By Michael Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 29, 2005; 12:00 PM
Go ahead, wrap yourselves up in the never-ending zaniness of Ron Artest and his flip-flop trade demands. Spend some more time trying to see if Pat Riley really undermined Stan Van Gundy to take over as coach of the Miami Heat. Try examining Kobe Bryant's 62-point barrage to determine if he really could've scored 80 had he played the fourth quarter. Keep fawning over the surprising Los Angeles Clippers or frowning over the disappointing Denver Nuggets.
Do everything you can to overlook the best story in the NBA this season: The Detroit Pistons don't want your love anyway. "It's cool, though. That's how we like it, that spotlight is not on us," Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace said during the first week of the season, well before the Pistons jumped out to one of the greatest starts in NBA history.
It's a strange fuel for this team that thrives on being overlooked and slighted. The Pistons have been in the NBA Finals in each of the past two seasons, but their perceived lack of recognition drives them each night to perform at such a high level that eventually, you will have to focus on them. Now you don't have much choice: After their 113-106 victory against the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday, the Pistons won their eighth game in a row and improved to 23-3.
Detroit is on a pace to win 73 games this season. Yes, that's 73 -- as in one more than the 72 victories the Chicago Bulls won in 1995-96. Los Angeles Lakers Coach Phil Jackson, who guided the only team in NBA history to win 70 games, was asked this week if he thought the Pistons had to potential to go 73-9. "I don't know. It's really hard to say," said Jackson. "You just have to manage it game by game and see where it goes. They haven't had to survive any injuries at this point, as far as anything critical, so we'll see what happens. But they have good athletes."
This is no longer about just trying to prove to everyone that they can win without Larry Brown. The Pistons like to remind people that they weren't too shabby under Rick Carlisle, either. Coach Flip Saunders has opened up the offense, letting his players' individual talents shine through. The Pistons should have three players representing the Eastern Conference at the all-star game in February (Ben Wallace, Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton).
The Pistons' all-star deficient backcourt shouldn't be snubbed any longer. Billups is finally beginning to generate some buzz for MVP for quarterbacking this unit, former Washington Wizard Richard Hamilton is averaging a career-best 21.6 points in the uptempo offense, and Tayshaun Prince and Rasheed Wallace have been able to carry the team offensively any given night. They are even surpassing the expectations of Saunders. "I thought we had the ability to get off to a good start, but I didn't think it would get this gaudy," Saunders said recently.
ESPN basketball analyst Scottie Pippen boldly predicted in November that the Pistons would join the Bulls among the 70 win elite. "I'm sure he's talking to [Pistons assistant and former Bull] Ronnie Harper about the team a little bit," Jackson said with a burly chuckle. "They're cracking each other up a little bit."
Jackson said it's too early to even think about winning 70. He said the 1995-96 Bulls didn't start to seriously think about 70 wins until the entered the month April with a 62-8 record. His one bit of advice to the Pistons: "You can't lose two in a row," said Jackson, whose Bulls had a chance to post back-to-back 70 win seasons but lost the final two games in 1997 and finished 69-13.
Last season, the Phoenix Suns started the season at 23-3 and received considerable publicity, with the "Steve Nash for MVP" campaign taking off before New Year's Eve. This season, the Pistons have yet have an Eastern Conference Player of the Week. Has there ever been a team this good that got so little love?
San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich said he understands the Pistons' chip-on-the-shoulder motivation. "Now they're really angry," Popovich told reporters on Sunday. "It sounds simplistic, but that's how they're playing. It's like they are saying, 'You [expletives], we're going to show you now.' They are scary."
The Pistons, however, will have a difficult time keeping up this pace: They play in arguably the toughest division in the NBA. They have been fortunate to have the same starting five for all 26 games this season and each starter averages at least 34 minutes per game.
In the past 15 years, six teams have started the season 23-3 -- Portland (1990-91), Houston (1993-94), Seattle (1993-94), Chicago (1995-96 and 1996-97) and Phoenix (2004-05) -- but the Bulls and the Rockets were the only teams to follow their incredible starts with championships in June. That's why the Pistons aren't too worried about how they finish the regular season. "Our ultimate goal is not to have the best record, but to win that championship," Wallace told reporters Tuesday night.
