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djsunyc
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Pistons Come to Town, Surprised by Brown's Troubles
By LIZ ROBBINS
What timing.
The Detroit Pistons, the best team in basketball, the team that became even better after Larry Brown left as coach, visits the worst team in basketball tonight, the team embroiled in a high-stakes feud between Brown and point guard Stephon Marbury.
Like salt in Brown's self-inflicted and Stephon Marbury-inflicted wounds, the Pistons present him with a prickly reminder of the spoils he once had with Detroit and the spoiled season he has endured with the Knicks.
"I am very surprised that it's gotten to this point — team-wise and with Stephon," Pistons point guard Chauncey Billups said yesterday after practice in Manhattan. "I'm really saddened by it. I know I couldn't play with that. I know it's just taken a toll on everybody."
As the Knicks (18-45) sink into chaos, the end of the season cannot come too soon. The Pistons (51-12) are also eager for it to end, so they can start the playoffs and try to recapture the title they won in 2004 under Brown.
"He drove this Rolls-Royce," Billups said, referring to Brown and the Pistons. "He chose to change up. It is what it is. I just never thought it would ever get this bad."
Brown and the Pistons will forever differ over the semantics, Brown saying he was fired, the Pistons saying he wanted out.
He started secret negotiations for a job in the Cleveland Cavaliers' front office during the 2004-05 season, which infuriated the Pistons' ownership when the news became public. Brown and the Pistons negotiated a $7 million buyout that freed him to take the Knicks' job at $10 million a year for five years.
The simmering tension between Brown and Marbury blew up this week as they lobbed cannonballs at each other through the news media. Billups recalled his own struggles with Brown, who he said made him a better player.
"There was a time where of course I was frustrated and wanted to sound off, but I wouldn't do it," Billups said. "There's a right way to do it. Me and Larry, we had our conversations. I voiced my opinions and he voiced his, and after we walked out of there, it was just it."
Billups said that had he clashed publicly with Brown, his teammates and the team president, Joe Dumars, would have quelled it. Then again, Billups said: "That's just not our culture. I just couldn't see that happening here."
Billups said he advised Marbury to be patient and to let Brown's criticisms "go in one ear and out the other."
"I don't have no advice for this," he added. "I don't know. I've never been through that, and I hope I never do."
The coach-point guard relationship is the axis of every team. Billups learned to work with Brown and endorsed the Pistons' hiring of Flip Saunders, his former coach with Minnesota. Marbury, who also played in Minnesota, considers Saunders his favorite coach.
"Having coached Steph for three years, his main thing is that he's unbelievably competitive," Saunders said. "And he can be very stubborn."
Marbury is different from Billups.
"Chauncey's a guy you can sit down and talk," Saunders said. "With Steph, your sit-downs, you're going to have to have a few of them to convince him. Once he believes in it, he goes overboard."
Marbury has never fully believed in Brown's system. When Saunders became Detroit's coach, guards Billups and Richard Hamilton praised him for giving them more freedom.
Marbury took his campaign for more freedom to the news media, saying Brown's criticism was personal.
Saunders said the New York stage and the Knicks' losing record had heightened the feud.
"I think what happens sometime is frustration creeps in a little bit and it's sort of a he-said, she-said situation," Saunders said. "There's no question that Larry can help Steph, and if Steph does things right, he can help their team."
Speaking of Marbury, Saunders said: "He wants to win. I know the losing right now is killing him."
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