MOLA1
03-02-2006, 09:44 PM
Smooth In Transition
http://www.nba.com/media/pistons/chauncey-billups_300_050614.jpg
New coach? O.K. New system? Sure. Nobody has handled
change better than Pistons point guard Chauncey Billups, who
in his sixth NBA stop might become the first journeyman MVP
By Jack McCallum
Every night is reunion night for Chauncey Billups, who spends a good portion of his pregame warmup time rapping with opponents. His Pistons coach, Flip Saunders, calls him a "walking address book," and teammates Rip Hamilton and Antonio McDyess shake their heads and ask, "Damn, Chaunce, do you know everybody in this league?" Just about. "What you have to understand," says Billups, "is that I played with half of them." If the 6'3" point guard goes on to become this season's Most Valuable Player -- he's on a short list that includes Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers, 2005 winner Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns and Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks -- he will be the first to have carried the tag journeyman. Since Boston drafted Billups out of Colorado No. 3 in the 1997 draft, he has had six addresses (Boston, Toronto, Denver, Orlando, Minnesota and Detroit) and the voices of eight different coaches booming down his auditory canals. In Boston he was told he wasn't as good as an aging Kenny Anderson; in Denver he was told he wasn't as good as a volatile Nick Van Exel; in Orlando he was told, well, nothing, and was allowed to pack his bags as a free agent after the 1999-2000 season; in Minnesota he was told he wasn't as good as an injured Terrell Brandon and was again told that he was free to move on.
http://rhein-zeitung.de/on/02/02/20/sport/news/nba.jpg
"Can you imagine how I felt?" says Billups. "I came in as the third pick, and three years later I'm a player who was of no value to anybody. That was a dark time."
And now there is only light. As he tells his story of redemption, while sitting in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia, Billups marvels at the trajectory of his career. Rarely do journeymen find a happy home -- that's why they're known as journeymen -- and never do they become MVPs. Nash, drafted by Phoenix, traded to the Dallas Mavericks and re-signed by the Suns as a free agent, is an anomaly among the award's recipients, having won the honor with his third team. Since 1976 four others (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Lakers, Moses Malone of the Houston Rockets, Charles Barkley of the Suns and Shaquille O'Neal of the Lakers) were named MVP while with their second team, and, with the exception of Malone, they were there because they had wanted to be moved.
http://www.rubyan.com/politics/archives/pistons%20cartoon.gif
Even when he was named MVP of the Finals after Detroit's 2004 championship, Billups was considered a bit of a post-season fluke; during the regular-season MVP voting that year, he had received no votes. "It's been a crazy ride," says the 29-year-old Billups, "but it's made me grow up fast -- and appreciate where I'm at now."
Where he's at now is in rarefied air. From the start of the season the Pistons, 41-9 through Sunday, have been so much better than the rest of the league that their main competition has been the history books. Even if they fall short of joining the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls as the only teams to win 70 games, Detroit has provided the NBA with something not seen since the 1985-86 Celtics: a starting five that is more often spoken of in collective terms rather than individual ones. (To wit: More than one Eastern Conference coach voted for all five Detroit starters to play in this weekend's All-Star Game.) "They're like five fingers of one hand doubled up in a fist," says Magic vice president Pat Williams. "They're perfect in age, experience, talent and attitude. We haven't seen that in a long time."
http://www.nba.com/media/pistons/DETCLE_060227_007.jpg
A major factor working against Billups's MVP candidacy is the balance of Detroit's starting unit, which includes Hamilton at shooting guard (nonstop energy and a team-high 21.7 points per game at week's end), Rasheed Wallace at power forward (post moves and three-point scoring), Tayshaun Prince at small forward (defense and ball handling) and Ben Wallace at center (shot blocking and rebounding). Billups serves as the quarterback, distributing the ball well (8.5 per game, third in the league) and wisely (a 3.73 assist-to-turnover ratio) while delivering clutch shots from the field (42.3%) and the free throw line (91.1%). All but Prince made this year's All-Star team, which ironically takes some of the shine off Billups's star. "Their team is so good," says Miami Heat point guard Gary Payton, "all five could be MVP." San Antonio Spurs guard Brent Barry concurs. "They play such a great team brand of basketball that their guys don't seem to stand out individually." Even Los Angeles Clippers point Sam Cassell, who bestows upon Billups the ultimate Sammy-love ("He reminds me of myself"), doubts Billups can win it. "An individual award for a guy on that team? I don't see it."
http://www.nba.com/media/pistons/DETLAC_051211_007.jpg
Others do, their viewpoint best expressed by another point guard having an All-Star season. "Steve Nash was MVP last year because he was the best player on the team that had the best record," says the Spurs' Tony Parker. "Well, the Pistons have the best record now. Obviously, it's the whole starting five playing well, but Chauncey is the mastermind behind all that and the one who takes the big shots in the fourth quarter."
