Ben Wallace is driving the Pistons
By Chad Ford
NBA Insider
Send an Email to Chad Ford Monday, January 12
Updated: January 12
9:31 AM ET
Before things spiral even further out of control and the media just hand Isiah Thomas' Knicks the Eastern Conference, you might want to check those box scores again.
The ex-bad boy has stirred things up in New York, but it's Thomas' former teammate, Joe Dumars, who appears to have the most realistic shot at tackling the Pacers and Nets for the Eastern Conference crown. After a terrible December swoon that prompted Dumars to defend his moves this summer to Insider, the Pistons are firing on all cylinders, winning eight straight games.
In Insider's Week 11 wrap, we explore the Pistons' sudden hot streak, the possible end of the Jazz's Cinderella run, Jim Jackson's stellar week in Houston, Lamar Odom's bid for the All-Star game and the future worth of Suns center Maciej Lampe.
Big Ben Fueling the Pistons
Three weeks ago the Pistons looked like a team on the ropes, and GM Joe Dumars was on the defensive. His team had lost seven of its last nine. The Pistons had cracked 90 points just once in the past 13 games. Larry Brown, who was supposed to fix the Pistons' stagnant offense, appeared instead to have made it even worse. Up-and-coming players like Darko Milicic, Tayshaun Prince and Mehmet Okur weren't progressing at the pace some thought they would. Milicic, the No. 2 pick in the draft, was averaging a DNP for the season. The team's confidence seemed shot.
What was going on?
"Growing pains," Dumars told Insider in December. "I thought we'd struggle at some point early. We've got a new coach, a new system, young players and some new players. We had a tough schedule. I was a little surprised by the way we played coming out of the gate and started to believe that maybe we wouldn't have to struggle the way we thought. Now we've hit a slide. I'm assuming we'll continue to struggle a bit until we really learn Larry's offense."
Dumars says the Pistons' early success was a product of them knocking down so many shots.
"We were shooting well at the start," he said. "When you do that, you look good. When the shots stop falling, players have to decide what to do next. Everyone on the team had learned option number one on offense. But option two and three? We're still struggling with that. Guys freeze up a little bit. Nothing's natural. I finally told them this week just to loosen up a bit and play. Eventually they'll get comfortable with the offense and will quit looking so confused out there."
Now, after an eight-game win streak has vaulted the Pistons to the second-best record in the East, those concerns seem to have melted away into the distant past. Those same confused Pistons seem to have figured out how to put the ball in the basket again while maintaining that trademark defensive intensity that propels everything they do.
While they're still no offensive juggernaut, the team has surpassed 90 points in four of its last eight games, including dropping 115 on the Mavericks Sunday night.
"We're getting better," Brown told the Detroit News. "Guys are falling into their roles and there have been some areas that we've really improved in. We've rebounded better. We've defended better. And offensively, we've gotten a better feel for what we are trying to do."
Ben Wallace
Power Forward
Detroit Pistons
Profile
2003-2004 SEASON STATISTICS
GM PPG RPG APG FG% FT%
36 9.9 13.3 2.0 .422 .548
Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton continue to be the main guns on offense, but the contributions of three other players on the offensive end, Ben Wallace, Tayshaun Prince and Chucky Atkins, are also fueling the Pistons' run.
Brown made it a point in training camp to get Wallace more involved in the offensive mix. The initial experiment had mixed results. In November, Wallace focused so much on his offensive production that his rebounding numbers and his shooting percentage plummeted. It wasn't really until mid-December that the two time Defensive Player of the Year started to get comfortable in his new skin.
"Ben's taken his offense very seriously this season, and it shows," Billups told the Detroit News. "It opens up a lot of things when Ben is scoring, or even if the defense really has to go over and guard him. You see other teams now starting to guard him a little closer. Ben's doing a good job, and I think he's just starting to see what he really can do out there. He's finding his range and feeling out the situations."
Wallace scored a season-high 17 points and grabbed 13 rebounds Sunday against the Mavericks. He also has had nine double-doubles in the last 14 games and is averaging 10.6 points and 14.8 rebounds since Dec. 12. Brown thinks Wallace is just now scratching the surface.
"It does a lot of good for our offense as a whole for Ben to be part of things more," Brown said. "Ben is an excellent passer. He can handle the ball like a two (shooting guard) or three (small forward). He can run the floor. He can shoot. He has all the components you need to be a good scorer in this league.
