I’ll level with you, I may not have what it takes to be a GM in the NBA. I will now pause for a moment for you to wake up from your seizure induced coma and resuscitate those around you…

Better? Everything cool? Ok. I know I shouldn’t have begun a blog with a sentence that shocking, but I am crazy…crazy like a fox (you know what I’m talking about). Seriously though, I might not be cut out for the job. Breathe, breathe…ok. After the Pistons’ imploded against Cleveland in the playoffs last year, I was sitting front and center in the group calling for massive break-ups, new directions, all that. Now here we are a mere 20 games into the new season, and like an emotional, teenager girl I’ve changed my mind again. Of course, therein would lay the problem for me being an NBA GM. Fickleness and emotional insecurity aren’t predominately the two main traits one looks for when filling that position…I assume. For real, though, after last year I was upset and ready for a change, convinced that the current core had taken the ship as far as it could go. Again, now I’m not so sure about that.

Upon evaluating these 2007 Pistons thus far, it seems to me that Joe D’s best move in the off season was maybe simply refraining from making the knee jerk moves that lunatics like myself were calling for (even if only subconsciously). Avoiding that rash, house cleaning, 10 player deal may be his greatest accomplishment to date. Now I don’t think that Dumars ever closes the door to pulling the trigger on a blockbuster trade, as he shouldn’t, and I don’t think he’s ever content or satisfied with his current crop of players, but I don’t think he gets suckered into the “grass is greener” mentality that we rabid fans often do either. That’s huge. For example, if the Lakers would have put a reasonable Kobe offer on the table in the off season, I think that Joe would have taken it. They didn’t, though, and therefore Dumars coolly dismissed the notion of just shipping off two or three members of the core group somewhere for 2 cents on the dollar just to say, “look at me, I did something. We’d be better off without em.” He had the foresight to see that although the last few years have ended in disappointing fashion (though 5 straight trips to the conference finals, 2 trips the finals, and 1 championship isn’t bad…just bad for expectations), the nucleus of Sheed, Rip, Dyce, Chauncy, & Tay are still better than 90% of what other teams have to offer. Period. In his mind he must have said, “ok, if I can’t alter the nucleus for the better, how can I better the nucleus?” His answer to that question is one that indicates he understands not only what he is doing but that he also has keen insight into the psyche of his team.

Detroit’s core is by and large a veteran core, and subsequently the knock on them over the past few seasons has been two-fold. #1. They seem to run out of gas when it counts (late in the season, weary from tired legs). #2. They seem cocky and hung up on their past laurels and in the end come up short when they lean too heavily on that, oh so dangerous, “turn it on” mentality. However, if these two problems could be repaired, you would basically be looking at the same team that won the title a few years ago. Now I’m probably jumping the gun here, but from where I’m standing it appears that these two issues have been remedied. How? What was Joe D’s magic elixir? The fountain of youth.

Detroit drafted two excellent young guns this off season in Rodney Stucky and Arron Afflalo. Then adding a fourth year scorer in Jarvis Hayes, continuing to develop budding stars like Jason Maxiell, sticking with and believing in Flip Murray, and giving Amir Johnson and Nazr Mohammed the opportunity to prove themselves have proved to be invaluable. The determination to grow these young players has done two things. #1. It has allowed the starters to play less minutes thus solving the burn out problem down the road. Bench play has been spotty the past few years for the Pistons, but now with fresh, energetic youth coming off of the pine, teams will not be able to simply throttle back when the main guys get their much needed breathers. #2. It has forced the starters to reengage at a high level in practice. For the past few seasons Detroit has had a very lopsided team – great starters, terrible bench play. This has no doubt hurt them, and although the effect is felt during games and more specifically the postseason, the cause is weak practice habits. Practice! We talkin bout practice? We ain’t even talkin bout the games! Yes AI, practice. The problem is that lack of competition in practice breeds complacency. My high school basketball team was a perfect example of this. There was such a dramatic difference in talent from the starting five to the second string that we starters didn’t have to go but half speed all the time during practice, and the second string guys knew they never had a shot to play much so they didn’t even bother to try hard. It was a lose lose situation. In college it was a different story and also probably the biggest shock to me during the high school to college transition. Practice was intense because there was such a greater degree of parity on the team. The result, then, was that it made everybody better, and now the same phenomenon is working for the Pistons. They’ve got young, hungry guys pushing the veteran starters to a higher level, all while the wise veterans are pulling these young guys to new heights with them. It’s a beautiful thing.

So how is this all panning out? Well, 20 games into the season the Pistons are 14-6. Not outrageous, but considering that almost all of their losses took place with one or more starters out with either injuries or personal commitments, it’s pretty impressive. In fact, over the last 10 games the Pistons are beating their opponents by an average of almost 13 points per game, and I have to say that they look good doing it. They honestly seem more in tune than they ever did last year even if they are a year older and perhaps still recovering from the pain of another past postseason meltdown. However, like my 1995 Honda Accord (with 199,946 miles on it) whose pistons are still firing away with no signs of stopping, these 2007 Detroit Pistons are still firing too…and right now, unlike I’ve seen in some time, they are firing on all cylinders.