East Not Running Away From Pistons

Gordon returns as Pistons lose; East still not running away from them
1 Down, 3 Left
by Keith Langlois

Eighteen games into an NBA season qualifies as a representative sample, more than a 20 percent slice. But where these Pistons are concerned, it’s a representative sample of a non-representative team. The Pistons have lost twice as many as they’ve won over their first 18 games, the latest loss coming Wednesday night, 92-85 at Chicago – one of the teams they’ll be battling for the last four playoff spots in the East, if they get healthy in time to mount such a charge.

So what we can extrapolate is that the Pistons without Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince (and Ben Gordon, who returned in Chicago after missing 2 ½ games, and Charlie Villanueva, still out with the broken nose incurred Sunday, for good measure) probably aren’t a playoff-caliber team.

With Gordon willing to go, but still unsure of his ankle, John Kuester went with the same lineup that beat Atlanta three days earlier, meaning Jason Maxiell with Ben Wallace up front and Chucky Atkins in the backcourt. That really leaves the Pistons with one scorer in the starting lineup, Rodney Stuckey.

An NBA team with one proven scorer is going to have first quarters like the one the Pistons put in the books at Chicago – 10 points, leaving them fighting uphill all night. They got it back to three from 17 by early in the third quarter, but their firepower is limited and their margin for error is fine.

“We did dig ourselves a hole, but we got ourselves in a position and … looking to make some key stops,” Kuester said. “When you get yourself in that position, you almost have to play perfect basketball.

“We’ve had a number of times where we weren’t at full strength and, bottom line, you’ve got to play the game and our guys have found different ways to do it. We’ve got to consistently do it defensively because right now, when you’re shorthanded, you’ve got to focus on what needs to be done defensively. We had some good spurts. It’s just a shame that in the first quarter we couldn’t get the ball to go in the hole.”

Way back before the season started, I had the Pistons pegged right around No. 6 or 7 in the East. But I also thought that 5 through 10 or 11 would be tightly bunched, and that whoever got the breaks – read: whoever stayed healthiest – would leapfrog the others.

The good news is that the way the East is playing out, the Pistons just aren’t getting buried. Even with Wednesday’s loss, they remain only two games in the loss column out of the field with 64 to play. But the bad news is that the way the East is playing out, they could be putting some distance between them and all those sputtering teams had the team we saw overwhelm Memphis in the season opener – the one game all season they were whole – taken the court en masse these last 17 outings.

Toronto was being pumped up as a team capable of challenging the acknowledged big three of Boston, Cleveland and Orlando. I didn’t see it that way, but a lot of others did. Well, look at the Raptors now. Despite remarkably good health, the Raptors fell to 7-13 with Wednesday’s loss at Atlanta in which they gave up – gulp! – 146 points. That’s been a recurring theme for the Raps – porous defense.

If the Pistons had enjoyed Toronto’s injury luck, they might have lapped the Raptors a couple of times already.

Philadelphia has been an even bigger flop, going 5-14. Yeah, the 76ers have gone the past few weeks without backup big man Marreese Speights, and just last week lost point guard Louis Williams for up to two months, but the die was cast already. How desperate are things in Philly? They’ve reconciled with Allen Iverson three years after rushing him through divorce court.

Washington has put together back-to-back wins – over Toronto and Milwaukee – but that only gets the Wizards, thought by many (me included) to be a threat to overtake Atlanta and get home-court advantage in the first round, back to 7-10. The Pistons, even without Prince and Hamilton, have a win at Washington on their resume.

Miami had its best win of the year Tuesday night, beating Portland on the road with the Blazers missing LaMarcus Aldridge, but the Heat have built their 10-7 record largely on a most favorable schedule – 11 of 17 at home.

Milwaukee’s been a pleasant surprise, but coming back to Earth a little now, 9-8, with the schedule evening out on the Bucks. They’ve shown enough to make you believe they’ll be in the hunt, but a healthy Pistons team would not fear missing out on a playoff spot because of Milwaukee.

And then there’s Chicago, which snapped a five-game losing streak but couldn’t put the Pistons down with ease Wednesday night despite Hamilton, Prince and Villanueva’s absences and Gordon still feeling his way back after spraining his ankle one week ago.