The revenge of Kobe and Phil
Wasn't Phil Jackson's reunion with Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles supposed to keep the soap opera alive in Los Angeles? Weren't they supposed to bump heads repeatedly, with Jackson writing more scathing entries about Bryant's selfish play in his diary? So far, Jackson has decided to let Kobe be Kobe, and following the Lakers' hideous 5-8 start to the season they have helped each other earn a semblance of redemption this season. "Having Phil back makes it different. Playing with him is very familiar to me. I know what he expects. By understanding his leadership and what he expects of me makes it more enjoyable," Bryant said. We're doing okay. We are a young team. We still have a lot to learn. The fact that we're more than keeping our head above water is good."
With the Lakers now 15-13, Jackson is proving that he is more than just a coach who "picks his spots" -- as Red Auerbach said early this year -- and takes ready-made contenders to the top. The Lakers don't have much else outside of Bryant, who is the league's second-leading scorer at 32.2 points per game -- almost 17 points more than second-leading scorer Lamar Odom (no other team in the league has such a gap between it's top two scorers). Players such as Smush Parker, Chris Mihm and Brian Cook probably wouldn't start for most of the teams in the NBA, but Jackson is already talking about the postseason.
"It's an overall picture. This month things have gone better for us. We're seeing growth," said Jackson. "We were telling them in November that we're going to be better in December. I'm hoping at the end of this month, I can tell that we're going to be better in January. If we fulfill that expectation then we'll be a playoff team and we'll compete for the playoffs. These guys like to play together. They compete together. Kobe is having a great year, giving us an opportunity to fill in the spaces around him and behind him."
Bryant accounts for about one-third of the Lakers' 96.3 points per game and his 62-point performance against Dallas opened up more discussions about Bryant being a ball hog (he averages 26 points per game). But Jackson defends Bryant's shot selection, knowing that there are games -- such as last Sunday in Miami -- when some of the Lakers' young players get that "deer in the headlights look" and Bryant is forced to carry his teammates along until they get comfortable on the floor. "It's a game-to-game basis for us," Jackson said. "There are some games when he comes out and things are just flowing for everybody else and it's great."
But there are nights like Monday in Washington, when Bryant has no help and his frustrations spill over on the floor, as he chastised his teammates for most of the Lakers' 94-91 loss. Bryant said he has been motivated by a number of factors this season -- from making third-team All-NBA to missing the playoffs for the first time in his career last season, which he said was "hurtful." Bryant doesn't want the momentum of a 10-win month to slip away. "We just have to gain it back, go out and snatch it. It's a roller-coaster year; it's a long year. We knew we would have peaks and valleys. Now it's time to peak again."
Jackson was asked if he felt Bryant, who debuted his first signature Nike shoe this week, had turned a corner in terms of public perception this season. If the boos Bryant heard in Miami and Washington said anything, it's that he still has work to do. "I was disappointed with people in Miami. He played a great game and they gave him, 'Kobe [stinks],' " Jackson said after Bryant scored 37 points in the Christmas matchup with the Heat. "I thought that was poor sportsmanship."
While Jackson is optimistic about how much better the Lakers can get, the legendary coach won't get carried away. After all, the Lakers were 16-12 after their first 28 games under Rudy Tomjanovich. They finished the season with 33 wins. "We're a team learning how to play together and we see signs that this team has got a chance to be pretty good," he said. "We don't expect to be in the Finals right now. We're not saying that we're that elite team. We certainly like the way we're playing ball and we're competitive."
