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Editor’s note: Pistons.com looks back at the 2008-09 Detroit Pistons season with a month-by-month review, starting with training camp and concluding with the Eastern Conference playoffs. Part IV: January. The Pistons knew they weren’t going to have Rip Hamilton or Rasheed Wallace anytime soon when they beat Sacramento to open 2009 at The Palace – a night Rodney Stuckey, 10 days after scoring a career-high 40, came back with 38 more – and they didn’t expect Antonio McDyess back, either, as they took off for a four-game Western Conference road swing facing a critical numbers shortage. They found an opponent even more depleted than them when they got to Los Angeles to take on the Clippers. The Clips went into that Jan. 4 matinee without their two double-double threats up front, Zach Randolph and Chris Kaman, as well as their top three point guards. Baron Davis, their major off-season acquisition, was out, as was his backup, Jason Hart, and his backup, Mike Taylor. That left the Clippers to plug in recent pickup Fred Jones, a veteran shooting guard, at the point. And less than three minutes into the game, Jones, too, was lost to injury. But with journeyman swingman Mardy Collins running the point, the Clippers made the Pistons sweat. Groping for points with a starting frontcourt that included Kwame Brown and Amir Johnson and seeing Allen Iverson struggle with his shot, the Pistons never got any breathing room. And when LA rookie Eric Gordon became unguardable in the fourth quarter – he would finish with 31 points, making all 12 of his free throws – it came down to Iverson trying to win it one-on-one, the Pistons exploiting the unique skill set that had made him one of the game’s elite scorers for more than a decade. We’ll never know if Iverson’s game-winning attempt would have gone in or not – Al Thornton swatted it away as it began its downward descent. The Pistons wound up winning on a goaltending call. “You know you’re having a bad shooting game when you hit the game winner and that doesn’t even go in,” Iverson said. “That’s the top – the worst shooting game that I’ve ever had in my career.”
He finished 7 of 22, but the Pistons had their seventh straight win and sat a season’s high 10 games over .500 at 21-11. They would take a step back at Portland in their next game – on a night Iverson’s potential game-winner missed – before heading into Denver and a charged meeting with Chauncey Billups and the Nuggets. Billups had 20 points by halftime and the 25-12 Nuggets, delighted with their end of the November trade, led by double digits most of the half and by 10 at the break. But Iverson was outstanding in the second half, finishing with 23 points and leading a fourth-quarter charge that carried the Pistons to a 93-90 win. Denver didn’t have Carmelo Anthony that night, but the Pistons were still playing without Hamilton and Wallace. It was a big win and the Pistons felt pretty good about themselves as they headed to Utah for the last game of the trip. They got Rasheed Wallace back in time for that game, though he was clearly subpar. The beleaguered Pistons, 24 hours after their emotional win in Denver, dug a huge early hole at nemesis Utah the next night, losing their eighth straight game to the Jazz. But they were heading home, Wallace had gotten his feet wet in Utah and Hamilton – who had missed the past eight games – was cleared to play for the next game. Things were looking up. Things were about to unravel. The Pistons came home to blow another fourth-quarter lead and lose at the buzzer on a jumper by Charlotte’s Raymond Felton. Later that week, they lost two more games to sub.-500 teams at Indiana and Oklahoma City, and the losing streak went to five on a Saturday night at The Palace when Chris Paul’s 23-point, 14-assist performance powered a New Orleans win. “Any time you’re losing games, your confidence may get shaken a little bit,” Curry said. “But I’ve been telling you all year – this is a different team. It’s a team that had played together so long and had a 10-year-plus vet running the team. No excuses for us, but this group has to learn its way as well. Stuckey has to learn his way. He has to get us in things. We’re playing with other guys that are playing more major minutes that have never done it before. This is different.”
The tailspin cast doubts about whether the small-ball lineup could be effective. The Pistons were 0-4 since Hamilton returned, headed to Memphis for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day matinee game. They would narrowly beat the 11-28 Grizzlies, but small ball died that day. Rip Hamilton – reigning three-time All-Star and the team’s leading scorer in each of his six seasons as a Piston – was coming off the bench. And everybody hung on what Hamilton’s reaction to the move would be. “It was something (Curry) wanted to do and I said fine, cool,” Hamilton said. “Bottom line, you want to win games and if that’s the best way that we can go out there and try to win a championship, I’m all for it.” The Pistons beat Toronto in a rout in Hamilton’s first game off the bench, outscoring the Raptors 49-33 in the second half. But they got pounded in a weekend set at The Palace, losing to Dallas by 21 and spotting Houston a 15-point lead before rallying to lose by three. Hamilton’s 27 off the bench against the Rockets was a bright spot, but the Pistons had lost five games to .500 in a little more than two weeks and couldn’t seem to sustain much in the way of progress at either end of the floor. After a narrow win at Minnesota, the Pistons closed out January with another loss to Boston, their third straight this season and fifth straight going back to last year’s playoffs. They were treading water, heading to February with a record of 25-20, and still clinging to the hope that with a little more familiarity between Iverson and his teammates, and with a little more time to let the Hamilton-as-super-sub experiment play out, the Pistons would gain enough steam over the second half of the season to hit the playoffs on a wave of momentum. That optimism was about to face a stern test.