"It's an adjustment for Ben to think of himself as a scorer, since he's usually been so defensively focused. But he can do more than that to help us.
"I think we're really going to see the major progress from Ben over the summer when he's working on it even more. I think he's going to take a huge leap then, and next season we're going to see even more from him."
The team is also seeing more out of second-year forward Prince and back-up point guard Chucky Atkins.
Tayshaun Prince
Small Forward
Detroit Pistons
Profile
2003-2004 SEASON STATISTICS
GM PPG RPG APG FG% FT%
37 11.1 5.2 2.6 .455 .754
Prince looked like he had the potential to be a big-time scorer in the league after a stellar playoff performance last season. But he got off to a slow start this season, averaging just 10.1 ppg and 4.1 rpg in December. However, in his last five games, Prince is averaging 13.6 ppg, 7.8 rpg, 3.4 apg, 1.6 spg and 1.6 bpg on 44 percent shooting.
Atkins has rebounded from a slow start to 10.6 ppg on 44 percent shooting from the field. Over the course of the past few weeks, he's been the team's most consistent 3-point shooter, shooting 40 percent from behind the arc.
All of the winning should help quash the rumors that Dumars is thinking about blowing up the young nucleus of this team. Two weeks ago a bad rumor started floating around the league that Dumars was packaging Hamilton and Darko. Not only is the deal implausible from a salary-cap standpoint (Hamilton is a base-year player) Dumars continues to insist that he's not interested in moving his talented young players.
"You can take it to the bank that we're not remotely thinking of doing anything with those two guys," Dumars told Insider late last week. In fact, Wallace, Hamilton, Billups, Okur, Prince, Darko and the Pistons' other first-round pick last year, Carlos Delfino, aren't going anywhere unless Dumars gets blown away with an All-Star caliber player in return.
With that strong of a corp, and with the success the Pistons have shown already this season, you can understand why Dumars is so optimistic.
"I know patience can be a dirty word in this business," Dumars told told Insider in December. "But at the very time people are writing that our window is closing, I'm telling you it's just now starting to open. They gave me that award last year because we surprised a lot of people and turned around a pretty bad team quickly. But I've done more this summer than I did last year. It's just going to take a little longer to see the results. But when they come, we won't be happy just to be in the Eastern Conference Finals."
Those words have never looked truer than they do right now.
Jazz's Cinderella story over?
Word that top forward Matt Harping will miss the remainder of the season after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his knee Saturday comes as a huge blow to the Jazz.
After most writers (including Insider) predicted that the Jazz would end the season with the worst record in the NBA, the Jazz have been the feel-good story in the first half of the season. Before losing Harpring on Jan. 3rd, the Jazz were 17-15, eclipsing the win total many had predicted for the entire season.
The team has gone a respectable 2-2 since Harpring's absence, but it's going to be virtually impossible for the team to replace what Harpring gave them every night.
"It's a big loss for us," Greg Ostertag told the Salt Lake Tribune. "Even when Matt had an off-night shooting, he still did a lot of things to help the team. Hopefully it's something he can recover from."
Two guard DeShawn Stevenson has taken the bulk of Harpring's minutes and has put up solid numbers (16 ppg, 6 rpg on 57 percent shooting). Reserve guard Raja Bell is also seeing a little more time. His 25-point, six-rebound performance against Dallas last Monday propelled the team to victory. Rookie Aleksandar Pavlovic has also seen a boost in minutes and had a big 12-point, seven-rebound game versus the Hawks on Saturday.
Andrei Kirilenko
Power Forward
Utah Jazz
Profile
2003-2004 SEASON STATISTICS
GM PPG RPG APG FG% FT%
36 15.9 7.9 3.2 .464 .807
Will that be enough to keep the Jazz playing .500 ball? The answer probably rests with Andrei Kirilenko. Kirilenko has been the team's most important player so far this season, but his numbers have been down since Harpring's absence. With no one else for the defenses to really key on, Kirilenko has seen the first steady streams of double teams in his career. The result has been a dip in scoring average to 13.2 ppg on just 34 percent shooting from the field in his last four games.
If Kirilenko wilts under the additional load, the Jazz could be in trouble. Jazz GM Kevin O'Connor says help isn't on the way.
"We've got 15 players, and they only allow you 15, so I'm not sure what we can do," he said. "We'll keep monitoring what comes up trade-wise, but we're not going to trade the future for the present."