Team of the Week
New Jersey Nets
This is more like it. With what Cleveland Coach Mike Brown called "three legitimate all-stars" in Jason Kidd, Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson, the Nets always had the talent to get hot and run off an extended winning streak. They have won seven in a row and knocked off some impressive teams along the way -- the Pat Riley-led Miami Heat, the then-Pacific Division-leading Los Angeles Clippers and the surging Cleveland Cavaliers. Carter's scoring spree has captured most of the headlines in the past two weeks -- especially after he dropped a career-high 51 on the Heat -- but the Nets' run cannot be discounted as a one-man show. Carter had what amounted to a mortal effort (21 points, nine rebounds) against the Cavaliers on Tuesday and the team was still able to halt Cleveland's six-game win streak with the help of Jefferson and Kidd. In the past two games, Jefferson, who has yet to make an all-star team, has shot 17 of 19 and scored 51 points, while Kidd has had at least nine assists in five of the past seven games. The Nets have also been able to get solid performances from their role players, even though the statistical contributions don't always jump out. Case in point: Jason Collins had no points, no rebounds and one block against Cleveland. That block, however, came after the Cavaliers had cut down an 18-point deficit to six points in the fourth quarter and led to a momentum-changing shot clock violation. Coach Lawrence Frank has urged his team not to get complacent. "There's a lot of areas we can continue to get better at. We have to continue work to get better," he said.
Team of the Weak
Golden State Warriors
The Warriors were one of the pleasant surprises the first quarter of the season. At one point, they were 12-6 and battling for the top spot in the Pacific Division despite an often objectionable dependence on three-pointers (they take a league-leading 24.5 per game) and with Baron Davis and Jason Richardson blossoming into a dangerous backcourt tandem. Since then, the Warriors have come crashing down, losing eight of their past 10 games. They are in the midst of a season-high five-game losing streak, suffering double-digit losses in four of those games. Golden State has benefited from a favorable schedule early, but that doesn't excuse the Warriors from not giving themselves a chance. They have knocked themselves out in the early stages of each of their past five losses, falling behind by double digits in the opening half. Some examples of their first quarter slumbers: They gave up 37 points to New Jersey, 35 to Philadelphia and on Monday Denver scored 44 -- the most the Warriors had allowed in any period in almost three years. The only positive to come from their recent run of futility has been the emergence of rookie Ike Diogu, who scored a career-high 27 points on 13-of-15 shooting in a loss to Detroit. In search of the missing mojo, Coach Mike Montgomery has recently decided to shake things up and benched Adonal Foyle in favor of Diogu. He likes Ike.
Player of the Week
Vince Carter, New Jersey Nets
Little more than two weeks ago the Nets put up a 20-point stinker in Washington and didn't look the least bit concerned as players sat in their locker room stalls laughing and joking, with Vince Carter serving as ring leader. It was a troubling scene considering the Nets didn't attempt to defend or compete. The next night they were embarrassed by the Charlotte Bobcats and appeared in desperate need of a jolt -- Ron Artest, perhaps -- to keep from being one of the biggest disappointments of the season. That jolt has come, however, came in the form of Carter, who has recaptured the highlight reel Vinsanity and propelled the Nets to a seven-game win streak. After the loss to Washington, Carter was asked if he felt he was playing with the same intensity he did when he first arrived from Toronto. "Yes, definitely," Carter said. No need to ask now, after Carter has averaged 32.1 points, 7.0 rebounds and 5.5 assists in the past seven games. Carter's toughness has been questioned in past seasons, as he battled injuries and often settled for fadeaway jumpers when he actually played. But Carter has attacked the basket with abandon in the past five games, taking 84 attempts from the foul line. He matched his career-high with 51 points on Friday in a win in Miami, as he connected on 23 of 24 free throws.
Player of the Weak
Michael Olowokandi, Minnesota Timberwolves
Kwame Brown spares him the ignominy of being the worst No. 1 pick currently in the NBA, but Olowokandi has been able to fluctuate between non-existent, awful and just okay in his two-plus seasons in Minnesota. Olowokandi has been the subject of trade rumors all season because of his expiring contract. On Friday, Olowokandi was both non-existent and awful during the Timberwolves' 91-83 loss to Portland. He went without a rebound and scored just two points in 14 minutes and was ejected after he picked up two quick technicals during a crucial part of the game, helping turn what was a four-point deficit into an eight-point deficit. Olowokandi's dreadful showing didn't end when he left the floor. After the game, he seemingly made a veiled criticism of Minnesota Coach Dwane Casey, saying that a "person of authority" should have stood up to the officials. He backtracked some a day later. "You can fill in the blanks if you want, but don't try to have me start naming names, and saying maybe [Casey] or maybe [Kevin Garnett] or whatever. . . . I just said a person of authority should have said something or spoken up about it." Casey hasn't received a technical foul or been ejected this season. Why would Casey get into a tizzy for this guy?
