DREW SHARP: Rasheed must do more if he's pushing out Okur

April 26, 2004

BY DREW SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

MILWAUKEE -- The risks, thought to be nonexistent when the trade went down two months ago, have attained an increasing clarity. The high-impact acquisition of Rasheed Wallace is no longer the no-lose proposition that the Pistons publicly sold.

But not for the reasons initially suspected.

The gamble isn't keeping Wallace beyond this season as much as it is the possibility of losing Mehmet Okur.

Okur's lack of early playoff minutes isn't lost on other teams. The questions are making the rounds on the league's underground network. Has Larry Brown lost faith in him? Does Okur believe he doesn't have a future with the Pistons? Can the prospective restricted free agent be had for the right, albeit outrageous, multimillion-dollar offer?

But the bigger question is, can Wallace's playoff performance finally rise to the level of his exquisite skills, thus greatly easing the blow should the Pistons keep him but fail to retain Okur?

And the early answer is no.

The Pistons still have control of their first-round series. They never really lost it. They exposed the impostors who took the floor in Game 2, returning to their basics and delivering an intimidating forearm shiver to Milwaukee in Game 3.

Maintenance crews were still working Sunday night at the Bradley Center, trying to clean up the spot where the Bucks' Keith Van Horn stained the hardwood in the fourth quarter Saturday. He wanted nothing to do with Ben Wallace under the basket, short-arming a five-foot air ball.

The Pistons don't need anything more than a complementary Rasheed Wallace to eventually take care of the Bucks. But he's going to have to step up and command the game as his own if the Pistons expect to get past New Jersey in the second round.

TNT talking head Charles Barkley called out Rasheed at halftime of Saturday's game. Never one to mince words, Barkley said Wallace possessed too much talent to put up modest numbers and that he can't be afraid to star.

At what point does unselfishness become a crutch?

It's easy to see why one of the many reputations Rasheed has garnered through a nine-year career is that of the perfect teammate. He spreads the wealth as well as the credit. He understands the team concept and so easily meshed with his new compatriots that it seems he has been with them 10 years as opposed to only 10 weeks.

But if he's hesitant to assume the burden of wanting the outcome of a crucial playoff game on his shoulders, then he's not worthy of the maximum free agent dollars he could command from the Pistons this summer.

Chauncey Billups isn't afraid to have the game in his hands in the closing seconds, and a potential championship team needs that backcourt component. But Wallace must be the No. 2 threat late in tight games, particularly with his inside-outside offensive talents.

Yet it seems that Tayshaun Prince is considered a better option. With both Billups and Rip Hamilton gone, Brown designed the final play in Game 2 for Prince to take the ball to the hole and decide whether to shoot or draw the double team and find the open man.

Rasheed's arrival raised expectations for the Pistons. He's cited as the difference-maker in any possible matchups against the Nets and Indiana, the perfect counterpoint to Kenyon Martin and Jermaine O'Neal. The city has adopted him and his family as its own. He has conducted himself maturely both on and off the court.

His re-signing has become Joe Dumars' top priority, but the Pistons have gone out of their way to reassure Okur that they still consider him an integral part of the franchise's future. Dumars agreed to the Wallace trade only after Boston agreed to take Chucky Atkins, thus freeing up enough salary cap room to offer Okur the mid-level exception of nearly $5 million.

Dumars can use the Larry Bird exemption to go over the cap and re-sign Wallace.

But even should Wallace prove to be the missing championship piece, the Pistons cannot afford to lose a talented though unrefined 24-year-old 7-footer, especially when nobody's terribly certain about the development of their 18-year-old 7-footer, Darko Milicic.

That's why everyone's wondering how Okur is coping with his limited minutes. And it's why ego-stroking has become another of Dumars' functions lately.

Brown pushed hard for Rasheed, because Brown knows he has only a few years left to win his elusive first NBA championship. So what if he potentially alienates Okur? In his mind, there is no gamble. There is no risk.

But Dumars doesn't have that luxury.

Charles Barkley whom used to be amusing in his charmed igonrance, seems to be of a man whoms mind is truley rotting from within.

He states the obvious and thinks he is clever. ITs not cute anymore, get him off the air!

At least he is not afraid to say things out straight, albeit them being very simple, but the other comentators are afraid to state the obvious so much that sometimes they make you sick with their brownnosing of the Lakers and other teams that are supposed to "win".