Stuckey diverts focus from Billups-Iverson deal

As if the three contenders remaining on their Western road swing weren't enough to rivet the Pistons' attention, each one comes with a compelling sidebar. Up first is Portland, where Rasheed Wallace returns to the place where he became synonymous with the vilified Jail Blazers, never mind that Wallace's transgressions were largely confined to accruing technical fouls in a time when his teammates were routinely landing on police blotters.

It ends with a trip to Utah, where the Pistons haven't won in their last five tries against a team they haven't beaten in their last seven meetings.

And in between is the most anticipated matchup of all - the Denver game on Friday, where the Pistons will meet up with their former point guard. We speak, of course, of Chucky Atkins.

Just kidding.

The Chauncey Billups Reunion Game will be tinged with emotion on both sides, but it won't even be close to qualifying as the final verdict on who got the better of the trade - or even if the trade was right for both sides.

A few weeks back, as the Pistons were groping to find themselves and Denver was riding high, there was a low murmur of unrest among Pistons fans tired of hearing about the many spinoff adjustments required in the transition from Billups to Allen Iverson. Those adjustments continue - sorry, but them's the facts - though the murmurs have been quieted by seven straight wins.

That streak, not so coincidentally, began the night Rodney Stuckey exploded for 40 points against Chicago, and its two most recent entries - wins over Sacramento and the Clippers despite the absences of Rip Hamilton and Wallace - were driven by Stuckey's 31-point scoring average.

Stuckey, appropriately, was named Eastern Conference Player of the Week on Monday for enabling the Pistons to win four games - all without Hamilton, most of three without Wallace. He won it, of course, largely for his offensive stats.

Less noticed - except by Joe Dumars, Michael Curry and their staffs - is Stuckey's impact on the defensive end. When Stuckey starts, the Pistons average 25.5 points a game in the first quarter and their opponents average 19.4. When he comes off the bench, the first-quarter numbers go the other way: 21.1-22.0.

So, in a nutshell, with Stuckey in the starting lineup, the Pistons come out of the first quarter 6.2 points ahead. With Stuckey mired on the bench, they come out of it almost a point behind.

We've talked about two main reasons for Joe D pulling off the Billups-Iverson trade: (1) the chance to be a more varied offensive team in the muck and grind of the playoffs, when half-court offenses have more difficulty executing; and (2) the chance to rebuild the team as soon as next summer because of the cap flexibility afforded Dumars by taking Iverson's expiring contract for Billups', which had three more years to run.

But all along there was a third reason, maybe the most compelling of all: The chance to give Rodney Stuckey the reins sooner than ever would have been possible with Billups still here.

It's worth wondering what the Pistons would be like today had the deal not been made. After all, if Iverson, Stuckey and Hamilton can share a backcourt - with Hamilton getting minutes at small forward, as well - then couldn't Billups, Stuckey and Hamilton have done the same thing?

Well, sure. Sort of. The minutes might have played out similarly. But as long as Billups was here, he was going to be the point guard. Yeah, when Billups and Stuckey shared the backcourt, as they frequently would have, they might have taken turns running the offense. But in crunch time? It was always going to be Billups with the ball in his hands, Billups making the call, Billups deciding when to stick with a play or break it off, Billups deciding it was his shot to take or not.

And that, inevitably, was going to slow Stuckey's development - maybe not as a player who could help the team right now, but as a point guard, and as the leader of the Pistons going forward.

The element of Billups' game that always stuck out most to me was his sense of when to push the pace and when to pull back, when to get others involved and when to force the issue himself. I figured that would take Stuckey a good long while to learn. But he's showing every sign that he's at ease with that aspect of being a point guard already, and making every scout who classified Stuckey as a shooting guard in predraft reports to his GM squirm uncomfortably.

And, again, we're focusing almost exclusively on the offensive end when, in fact, Curry's decision to put Stuckey in the starting lineup was driven equally by his desire to spark the defense. Curry has said repeatedly that Stuckey is his best perimeter defender on the ball. His speed is breathtaking and his lateral quickness and strength keep point guards from routinely getting to the spot from which they want to initiate offense.

Billups was a perfectly competent defender, of course. He would show up in the All-Defense voting every season. And he remains big and strong enough to defend most shooting guards. But he had trouble staying in front of quick point guards. That was no secret. When the Pistons played New Orleans last season, for instance, they had Hamilton guard Chris Paul. Stuckey, 10 years Billups' junior, won't need similar protection. But as someone who's even bigger than Billups, he's also capable of guarding shooting guards, which helps because of the matchup problems the slight Iverson sometimes faces.

Billups is probably the more efficient point guard as of today - no knock on Stuckey, because Billups has been among the NBA's most efficient point guards for the last five years or so. But Stuckey's 38- and 40-point games within the seven-game win streak suggest he's the more explosive player. And the numbers on what he's meant to the Pistons' defense don't lie.

So even though Friday's game was never going to be a referendum on Chauncey Billups vs. Allen Iverson, it turns out the focus on the trade all along probably should have been on what it meant for the Pistons in the era of Rodney Stuckey.

• The Pistons, who've played shorthanded for their last five games and hope to get Wallace back, if not Hamilton, for Wednesday's game at Portland, probably see it as karmic justice that each of their three remaining opponents on this trip will be down an All-Star-caliber player: Portland won't have Brandon Roy (hamstring) back until Saturday at the earliest; Utah remains without Carlos Boozer (knee); and Denver lost Carmelo Anthony on Monday night to a broken hand. If Anthony's is similar in severity to Rodney Stuckey's a year ago, he'll miss about six weeks. More should be known today.
• A little surprising that Denver thought so little of Cheikh Samb that the Nuggets essentially gave him to the Clippers on Monday. The move was done to enable Denver to get below the luxury-tax threshold, but George Karl said this: "We didn't see (Samb) having a chance here.'' Samb had averaged 12.4 points, 7.1 rebounds and 3.8 blocks in 10 games for Colorado of the D-League.

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