MVP talk, however, makes winning teams nervous. The Nash-led Suns have been one of the NBA's most cohesive teams, but even they had rifts last year when the attention given Nash chafed at mainstays Amaré Stoudemire and Shawn Marion. Bring up MVP with these Pistons, and you'll get some variation of the stock answers supplied by Hamilton ("Man, we don't pay attention to any of that stuff") and Billups ("It's a team thing with us"). It remains for one of the old guard, erstwhile Bad Boy Bill Laimbeer, now a Pistons color analyst, to tell it like it is. "They all have their roles, they're all important and, really, Rasheed might be the best talent," says Laimbeer, "but Chauncey is the best player."
http://www.covers.com/images/2005/180x180/laimbeer_bill050719.jpghttp://images.usatoday.com/sports/nba/_photos/2004-06-02-rasheed-wallace-.jpg
These Pistons have both an us-against-the-world attitude and a we-can-be-nasty toughness that recalls the Bad Boy teams that won back-to-back titles in 1989 and '90. They are distant, if not abrasive (well, 'Sheed can be), an insular group that resists deconstructing itself around outsiders. If there is an ambassador on the team, it is Billups, who plays a similar role to the one that guard Joe Dumars did for the Bad Boys: a player able to bare-knuckle it on the court yet come across as warm off it, a mixture of street cred and backroom diplomacy. "I'm part of hip-hop nation to the core, but I know how to treat people and I'm respectful," says Billups. "I know how to walk between those worlds."
http://img311.imageshack.us/img311/7444/nbillups4uz.jpg
In basketball parlance there's a word for that kind of talent: tweener, a label Billups has carried since his earliest hoops-playing days. Being a tweener wasn't a problem back in his native Denver, where labels like playground legend and high school star were also bestowed upon him. Bobby Wilkerson, who played on Indiana's undefeated 1976 NCAA-champion team and with the Denver Nuggets, gave Billups the nickname Smooth when he coached him as a grade school player at Skyland Recreation Center in the northeast section of town. A four-time state player of the year at George Washington High, Billups loved the moniker, in part because he never has been completely comfortable as a Chauncey ("It was a mother thing") and, on a few occasions, he says he was compelled to demonstrate that boys bearing the name of an English butler also know something about bare knuckles.
http://www.colorado.edu/insidecu/archives/2005/3-8/photos/billups.jpg
Nor was being a tweener a problem at Colorado, where he was a second-team All-America after his sophomore season, his final one in Boulder. Nor did it seem to be an issue when only Tim Duncan and Keith Van Horn got picked ahead of him in the draft. Billups couldn't have been happier with his destination: Boston, which had just handed the coaching and operational reins to Rick Pitino, whose aggressive, uptempo style was perfect for Billups. Or so the rookie thought.
Then, suddenly, tweener became a dirty word. In the eyes of Pitino, Billups was twice cursed, a tweener in both skill set (he didn't have the pass-first mentality to be a point guard) and size (though blessed with scoring ability, he didn't have the height to get off his shot as a two). Less than two thirds of the way into his rookie season he was traded to Toronto for Anderson, a more traditional slick-ball-handling, direct-the-offense point guard. "You can call tweeners combo guards," says Saunders, "but it comes down to the same thing. The way people see it, combo guards rarely become great players." One could argue that two of the best players in league history, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West, were combo guards, but the former is still recognized as a point and the latter as a shooting guard. Ditto for the versatile Pistons backcourt of Dumars and Isiah Thomas; they could switch positions seamlessly, but Joe D was still primarily the shooter and Zeke the QB.
http://www.nba.com/media/pistons/daly_bad_boys_020115.jpg
Billups couldn't get traction at either position. "People wanted him to be a point guard before he was ready," says Nash. "It takes time. He could always play." Van Exel is more direct: "When Chauncey was in Denver, he would play point guard for about two minutes, and then, for whatever reason, for the other minutes he was out there. He was out of control a little bit."