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continued....................
By Chad Ford
NBA Insider
Send an Email to Chad Ford Monday, January 12
Updated: January 12
9:31 AM ET
Before things spiral even further out of control and the media just hand Isiah Thomas' Knicks the Eastern Conference, you might want to check those box scores again.
The ex-bad boy has stirred things up in New York, but it's Thomas' former teammate, Joe Dumars, who appears to have the most realistic shot at tackling the Pacers and Nets for the Eastern Conference crown. After a terrible December swoon that prompted Dumars to defend his moves this summer to Insider, the Pistons are firing on all cylinders, winning eight straight games.
In Insider's Week 11 wrap, we explore the Pistons' sudden hot streak, the possible end of the Jazz's Cinderella run, Jim Jackson's stellar week in Houston, Lamar Odom's bid for the All-Star game and the future worth of Suns center Maciej Lampe.
Big Ben Fueling the Pistons
Three weeks ago the Pistons looked like a team on the ropes, and GM Joe Dumars was on the defensive. His team had lost seven of its last nine. The Pistons had cracked 90 points just once in the past 13 games. Larry Brown, who was supposed to fix the Pistons' stagnant offense, appeared instead to have made it even worse. Up-and-coming players like Darko Milicic, Tayshaun Prince and Mehmet Okur weren't progressing at the pace some thought they would. Milicic, the No. 2 pick in the draft, was averaging a DNP for the season. The team's confidence seemed shot.
What was going on?
"Growing pains," Dumars told Insider in December. "I thought we'd struggle at some point early. We've got a new coach, a new system, young players and some new players. We had a tough schedule. I was a little surprised by the way we played coming out of the gate and started to believe that maybe we wouldn't have to struggle the way we thought. Now we've hit a slide. I'm assuming we'll continue to struggle a bit until we really learn Larry's offense."
Dumars says the Pistons' early success was a product of them knocking down so many shots.
"We were shooting well at the start," he said. "When you do that, you look good. When the shots stop falling, players have to decide what to do next. Everyone on the team had learned option number one on offense. But option two and three? We're still struggling with that. Guys freeze up a little bit. Nothing's natural. I finally told them this week just to loosen up a bit and play. Eventually they'll get comfortable with the offense and will quit looking so confused out there."
Now, after an eight-game win streak has vaulted the Pistons to the second-best record in the East, those concerns seem to have melted away into the distant past. Those same confused Pistons seem to have figured out how to put the ball in the basket again while maintaining that trademark defensive intensity that propels everything they do.
While they're still no offensive juggernaut, the team has surpassed 90 points in four of its last eight games, including dropping 115 on the Mavericks Sunday night.
"We're getting better," Brown told the Detroit News. "Guys are falling into their roles and there have been some areas that we've really improved in. We've rebounded better. We've defended better. And offensively, we've gotten a better feel for what we are trying to do."
Ben Wallace
Power Forward
Detroit Pistons
Profile
2003-2004 SEASON STATISTICS
GM PPG RPG APG FG% FT%
36 9.9 13.3 2.0 .422 .548
Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton continue to be the main guns on offense, but the contributions of three other players on the offensive end, Ben Wallace, Tayshaun Prince and Chucky Atkins, are also fueling the Pistons' run.
Brown made it a point in training camp to get Wallace more involved in the offensive mix. The initial experiment had mixed results. In November, Wallace focused so much on his offensive production that his rebounding numbers and his shooting percentage plummeted. It wasn't really until mid-December that the two time Defensive Player of the Year started to get comfortable in his new skin.
"Ben's taken his offense very seriously this season, and it shows," Billups told the Detroit News. "It opens up a lot of things when Ben is scoring, or even if the defense really has to go over and guard him. You see other teams now starting to guard him a little closer. Ben's doing a good job, and I think he's just starting to see what he really can do out there. He's finding his range and feeling out the situations."
Wallace scored a season-high 17 points and grabbed 13 rebounds Sunday against the Mavericks. He also has had nine double-doubles in the last 14 games and is averaging 10.6 points and 14.8 rebounds since Dec. 12. Brown thinks Wallace is just now scratching the surface.
"It does a lot of good for our offense as a whole for Ben to be part of things more," Brown said. "Ben is an excellent passer. He can handle the ball like a two (shooting guard) or three (small forward). He can run the floor. He can shoot. He has all the components you need to be a good scorer in this league.
