregg Popovich. Power is centralized in his hands in San Antonio, surrounding himself with astute personnel evaluators and letting them do their jobs.

Dumars built the Pistons through terrific trades (Rip Hamilton, Rasheed Wallace), a phenomenal record for picking up free agents on the cheap (Chauncey Billups, Ben Wallace) and finding in the draft players who greatly exceeded their slot (Tayshaun Prince, Jason Maxiell, Rodney Stuckey, Arron Afflalo, Amir Johnson).

Popovich had the great good fortune of timing in San Antonio, being named head coach in December 1996 and winning the lottery six months later for one of the biggest no-brainer No. 1 picks of all-time, Tim Duncan. Who knows if any of the four titles they've won since Duncan came on board would have been possible without him?

But this much is certain, too: If the Popovich-led Spurs hadn't found All-Stars Ginobili and Parker late in the draft, the last three of those banners wouldn't be flying above center court at the AT&T Center when the Pistons take the floor tonight. And Popovich and GM R.C. Buford have shown great touch in finding the perfect role players to put around them, taking Bruce Bowen off the journeyman's scrap heap and grabbing Robert Horry when he was highly productive, to name the two most prominent.

The teams are approaching a similar transitional stage now, too. Duncan, though still a bona fide All-Star, probably shouldn't be playing the 35 minutes a game he's had to play to this point to cover for the Ginobili and Parker absences, just as Wallace has had to play extended minutes until Antonio McDyess' imminent return to give the Pistons a scoring threat in their frontcourt.

Both teams are attempting to defy the convention that suggests a downturn is inevitable after an extended period of success by rebuilding on the fly. With the Pistons, the future is led by Stuckey, a dynamic young point guard, with Hamilton and Prince still with prime years ahead of them, and potentially outstanding role players in Johnson, Maxiell and Afflalo - not to mention the money Joe D is going to have at his disposal sometime over the next two summers to spend on the bountiful crop of free agents about to blossom.

The Spurs' future is a little less certain. Duncan is a virtually irreplaceable talent. But Parker is still only 26 and Ginobili 31. The Spurs' signing of 3-point marksman Roger Mason was one of the most astute acquisitions of last off-season. They raised eyebrows by drafting little-known IUPUI point guard George Hill late in the first round, but he's already standing out amid a bumper crop of rookies. Young big man Ian Mahinmi hasn't shown much yet, but the Spurs see in him what the Pistons see in Johnson.

And always, the Spurs, like the Pistons, invest prudently. They don't throw another year onto contract offers they know they'll regret, they don't sweeten deals with future draft picks unless the payoff is clear, they don't spend themselves into salary-cap purgatory.

The Pistons and Spurs are constants. They might be playing the role of the tortoise to the hares of the Celtics, Lakers and Cavs of early December, but let's see where everybody's at come April and May. You might want to pay particular attention tonight.

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Curry: "It's all a part of change"

Less than two weeks ago, the Pistons hung 58 second-half points on the NBA's hottest team at the time, Cleveland, and broke open a tight game in the fourth quarter. Three of Michael Curry's starters didn't play the last 10 minutes. Two of them were Tayshaun Prince and Rip Hamilton.

But the win left everyone feeling good, so nobody made anything of it. When Prince didn't play, and Hamilton and Allen Iverson's minutes were curtailed in the fourth quarter of Sunday's loss to Portland, it left a far greater impression.

But it's all the same to Michael Curry.

"We would have loved to have gotten Tay back in the game," Curry said Monday after a tape review confirmed his suspicions - his starters didn't play very well. "But the way it went, that combination brought us from 11 down to two up and we tried to carry it out what that group. ... Tay has been leading us in minutes pretty much the whole season. That was one game in the midst of trying to find a way to win."

Curry wants to make it clear that he wasn't laying blame for Sunday's poor performance at Prince's feet just because he didn't get back in the game during the fourth quarter. He's still searching for combinations that work in a season of change. It's not just the transition from Chauncey Billups to Allen Iverson, either. This was going to be a season of change for the Pistons regardless. The Billups-Iverson trade only ratcheted up the magnitude of change.

"It's all a part of change," he said. "These guys have played 40 minutes together regardless, no matter what. The young guys haven't played. So at the end of the year, guys have been tired. You all tell me the excuses - I've read all of 'em over the years. We're going to play our young guys, OK? If our young guys are playing well, they're going to stay in the game. They deserve it. They've earned it. And that's what we're going to do.

"Now, are guys minutes going to be down? Sometimes. But it's never a personal thing with one guy. ... Even if the (starters weren't) playing bad to start the game, (the bench) played really well. I think we can all say they played well. You all looked at their plus-minus. Those guys off the bench, double figures plus-minus, that kind of indicates they played well. And they gave us a chance to win the game and that's what we were trying to do - win the game."

The Pistons are getting closer to putting it all together. Rodney Stuckey's elevated his level of play tremendously in the last week after getting over the effects of the hard crash he took courtesy of Shaquille O'Neal. Arron Afflalo is giving Curry quality minutes virtually every game. Jason Maxiell and Amir Johnson are producing with greater consistency. Those young bench guys had come to rely on the stability Antonio McDyess provided the second unit. They're getting him back soon, the Dec. 7 window to formally extend a contract offer about to open.

Knowing what he can expect on a nightly basis from his bench will give Curry one less ball he has to keep in the air amid this juggling act he's been performing. He's figuring out what works and what doesn't, what to add and what to phase out, as Iverson immerses himself in the Piston way. When the comfort level of the starters starts inching up, gradually but steadily, then another corner will have been turned.

In the meantime, winning games will remain the short-term goal, and the players who give the Pistons the best chance to do so on any given night will be called upon to win them.

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