Top Ten
1. Detroit Pistons (23-3)
The Pistons haven't lost a game since Dec. 12, rolling off eight in a row. The run is centered on the rebirth of defensive intensity and Ben Wallace, who had averaged 15 rebounds in the past seven games before snagging just seven against Toronto on Tuesday.
2. Dallas Mavericks (21-7)
What positives can the Mavericks possibly take after Kobe Bryant torched them for 62 points in three quarters? They only have to see Bryant one more time this season. The Mavericks have looked stellar against every other team in the league, having already won 11 games this month.
3. San Antonio Spurs (22-7)
It might've been nice to see him straighten it and try the Manu Ginobili moppy-do, but thankfully, Tim Duncan has finally shaved off that unsightly fuzzy 'fro. Maybe the Spurs can start resembling themselves, too, especially now that Ginobili is back after missing the past eight games with a sprained right foot.
4. New Jersey Nets (16-12)
Is this finally the Nets team that everyone has been waiting to see this season? They are the hottest team in the league other than Detroit. Vince Carter has certainly been on a tear, but Jason Kidd has averaged 9.6 assists during the Nets' current seven-game win streak. This might be a bit high for the Nets, but only one team has been playing better basketball the past two weeks.
5. Miami Heat (17-12)
The Heat fell asleep against Vince Carter, giving up 51 points, but it rebounded to win an emotional game against the Lakers and trounce the Bucks. Miami is 6-2 since Pat Riley has taken over, but the honeymoon will be put to test as they play nine of their next 10 games on the road.
6. Phoenix Suns (16-10)
While waiting for Amare Stoudemire and Leandro Barbosa to come back from injury, the Suns can take solace in this little nugget: They are 11-5 in games Boris Diaw starts. Congrats to Steve Nash, winner of the Canadian athlete of the year award for the second time.
7. Cleveland Cavaliers (17-10)
The Cavaliers broke out of their funk, winning six in a row before losing to the Nets. James has scored at least 30 points in nine of Cleveland's 12 games this month. You might try to criticize the youngster for being too concerned with scoring -- until you realize James is shooting 49.7 percent from the floor this season.
8. Memphis Grizzlies (16-10)
Eddie Jones returns from a sprained right ankle and they still blow an 18-point lead in Utah. The Grizzlies have gone just 3-4 since Bobby Jackson went down with a strained right hamstring.
9. Los Angeles Clippers (16-11)
Could L.A.'s "other team" be coming back to earth? The league's darlings have lost six of their past eight games, the Lakers are gaining ground and Corey Maggette is expected to miss four more weeks with a left foot injury. The good news? Eight of their next 10 games will be at home.
10. Indiana Pacers (15-11)
Will they trade Ron Artest already? Larry Bird feels "betrayed" and Jermaine O'Neal is doing his best to keep the Pacers moving along without the enigmatic all-star forward but O'Neal will need some help sooner than later. They've lost three in a row. The Denver Nuggets are desperately trying to pry away Artest.
Games to Watch This Week
Atlanta at Toronto (Wednesday)
It doesn't get any better . . . um, worse than this. Battle of the Bottomfeeders Part II. The Hawks should like their chances, though: Toronto is 1-12 at home this season.
Phoenix at Washington (Wednesday)
They staged a one-point thriller less than a week ago. It will be tough for the rematch to come close -- but let's hope the Suns and Wizards try.
Philadelphia at Portland (Wednesday)
Former Trail Blazers Coach Maurice Cheeks returns to Portland for the first time since he was canned. He arrives with his new yo-yo Sixers.
Miami at Detroit (Thursday)
The Heat barely resembles the team that lost to Detroit in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Pistons haven't changed too much -- but they look much, much better.
Detroit at Cleveland (Saturday)
After LeBron James scored a career-high 56 points in Toronto last season, Jalen Rose offered this doozy: "Imagine when he gets old enough to drink." Well, James turns 21 on Friday. He gets the Pistons as a birthday present in this matchup of the teams with the best two records in the Eastern Conference.
