http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/trueblu ... 91129.htmlBig-Time Win
If any one visual could symbolize the Pistons’ season, it’s Charlie Villanueva standing at the free-throw line in Sunday’s fourth quarter, an oversized wad of blood-soaked gauze dangling out of his left nostril. With those empty seats on Roundball Two vacated by Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince and Ben Gordon, their walking wounded – or limping wounded, more like it – the Pistons could make room for a Revolutionary War fife and drum corps to serenade their march to the infirmary. Charlie V stayed in the game after getting gouged by Zaza Pachulia with 9:30 to play, causing a cut on his cheek, and, launched by Pachulia into Ben Wallace, cracking his nose on Wallace’s hip, just to shoot the free throws. Had someone else shot for him, he wouldn’t have been able to re-enter the game at any point. He left after knocking down both foul shots, heading straight to the locker room, where the bleeding wouldn’t stop in time to allow an X-ray to be taken for damage assessment. So the Pistons ended Sunday’s game against Atlanta, which began the day in a four-way logjam atop the Eastern Conference with a 12-4 record that left everyone convinced the Hawks are a legitimate contender, without any of their four highest-paid players, representing nearly $40 million of their payroll. They won anyway, 94-88, dominating Atlanta on the backboards (53-27) and getting contributions from practically everybody still fit enough to play, snapping a seven-game losing streak during a portion of their schedule that would have been murderous had they been completely healthy.Funny how one win can change perspective. For as gloomy as things could be and despite the surreal adversity facing them, the Pistons ended the day, at 6-11, just two games in the loss column out of the No. 7 playoff seed in the East. “Good win,” John Kuester sighed in relief. “You’re playing one of the premier teams in the East. Atlanta is outstanding – well-coached, tremendous athletes. And our guys came in and were focused. They understood that we had been in a tough situation and we didn’t lose focus. We held everybody accountable in practices, we held everybody accountable in games and the guys responded.”
Kuester changed the starting lineup for this one, Jason Maxiell stepping in for Charlie V and Chucky Atkins for Austin Daye to help buy some minutes in the backcourt for Rodney Stuckey and Will Bynum. But more than the lineup change, it was a mind-set change that established the Pistons’ competitiveness early in a game that looked very likely to extend the losing streak to eight. It might take some heavy analysis from the coaching staff to figure out the chicken-or-egg relationship between the two, but the Pistons were extremely efficient offensively in a first half that saw them get scoring chances – and scoring – from a group of their traditional non-scorers. Passing instead of dribbling, feeding the post even if those post players aren’t renowned scorers, the Pistons had 55 points at halftime and 17 of their first 24 shots were taken by players other than the three proven scorers left on the roster – Stuckey, Villanueva and Bynum. “That’s what we need to start doing,” Stuckey said. “Need to start having that post presence and we need to start giving it to (Wallace) and Maxiell and Kwame down there when they’re posting up, because it’s going to take a lot o pressure off our guards. We just need to start feeding them now so we can get their confidence up and it’s also going to take a lot of pressure off of us.” “I thought they did a great job tonight, especially on the offensive end, getting us going. Defensively, you know Ben is going to be Ben, Max is going to be Max. The’re going to chop and hit people. And that’s what we need out there. We needed that energy. It gave us a big boost.” “They’re all getting a feel in regard to asserting themselves,” Kuester said. “I think they’re getting a trust factor, saying, ‘I’ve got to assert myself.’ That’s where Kwame is a big part of this thing. … We have to do things by committee and those guys did a great job of giving us a tremendous amount of support tonight.” Brown and Wallace had taken a combined 86 shots in the Pistons’ first 16 games – a little over five per game – but by halftime they’d both topped that figure, Brown with seven and Wallace six. They finished with 17 shots and 18 points. Establishing them as a threat, in addition to infusing the Pistons with a confident aggression, paid dividends in other ways. Cut to the fourth quarter. Atlanta had just erased a 12-point deficit and tied the game at 67 when the Pistons went on a 10-0 run that held up, a run that ended with two telling possessions. First, Stuckey ran a pick and roll with Jason Maxiell, making a simple but perfectly accurate bounce pass – in Maxiell’s sweet spot – that he deposited in the hoop with a stab hook from 5 feet in front of the basket.
Maxiell, perhaps active and engaged for the adrenaline rush of having been fed and scoring, the next time down hustled down an offensive rebound – the Pistons’ 22nd of the game en route to 24 – to set up another possession. This time the ball went inside to Wallace, whose passing skills have always been drowned out by his rebounding and defense, and Wallace threaded a bounce pass to Bynum for a layup. Wallace finished with 10 points and 18 boards, 11 of them offensive, giving him 21 over the past two games played less than 48 hours apart, further defying expectations that he’d settle in as the Pistons’ No. 5 big man. “Ben Wallace was phenomenal,” Kuester said. “The sonofagun continues to rebound at a high pace and did a great job.” Wallace wasn’t the only Piston to register a double-double. So did Jonas Jerebko, who followed Friday’s 22-point career high with 10 points and 11 boards, and it was Jerebko’s defensive play with just under two minutes to play and Atlanta trailing by six that was as big as any moment. Jamal Crawford was on the left wing and the hyperathletic Josh Smith was streaking down the right wing with only Jerebko back on defense. As Crawford tried to sneak a pass around Jerebko to Smith, Jerebko deflected the ball and then gathered it up, giving the Pistons a possession that ended with a Stuckey jumper and an eight-point lead.“How big was that?” Kuester whistled. “Boy, has he been a pleasant surprise. I keep thinking he’s going to hit a wall and not have the same kind of energy and I’m going to have to yell at him – ‘Hey, you’re not working hard enough’ – but it hasn’t happened.” “That won’t happen yet,” the Swedish rookie, the 39th player drafted last June, said. “We’ll see when game 75 comes up, but not now.” As for his momentum-saving play, Jerebko said, “I just heard everyone screaming. I was going to foul (Crawford), to be honest. But he was looking for the pass, I got a hand on it and we got two points on the other end. So it was a very nice play. We needed that win, so that was a big play.” It sure was, a play that might have preserved a win that, four months from now, when the last few playoff spots in the East are filling up, the Pistons might look back at as the one that enabled them to stay in the hunt.