It's doubtful that any self-respecting point guard would appreciate a Basketball 101 lesson from Van Exel, but Billups doesn't disagree with the assessment. Scoring, he explains, became his means of survival. "What I latched onto was that they gotta know they can count on me to score," he says. "Maybe I overtried, because it turned out to be a disadvantage. It took me a while to understand that a shoot-first point guard can mess up a team's rhythm. I can understand why some teams wanted to get rid of me."
http://brentbarbour.com/nuggets/billups.jpg
There was one team, though, that wanted him. Badly, in fact. "Eight times over two years I called [Minnesota general manager] Kevin McHale trying to get Chauncey," says Dumars, the Pistons' G.M. since 2000. "What other people saw as a liability I saw as an asset. Oh, he's not strictly a point guard and not strictly a shooting guard? I said, 'Wow. I want that problem.'" Dumars saw something in Billups that reminded him of himself. "Heck," says Dumars, "the guy was wearing my number, too." (Billups had to take jersey number 1 when he got to Detroit since Dumars's 4 is retired.)
McHale refused to trade Billups, but neither he nor Saunders, Minnesota's coach at the time, would start him over Brandon, who was making $10 million per. Billups didn't want to hang around as a backup and in July 2002 signed Dumars's six-year, $33.7 million free-agent offer, which turned out to be a bargain for the Pistons. Though almost everyone forgets it now, the sudden upturn in Billups's career began in his first season in Detroit, under coach Rick Carlisle. Now coach of the Indiana Pacers, Carlisle is to control offense what Bergman is to angst. "Rick called all the plays," says Billups. "But he came to trust me to quarterback his offense. That was huge. It was under Rick that I stopped looking over my shoulder."
http://www.basket-plus.com/images/NBA/Dumars_trofej.jpg
Although Carlisle took Detroit to the Eastern finals in 2003, Dumars replaced him with Larry Brown, and Billups's ascent continued. Revisionist history about the Larry Era is already rampant -- the Pistons hated playing for him; Larry drove Chauncey crazy from Day One -- but Billups owes Brown a giant debt. Wake Billups up in the middle of the night, dose him with sodium pentothol, and the story will not change. "Larry made me believe that I could have 10 assists, a couple of steals and only nine points and still dominate the game," says Billups. "Nobody ever made that point to me that strongly. He made me a more cerebral player and a better all-around player."
Billups laughs. "Now, Larry, man, he is an animal. There were nights when I'd come home from a road trip, wake up my wife and say, 'Man, you can't believe what he got on me for tonight.' But don't ever think I didn't learn from the man."
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/051202/051202_knicks_hmed_6p.hmedium.jpg
Given their time together in Minnesota, one might have expected awkwardness between Billups and Saunders. There has been none. Saunders's offense has been perfect for Billups, who makes a lot of the play calls. (Both say they've reached the point where they would make the same call anyway.) Billups is allowed to -- in fact, supposed to -- push the ball if a fast-break opportunity presents itself, and he has the green light on threes, which he was shooting at a 43.2% through Sunday.
What is overlooked, though, is what Billups did for Saunders. The coach was the newcomer who, after 10 seasons in Minnesota and a 17-30 playoff record, had to show he belonged on a team that had just won a championship. "You have a point guard doing what Chauncey is doing," says Portland Trail Blazers coach Nate McMillan, "well, he's made it comfortable for Flip, more than the other way around."
Billups agrees that comfortable is a good word to describe his state of mind right now. He's comfortable on the court, where he sometimes plays with a kind of half-smile soldered on his face, as if he's in on a joke that nobody else knows. He's comfortable in the locker room, whether kidding Rasheed about his new "little-boy haircut" or making sure that the credit gets spread around. He's comfortable at home, where he and his wife, Piper, are expecting their third child in July, a prospect that has made him hesitant about joining the U.S. Olympic team (for which he is a virtual lock) this summer.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/ap/dtp10105161814.hmedium.jpg
"One thing a player can never do is lose his confidence," says Billups. "But I will admit there were times when I thought, Maybe I wasn't meant to be a great NBA player. So to end up here, at a place where there is no ego, no care about who's getting the most money or making the most commercials or taking the most shots, man, that is like the end of a perfect dream."