“I haven’t played in a couple of games, still kind of favoring the ankle,” Gordon said after leading the Pistons with 18 in 31 minutes. “But I think with a couple of days more rest and continue to treat it, I’ll be all right in a few games.”

Villanueva will be back soon and that helps. The Pistons don’t have a frontcourt player besides Charlie V who really represents a scoring threat. Less certain are the returns of Prince and Hamilton. The Pistons aren’t putting a timetable on either player because first they need to see them break through certain thresholds in jumping, cutting and lateral movement. Then it’ll be getting them back to practice and getting their legs back.

If that process takes another two weeks, OK. The Pistons can probably live with that and still mount a run at the playoffs. They got in with 39 wins last year. Let’s say it takes 40 this year – and the way the East is going, that’s probably about right. Can they go 34-30 the rest of the way to get to 40? Healthy, sure. That’s doable.

And let’s get this out of the way: I don’t buy the argument that if you’re going to get beat in the first round of the playoffs anyway, then you’re better off missing the postseason altogether and trying your luck in the lottery. This team – with young veterans like Gordon, Charlie V, Will Bynum, Rodney Stuckey, plus the rookies – would be the better for future playoff appearances even if it meant a first-round sweep at the hands of the Cavs or Celtics.

Finishing one spot outside the playoff field gives you an infinitesimally small chance to get a top-three lottery pick. Is a 1 percent chance at drafting Kentucky point guard John Wall, the putative No. 1 pick next June, really worth missing out on soaking up the playoff experience a team Joe Dumars has positioned for many future playoff runs could gain next spring?

No, resoundingly no. And even if they wound up playing a 65-win team in the first round, I’d give them something better than a 1 percent chance of springing the upset.

Besides, next June’s draft is going to be good, potentially really good. The Pistons are thrilled with Austin Daye, but if they wind up picking right around where they got Daye last June, 15th, they’ll go into the draft process pretty confident that they’ll come away with a prospect at least of Daye’s caliber.

So picture a team next year that includes the core Joe D has already assembled – Prince and Hamilton back, plus Stuckey, Bynum, Gordon, Villanueva, the three rookies, perhaps Ben Wallace back for another go. And add to them another prospect as good or better than Daye. And add to them the significant veteran frontcourt piece that their mid-level exception can land them.

Who might that be? It’s too early to speculate with any degree of insight, but here’s one example of somebody that could be available, and I’ll cite him merely to illustrate the caliber of player that could be had with the MLE in a year where quality free agents will flood the market: Washington’s massive 7-footer, Brendan Haywood.

The Wizards are paying luxury tax this year and will be again, almost certainly, if they retain Haywood. The team’s owner, Abe Pollin, was always willing to do so if he thought he had a winner. But Pollin died last week, so no one really knows what direction the franchise will take.

Put somebody like that in the middle, or somebody who can make a similar impact in a different way, and the Pistons take on a whole different look. Somebody else who falls into that class, though he’s older and would be a candidate for a short-term deal: Marcus Camby. The point is, a lot of teams are going to be making tough decisions, with the cap coming down and the luxury tax threshold along with it, and the Pistons could be in position to benefit.

Success this season was always going to be measured a little differently than the Pistons have measured it since early in this decade. It was going to be centered on the progress their young veterans made, by the way Gordon and Villanueva adapted, by the futures they could project for their three rookies, by the mettle John Kuester showed as a rookie coach. If the injuries to Prince and Hamilton linger so long that the playoffs start slipping from their reach, it only changes those expectations by a matter of degree.

Because healthy, the Pistons know enough about themselves – even in limited exposure – and about the rest of the East to feel confident they’re a playoff team. Battered and bruised, they’ve at least shown they’ll compete every night and win some games, like Sunday against Atlanta, they have little business winning.

However it plays out, they’ve already gotten good vibes on all of those things that bear watching – the young veterans, the free agents, the rookies, Kuester. Whatever happens, chances are pretty good the Pistons are going to finish this season feeling they’ve gone a long way toward securing their future.