Charlie Villanueva ran the floor for about 20 minutes during Monday's practice and was pleased by how his non-running cardiovascular conditioning has helped him remain in shape.
Villanueva has been dealing with ankle tendinitis and bone spurs.
No timetable has been established for Villanueva's return.
Lawrence Frank, through his 12 seasons of NBA experience, has a theory that strange things happen just before and right after the All-Star break.
“Usually the week prior to the break and the week after the break, weird things happen,” Frank said recently in Boston. “If you study the history of the league and you look at the scores, you see supposed upsets, because people start to loosen their focus. It’s important for us – because we are on the other end, we are the ones stealing the wins, so to speak – to maintain our focus.”
There are upsets every night in the NBA, but they were almost a common occurrence just as Frank predicted in the week leading up to All-Star weekend.
Let’s categorize an “upset” as a team beating another team that is four or more games ahead of them in the standings for the sake of this study.
From last Friday, Feb. 17, to Thursday night, the official end of the first half of the season, there were nine upsets in 58 games. That plays out to 15.5% of games played.
If what Frank says is true, then we should see fewer upsets Feb. 1 to Feb. 16, right?
Over that 16-day stretch there were 130 games played and 22 were upsets, which works out to a 16.9% rate. Those numbers don’t support Frank’s theory, but this an atypical season due it being condensed and shortened. Perhaps the 2010-11 campaign is a better sample, with the post-All-Star week mentioned by Frank available for study as well.
In the seven days prior to last year’s All-Star break, there were upsets in 15 of 52 games (28.8%). In the seven days after the 2011 break there was an upset in 10 of 56 games played (17.8%). Those figures are higher than we saw this season, but they have to be taken in context. Was there more parity in the NBA a year ago?
Not really. There were four teams that won seventy percent (or more) of their games and there are three so far this year. In 2010-11, four teams won less than thirty percent of their games. This season there are six through the first half.
The Pistons have won seven of their last nine games, which took them from having the second worst record in the NBA to the 24th.
As the team continues to rebuild, some have been concerned how these wins will impact their lottery chances.
"Our job is to give 100 percent, best effort, otherwise we're stealing money," said Lawrence Frank. "As I understand, from a theoretical standpoint, it's a great draft coming up, so let's get a lot of ping balls. But as a player or coach, if we think that way, they should fire us. You can't do it. One, we make a lot of money to go out and do our jobs. Also, for the people that support our team, that would be one heck of an indictment to know that your team wasn't giving its best effort because they were playing for next year."
Rodney Stuckey readily admits rookie point guard Brandon Knight has had a positive effect on him.
"It's a different atmosphere than in the past couple years, everything's positive, everyone's just trying to get better," Stuckey said.
Knight’s positive spirit and tireless work ethic appear to have rubbed off on Stuckey.
"He's a great kid, he comes in with an attitude to learn and get better," Stuckey said. "He's positive, and there's nothing really negative about him. Having that kind of energy around you really helps you and picks you up.
"We're gonna have a lot of years together. The kid can shoot the ball. We're only going to get better with each other.”
Lawrence Frank is giving the Pistons freedom to improvise on offense after defensive stops.
“We give the ultimate gold ticket to players,” Frank said. “If we get stops, we just play out of basketball principles. We don’t run set plays off of misses. So if I’m a player and I want freedom, I’m going to get stops.”
Frank has encouraged Brandon Knight – a player Pistons scouts felt was the fastest from end to end with the ball in his hands in college basketball last season – to play at a faster pace.
“The last couple of years, and even the championship years, this was one of the slower-paced teams in the league,” Frank said. “It’s not ‘six seconds or less,’ but we have to attack before the defense is set. You see all the advantages to it. Not only do you get open shot opportunities, but you have so many mismatches. You have big against small, small against big, which may indirectly lead to penetration, may lead to offensive rebounding. There are so many benefits to it, but it all starts with getting stops.
“You get the rebound, you outlet the ball as far up the floor as possible. The first thing you’re going to look to do is, anyone ahead of the ball, you’re going to advance it. If not, we call ’em rack attacks. So you’ve got to attack the rack. We’ve got two guys who are great speed dribblers in Brandon Knight and Rodney Stuckey. We fully encourage it and want them to get into the paint and create and that’s a big part of their game. It has to be an attack mentality.”
The NBA has announced the 2012 Rising Stars Challenge participants on Wednesday.
Sophomores selected include DeMarcus Cousins (Sacramento Kings), Landry Fields (New York Knicks), Blake Griffin (Los Angeles Clippers), Gordon Hayward (Utah Jazz), Greg Monroe (Detroit Pistons), Tiago Splitter (San Antonio Spurs), Evan Turner (Philadelphia 76ers) Paul George (Indiana Pacers), and John Wall (Washington Wizards).
Freshmen selected include Kyrie Irving (Cleveland Cavaliers), Ricky Rubio (Minnesota Timberwolves), Brandon Knight (Detroit Pistons), Kawhi Leonard (San Antonio Spurs), Markieff Morris (Phoenix Suns), Marshon Brooks (New Jersey Nets), Tristan Thompson (Cleveland Cavaliers), Kemba Walker (Charlotte Bobcats) and Derrick Williams (Minnesota Timberwolves).
Pistons coach Lawrence Frank said his team is struggling to make reads off of passes and cuts after their first offensive option is taken away.
“It's the play after the play, that's what we're struggling with, meaning we run a set, and the ball usually stops, or there's a delay,” Frank said. “What we work on, every single day, is how do you play after the play? That's what we have to do a better job on.”
Rodney Stuckey said the team is “just standing” offensively, and Tayshaun Prince said the team may need to, “put in some more sets,” because the Pistons too often failed to move the ball offensively.
“When the first option is taken away, guys look around and say, 'What do we do now?' as opposed to cutting, moving, things like that – which is a problem,” Prince said.
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