He laughs. "But don't think I want to go through the whole thing again."
Issue date: February 20, 2006
http://www.nba.com/media/pistons/chauncey-billups_300_050614.jpg
New coach? O.K. New system? Sure. Nobody has handled
change better than Pistons point guard Chauncey Billups, who
in his sixth NBA stop might become the first journeyman MVP
By Jack McCallum
Every night is reunion night for Chauncey Billups, who spends a good portion of his pregame warmup time rapping with opponents. His Pistons coach, Flip Saunders, calls him a "walking address book," and teammates Rip Hamilton and Antonio McDyess shake their heads and ask, "Damn, Chaunce, do you know everybody in this league?" Just about. "What you have to understand," says Billups, "is that I played with half of them." If the 6'3" point guard goes on to become this season's Most Valuable Player -- he's on a short list that includes Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers, 2005 winner Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns and Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks -- he will be the first to have carried the tag journeyman. Since Boston drafted Billups out of Colorado No. 3 in the 1997 draft, he has had six addresses (Boston, Toronto, Denver, Orlando, Minnesota and Detroit) and the voices of eight different coaches booming down his auditory canals. In Boston he was told he wasn't as good as an aging Kenny Anderson; in Denver he was told he wasn't as good as a volatile Nick Van Exel; in Orlando he was told, well, nothing, and was allowed to pack his bags as a free agent after the 1999-2000 season; in Minnesota he was told he wasn't as good as an injured Terrell Brandon and was again told that he was free to move on.
http://rhein-zeitung.de/on/02/02/20/sport/news/nba.jpg
"Can you imagine how I felt?" says Billups. "I came in as the third pick, and three years later I'm a player who was of no value to anybody. That was a dark time."
And now there is only light. As he tells his story of redemption, while sitting in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia, Billups marvels at the trajectory of his career. Rarely do journeymen find a happy home -- that's why they're known as journeymen -- and never do they become MVPs. Nash, drafted by Phoenix, traded to the Dallas Mavericks and re-signed by the Suns as a free agent, is an anomaly among the award's recipients, having won the honor with his third team. Since 1976 four others (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Lakers, Moses Malone of the Houston Rockets, Charles Barkley of the Suns and Shaquille O'Neal of the Lakers) were named MVP while with their second team, and, with the exception of Malone, they were there because they had wanted to be moved.
http://www.rubyan.com/politics/archives/pistons%20cartoon.gif
Even when he was named MVP of the Finals after Detroit's 2004 championship, Billups was considered a bit of a post-season fluke; during the regular-season MVP voting that year, he had received no votes. "It's been a crazy ride," says the 29-year-old Billups, "but it's made me grow up fast -- and appreciate where I'm at now."
Where he's at now is in rarefied air. From the start of the season the Pistons, 41-9 through Sunday, have been so much better than the rest of the league that their main competition has been the history books. Even if they fall short of joining the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls as the only teams to win 70 games, Detroit has provided the NBA with something not seen since the 1985-86 Celtics: a starting five that is more often spoken of in collective terms rather than individual ones. (To wit: More than one Eastern Conference coach voted for all five Detroit starters to play in this weekend's All-Star Game.) "They're like five fingers of one hand doubled up in a fist," says Magic vice president Pat Williams. "They're perfect in age, experience, talent and attitude. We haven't seen that in a long time."
http://www.nba.com/media/pistons/DETCLE_060227_007.jpg
A major factor working against Billups's MVP candidacy is the balance of Detroit's starting unit, which includes Hamilton at shooting guard (nonstop energy and a team-high 21.7 points per game at week's end), Rasheed Wallace at power forward (post moves and three-point scoring), Tayshaun Prince at small forward (defense and ball handling) and Ben Wallace at center (shot blocking and rebounding). Billups serves as the quarterback, distributing the ball well (8.5 per game, third in the league) and wisely (a 3.73 assist-to-turnover ratio) while delivering clutch shots from the field (42.3%) and the free throw line (91.1%). All but Prince made this year's All-Star team, which ironically takes some of the shine off Billups's star. "Their team is so good," says Miami Heat point guard Gary Payton, "all five could be MVP." San Antonio Spurs guard Brent Barry concurs. "They play such a great team brand of basketball that their guys don't seem to stand out individually." Even Los Angeles Clippers point Sam Cassell, who bestows upon Billups the ultimate Sammy-love ("He reminds me of myself"), doubts Billups can win it. "An individual award for a guy on that team? I don't see it."