"It's an adjustment for Ben to think of himself as a scorer, since he's usually been so defensively focused. But he can do more than that to help us.
"I think we're really going to see the major progress from Ben over the summer when he's working on it even more. I think he's going to take a huge leap then, and next season we're going to see even more from him."
The team is also seeing more out of second-year forward Prince and back-up point guard Chucky Atkins.
Tayshaun Prince
Small Forward
Detroit Pistons
Profile
2003-2004 SEASON STATISTICS
GM PPG RPG APG FG% FT%
37 11.1 5.2 2.6 .455 .754
Prince looked like he had the potential to be a big-time scorer in the league after a stellar playoff performance last season. But he got off to a slow start this season, averaging just 10.1 ppg and 4.1 rpg in December. However, in his last five games, Prince is averaging 13.6 ppg, 7.8 rpg, 3.4 apg, 1.6 spg and 1.6 bpg on 44 percent shooting.
Atkins has rebounded from a slow start to 10.6 ppg on 44 percent shooting from the field. Over the course of the past few weeks, he's been the team's most consistent 3-point shooter, shooting 40 percent from behind the arc.
All of the winning should help quash the rumors that Dumars is thinking about blowing up the young nucleus of this team. Two weeks ago a bad rumor started floating around the league that Dumars was packaging Hamilton and Darko. Not only is the deal implausible from a salary-cap standpoint (Hamilton is a base-year player) Dumars continues to insist that he's not interested in moving his talented young players.
"You can take it to the bank that we're not remotely thinking of doing anything with those two guys," Dumars told Insider late last week. In fact, Wallace, Hamilton, Billups, Okur, Prince, Darko and the Pistons' other first-round pick last year, Carlos Delfino, aren't going anywhere unless Dumars gets blown away with an All-Star caliber player in return.
With that strong of a corp, and with the success the Pistons have shown already this season, you can understand why Dumars is so optimistic.
"I know patience can be a dirty word in this business," Dumars told told Insider in December. "But at the very time people are writing that our window is closing, I'm telling you it's just now starting to open. They gave me that award last year because we surprised a lot of people and turned around a pretty bad team quickly. But I've done more this summer than I did last year. It's just going to take a little longer to see the results. But when they come, we won't be happy just to be in the Eastern Conference Finals."
Those words have never looked truer than they do right now.
Jazz's Cinderella story over?
Word that top forward Matt Harping will miss the remainder of the season after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his knee Saturday comes as a huge blow to the Jazz.
After most writers (including Insider) predicted that the Jazz would end the season with the worst record in the NBA, the Jazz have been the feel-good story in the first half of the season. Before losing Harpring on Jan. 3rd, the Jazz were 17-15, eclipsing the win total many had predicted for the entire season.
The team has gone a respectable 2-2 since Harpring's absence, but it's going to be virtually impossible for the team to replace what Harpring gave them every night.
"It's a big loss for us," Greg Ostertag told the Salt Lake Tribune. "Even when Matt had an off-night shooting, he still did a lot of things to help the team. Hopefully it's something he can recover from."
Two guard DeShawn Stevenson has taken the bulk of Harpring's minutes and has put up solid numbers (16 ppg, 6 rpg on 57 percent shooting). Reserve guard Raja Bell is also seeing a little more time. His 25-point, six-rebound performance against Dallas last Monday propelled the team to victory. Rookie Aleksandar Pavlovic has also seen a boost in minutes and had a big 12-point, seven-rebound game versus the Hawks on Saturday.
Andrei Kirilenko
Power Forward
Utah Jazz
Profile
2003-2004 SEASON STATISTICS
GM PPG RPG APG FG% FT%
36 15.9 7.9 3.2 .464 .807
Will that be enough to keep the Jazz playing .500 ball? The answer probably rests with Andrei Kirilenko. Kirilenko has been the team's most important player so far this season, but his numbers have been down since Harpring's absence. With no one else for the defenses to really key on, Kirilenko has seen the first steady streams of double teams in his career. The result has been a dip in scoring average to 13.2 ppg on just 34 percent shooting from the field in his last four games.
If Kirilenko wilts under the additional load, the Jazz could be in trouble. Jazz GM Kevin O'Connor says help isn't on the way.
"We've got 15 players, and they only allow you 15, so I'm not sure what we can do," he said. "We'll keep monitoring what comes up trade-wise, but we're not going to trade the future for the present."
-----------------------------------------
continued....................
