May " Sheed should reamin in motown"

[gary_moore]

 

By Peter May

Special to ESPN.com

 

How often does it really work this way? A team deems itself to be one player away from an NBA title and, in mid-season, goes on to make the move. Then, said team goes out and wins the NBA championship.

Suffice it to say there are more examples where that doesn't happen. (Think Dallas in 2002 and Philadelphia in 2001.) But, in the case of the Detroit Pistons and Rasheed Wallace, it did. This shotgun marriage of February now has a chance to be much longer and stable and, given Wallace's play and role, it would seem silly for him to want to move again.

But you know what's going to happen. The agent will take offers, as agents should. The money will be ludicrous, as it always is. But at some point, don't Bill Strickland (the agent) and Rasheed have to understand that Detroit is the best thing that happened to Wallace since he entered the NBA nine years ago?

He has a championship ring. He has a system and a role in which he is comfortable and not required to produce big numbers. He has young teammates who may even get better, a coach's coach (for now, anyway) and an organization that's committed to doing things a certain way.

Why on earth would he want to be anywhere else?

	The Pistons can shower 'Sheed with championship bubbly as well as free-agent dollars.

It was eye-opening to see the public change in Wallace once he came over from Atlanta in the February deal. He talked to the media and while he'll never be a candidate for the All-Interview Team, his remarks and observations generally were deeper and more profound than the four words for which he was known in Portland: "both teams played hard."

His talent was never in doubt. It was always the Other Stuff which dragged him down, most of it his own doing. And what wasn't illegal was usually pretty stupid, such as his rant in the Oregonian earlier this season about African-Americans being exploited.

But you generally heard teammates talk glowingly about him -- Arvydas Sabonis probably being an exception -- and you always wondered what would happen to him if he extricated himself from that noxious atmosphere which had been allowed to fester in Portland.

When it finally did happen, he prospered. Larry Brown could cite the Carolina connection and got through to Wallace as no one else had. If Wallace went 1-for-7 in a big game, he wasn't hung out to dry. Somehow, you knew he'd soon be scratching a 20-and-10 itch.

Throughout the playoffs, he battled a painful case of plantar fasciitis. There's apparently no such thing as a non-painful case; those who've had it liken it to walking on glass shards. But he played and generally played well. He never complained publicly when he was yanked early in three straight games of the NBA Finals after picking up his second foul. Brown complained for him.

And Wallace, heretofore first-team All-Combustible, picked up only two technical fouls in the 24 Pistons' playoff games. And one of those, in Game 4 of the Finals, was, as they say in the NFL, an off-setting penalty because Slava Medvedenko was also nailed. Meanwhile, Rip Hamilton picked up seven Ts in the playoffs, yet no one said a word about that. One of those, in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, looked pretty huge when the Lakers were down three (instead of four) in the closing seconds of regulation.

Wallace put himself out for public ridicule (again) when he promised a Pistons victory in Game 2 of the conference finals in Indiana. It looked sillier in that he had scored only four points (and picked up five fouls) in the Game 1 loss to the Pacers. He proved to be prophetic, even if the Pistons almost blew a late lead and were saved only by Tayshaun Prince's remarkable block on Reggie Miller. But Wallace also had 10 points, eight rebounds and five blocks in that game, a 72-67 Detroit victory.

His play spoke for him as well in other big games. He had 14 points and four blocked shots when the Pistons went into New Jersey, down 3-2, and took Game 6 to square their conference semifinal. He had 22 points, eight rebounds and three blocked shots in the Pistons' big win in Indiana to take a 3-2 lead in their conference final. He had lucky 11s two nights later as the Pistons eliminated Indiana, including a gigantic offensive rebound/dunk in the final four minutes, where points came hard and droughts were Biblical.

He had 26 points and 13 rebounds in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, the one game which limited the already declining number of disbelievers to those within the confines of the four walls of the Lakers' locker room. (And we're not sure there weren't a few converts in there as well.)

Even before the Finals began, when the Pistons were still deemed by many to be Lakers' fodder, Brown was adamant about what Wallace meant to his team. Asked, simply, if he'd be in the Finals had the deal not gone down, the Pistons' coach said, "No way. I'd be trying to find Michael (Jordan) to play golf."

The deal which brought Wallace to Detroit -- midwived by Celtics basketball boss Danny Ainge -- also gave the Pistons some flexibility in re-signing him because they dumped Chucky Atkins in the process. (By the way, guys, Ainge's ring size should be easy to obtain. He has two from his days as a Celtic.) Wallace turns 30 in September, so this could be his last chance for a big hit. But he's already been paid a king's ransom by the Blazers and now, we must assume, is content with his employer, his team and his town. We have to assume the Pistons are happy with what they got out of it as well.

Given all that, this should be a no-brainer. Does Wallace really want to go to New York and play for the decrepit Knicks? Think he'd last long there in the role that he prefers (wingman) for a team under constant scrutiny?

He has found a home. By now, doesn't he understand that as well? This was a marriage that worked. It should now be given the necessary amount of time to make it continue to work. We're not going to insinuate that it's not about the money, because, of course, it always is about the money.

In this case, though, it's not just about the money. It's about all the other things that Rasheed Wallace never had -- happiness, success, camaraderie, professionalism -- until he ended up in Detroit. He might have been partly to blame for that, but he is now in a position to look forward, not backwards.

Peter May, who covers the NBA for the Boston Globe, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.

 토마스 아저씨, 허풍좀 그만 떨고 다니세요.

[[Card*하경우*]]

제 생각에도 우승까지 한 마당에 피스톤스를 떠날 이유가 없는듯..