http://www.nba.com/media/pistons/DETLAC_051211_007.jpg
Others do, their viewpoint best expressed by another point guard having an All-Star season. "Steve Nash was MVP last year because he was the best player on the team that had the best record," says the Spurs' Tony Parker. "Well, the Pistons have the best record now. Obviously, it's the whole starting five playing well, but Chauncey is the mastermind behind all that and the one who takes the big shots in the fourth quarter."
MVP talk, however, makes winning teams nervous. The Nash-led Suns have been one of the NBA's most cohesive teams, but even they had rifts last year when the attention given Nash chafed at mainstays Amaré Stoudemire and Shawn Marion. Bring up MVP with these Pistons, and you'll get some variation of the stock answers supplied by Hamilton ("Man, we don't pay attention to any of that stuff") and Billups ("It's a team thing with us"). It remains for one of the old guard, erstwhile Bad Boy Bill Laimbeer, now a Pistons color analyst, to tell it like it is. "They all have their roles, they're all important and, really, Rasheed might be the best talent," says Laimbeer, "but Chauncey is the best player."
http://www.covers.com/images/2005/180x180/laimbeer_bill050719.jpghttp://images.usatoday.com/sports/nba/_photos/2004-06-02-rasheed-wallace-.jpg
These Pistons have both an us-against-the-world attitude and a we-can-be-nasty toughness that recalls the Bad Boy teams that won back-to-back titles in 1989 and '90. They are distant, if not abrasive (well, 'Sheed can be), an insular group that resists deconstructing itself around outsiders. If there is an ambassador on the team, it is Billups, who plays a similar role to the one that guard Joe Dumars did for the Bad Boys: a player able to bare-knuckle it on the court yet come across as warm off it, a mixture of street cred and backroom diplomacy. "I'm part of hip-hop nation to the core, but I know how to treat people and I'm respectful," says Billups. "I know how to walk between those worlds."
http://img311.imageshack.us/img311/7444/nbillups4uz.jpg
In basketball parlance there's a word for that kind of talent: tweener, a label Billups has carried since his earliest hoops-playing days. Being a tweener wasn't a problem back in his native Denver, where labels like playground legend and high school star were also bestowed upon him. Bobby Wilkerson, who played on Indiana's undefeated 1976 NCAA-champion team and with the Denver Nuggets, gave Billups the nickname Smooth when he coached him as a grade school player at Skyland Recreation Center in the northeast section of town. A four-time state player of the year at George Washington High, Billups loved the moniker, in part because he never has been completely comfortable as a Chauncey ("It was a mother thing") and, on a few occasions, he says he was compelled to demonstrate that boys bearing the name of an English butler also know something about bare knuckles.
http://www.colorado.edu/insidecu/archives/2005/3-8/photos/billups.jpg
Nor was being a tweener a problem at Colorado, where he was a second-team All-America after his sophomore season, his final one in Boulder. Nor did it seem to be an issue when only Tim Duncan and Keith Van Horn got picked ahead of him in the draft. Billups couldn't have been happier with his destination: Boston, which had just handed the coaching and operational reins to Rick Pitino, whose aggressive, uptempo style was perfect for Billups. Or so the rookie thought.
