What a Win

Minus Prince and Hamilton, total team effort sparks upset of Orlando
What a Win
by Keith Langlois

Who says the basketball gods have no sense of humor? Seven seasons ago, in a move born of desperation, with Orlando as the antagonist, the Pistons turned to a callow rookie and asked him to bail them out.
Seven seasons later, in a move born of desperation, with Orlando as the antagonist, the Pistons turned to a callow rookie and asked him to bail them out.

OK, they didn’t really expect Jonas Jerebko to bail them out. But just as they asked Tayshaun Prince to guard Tracy McGrady in the 2003 playoffs when no one else could slow him down, they asked the NBA’s first Swede to guard McGrady’s cousin, Vince Carter, in a game that probably was taken off the board in Las Vegas when news leaked about an hour before tipoff that Prince couldn’t play.

And this one turned out just like that one seven years ago did – with the Pistons winning and Orlando leaving The Palace muttering, like the Magic have so many times since.

But the Pistons were the No. 1 seed back then playing a No. 8 seed – and this was, on paper, an even bigger mismatch for Orlando, which cruised through a perfect preseason and beat down its first three regular-season opponents by an average of 11 points a game and was making half its shots.

The story was Jerebko, holding Carter in check, Carter finishing with 15 points. Until it became the three guards left standing – Rodney Stuckey, Ben Gordon and Will Bynum – combining for 63 points. Until it became Ben Wallace – the one link to the glory days still healthy with not only Prince but Rip Hamilton in street clothes – making two huge plays in the final minute.

In one blindingly bright moment for a proud franchise in transition, the future, the present and the past experienced a harmonious convergence.

“That’s when a victory is so sweet,” John Kuester said. “You always miss star players, but having other players step up and play big roles … but you’ve got to be careful. A lot of times, when they see star players out, they try to do too much. That’s what our players did – they made plays, they complemented each other and they really did a great job defensively against as powerful an offensive team as there is in the NBA.”

The Pistons aren’t kidding themselves or anybody else. Their season gets a whole lot less problematic when Hamilton and Prince are cleared to return – don’t look for either player before Sunday, and maybe not even then – but don’t shrug off this win as a meaningless November fluke, either.

For what it says about their trust in one another, for what it says about their competitive spirit, and for what it says about the effects of Kuester’s indefatigable positivity, this is a win that bodes well for whatever hurdles confront the Pistons over the next 78 games.

And they will be many. You don’t introduce eight new players to a roster, you don’t bring in a new coach and you don’t carry three rookies without experiencing growing pains and discovering new things about yourself as a matter of daily routine.

But what Kuester learned Tuesday night – and learned within minutes of tipoff – confirmed everything he’s insisted was true about this team from the first day of training camp: They’ll work hard, they’ll work together and they’ll compete fearlessly.

“Early on, we set the pace,” he said. “I knew immediately.”

Jerebko went the whole first quarter on Carter and held him to six points on 3 of 9 shooting. Carter wound up taking nine of his 16 shots behind the 3-point arc, making only three of them, all in the third quarter. Two came against Jerebko and one against Stuckey and all were essentially unguardable bombs.

Jerebko doesn’t have a very full catalog when it comes to defending NBA players. When I asked him last month about the comparisons two of his coaches made between him and David Lee, he sheepishly admitted he’s never seen Lee play.

But Carter?

“Of course I know about Vince Carter,” he smiled after conducting interviews in Swedish for two visiting journalists from his native country. “Everybody that plays basketball knows about Vince Carter.”

The Pistons played Jerebko exclusively at power forward in preseason games, then used him for six minutes at Milwaukee the other night to back up Prince. That’s the spot he played in Italy the past two seasons and where he feels more at home.

“There was more of a change to come and play the four,” he said. “I don’t really mind what I’m playing. I’ve been playing the three – maybe not against guys like Vince Carter, but against guys similar to him in Italy for two years.”

“Joe Dumars, we were talking today, what a great opportunity for a lot of these young players that we have so much confidence in – this was a total team effort,” Kuester said. “I thought Jonas did a great job. He didn’t know until this morning that he was going to start. He brings an energy to this team that I really like.”

So did Will Bynum this time out. Bynum was chastising himself for not carrying over his dazzling preseason play to the regular season, but he scored 20 against Orlando, 16 of them in the second half and 10 in the fourth quarter despite missing three minutes when he thought his career might have ended.

Bynum had eye surgery over the summer to repair both retinas, he said, and they told him that if he took a hard blow to the eye socket he might detach a retina. That’s all he thought about when he got hit with an open hard with 6:51 left, Bynum covering his left eye with his hand and refusing to uncover it as trainer Mike Abdenour escorted him to the locker room. Three minutes later, he was back, replacing Jerebko.

“That’s just how I play,” he said. “I’ve been kind of down on myself with the way I’ve been playing that last couple of games. But once I smelled blood, I just wanted to keep attacking. I was getting stops on one end, I was guarding pretty good and pretty much making plays and scoring on the other end. Once I felt they couldn’t stop me, I just tried to keep going.”

Down 77-75 after two Ryan Anderson free throws with 3:55 left, the Pistons closed this win out the way they closed out so many in the Goin’ to Work heyday – with ferocious defense. They missed five straight shots and committed three turnovers, a streak that ended only when J.J. Redick’s meaningless 3-pointer wrapped up the scoring with less than one second left.

Charlie Villanueva, not known for his defense and still struggling to find his offense, had his “welcome to the Pistons” moment down the stretch, drawing a few charges and grabbing some big rebounds. He wasn’t alone. Stuckey, who scored 20, logged big minutes at small forward in the fourth quarter, guarding Carter and then Matt Barnes. Kwame Brown was a huge presence inside. Gordon was clawing through picks being set for Redick.

But it was Wallace, fittingly enough, who sealed the win, harassing Brandon Bass into a desperate jump shot that missed wide by about 5 feet with the Pistons up four and just under a minute left, then chasing down a Bynum miss at the other end to extend a possession that ended with clinching free throws from Gordon, who finished with 23 despite taking only 10 shots.

“Other guys had to step up and it was going to take a team effort,” Brown said. “We couldn’t do this without being together.”

“It’s one game,” Kuester said, but “it’s a game that says a lot about our team.”