Then, suddenly, tweener became a dirty word. In the eyes of Pitino, Billups was twice cursed, a tweener in both skill set (he didn't have the pass-first mentality to be a point guard) and size (though blessed with scoring ability, he didn't have the height to get off his shot as a two). Less than two thirds of the way into his rookie season he was traded to Toronto for Anderson, a more traditional slick-ball-handling, direct-the-offense point guard. "You can call tweeners combo guards," says Saunders, "but it comes down to the same thing. The way people see it, combo guards rarely become great players." One could argue that two of the best players in league history, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West, were combo guards, but the former is still recognized as a point and the latter as a shooting guard. Ditto for the versatile Pistons backcourt of Dumars and Isiah Thomas; they could switch positions seamlessly, but Joe D was still primarily the shooter and Zeke the QB.
http://www.nba.com/media/pistons/daly_bad_boys_020115.jpg
Billups couldn't get traction at either position. "People wanted him to be a point guard before he was ready," says Nash. "It takes time. He could always play." Van Exel is more direct: "When Chauncey was in Denver, he would play point guard for about two minutes, and then, for whatever reason, for the other minutes he was out there. He was out of control a little bit."
It's doubtful that any self-respecting point guard would appreciate a Basketball 101 lesson from Van Exel, but Billups doesn't disagree with the assessment. Scoring, he explains, became his means of survival. "What I latched onto was that they gotta know they can count on me to score," he says. "Maybe I overtried, because it turned out to be a disadvantage. It took me a while to understand that a shoot-first point guard can mess up a team's rhythm. I can understand why some teams wanted to get rid of me."
http://brentbarbour.com/nuggets/billups.jpg
There was one team, though, that wanted him. Badly, in fact. "Eight times over two years I called [Minnesota general manager] Kevin McHale trying to get Chauncey," says Dumars, the Pistons' G.M. since 2000. "What other people saw as a liability I saw as an asset. Oh, he's not strictly a point guard and not strictly a shooting guard? I said, 'Wow. I want that problem.'" Dumars saw something in Billups that reminded him of himself. "Heck," says Dumars, "the guy was wearing my number, too." (Billups had to take jersey number 1 when he got to Detroit since Dumars's 4 is retired.)
McHale refused to trade Billups, but neither he nor Saunders, Minnesota's coach at the time, would start him over Brandon, who was making $10 million per. Billups didn't want to hang around as a backup and in July 2002 signed Dumars's six-year, $33.7 million free-agent offer, which turned out to be a bargain for the Pistons. Though almost everyone forgets it now, the sudden upturn in Billups's career began in his first season in Detroit, under coach Rick Carlisle. Now coach of the Indiana Pacers, Carlisle is to control offense what Bergman is to angst. "Rick called all the plays," says Billups. "But he came to trust me to quarterback his offense. That was huge. It was under Rick that I stopped looking over my shoulder."
http://www.basket-plus.com/images/NBA/Dumars_trofej.jpg
Although Carlisle took Detroit to the Eastern finals in 2003, Dumars replaced him with Larry Brown, and Billups's ascent continued. Revisionist history about the Larry Era is already rampant -- the Pistons hated playing for him; Larry drove Chauncey crazy from Day One -- but Billups owes Brown a giant debt. Wake Billups up in the middle of the night, dose him with sodium pentothol, and the story will not change. "Larry made me believe that I could have 10 assists, a couple of steals and only nine points and still dominate the game," says Billups. "Nobody ever made that point to me that strongly. He made me a more cerebral player and a better all-around player."
Billups laughs. "Now, Larry, man, he is an animal. There were nights when I'd come home from a road trip, wake up my wife and say, 'Man, you can't believe what he got on me for tonight.' But don't ever think I didn't learn from the man."
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/051202/051202_knicks_hmed_6p.hmedium.jpg
Given their time together in Minnesota, one might have expected awkwardness between Billups and Saunders. There has been none. Saunders's offense has been perfect for Billups, who makes a lot of the play calls. (Both say they've reached the point where they would make the same call anyway.) Billups is allowed to -- in fact, supposed to -- push the ball if a fast-break opportunity presents itself, and he has the green light on threes, which he was shooting at a 43.2% through Sunday.
What is overlooked, though, is what Billups did for Saunders. The coach was the newcomer who, after 10 seasons in Minnesota and a 17-30 playoff record, had to show he belonged on a team that had just won a championship. "You have a point guard doing what Chauncey is doing," says Portland Trail Blazers coach Nate McMillan, "well, he's made it comfortable for Flip, more than the other way around."
Billups agrees that comfortable is a good word to describe his state of mind right now. He's comfortable on the court, where he sometimes plays with a kind of half-smile soldered on his face, as if he's in on a joke that nobody else knows. He's comfortable in the locker room, whether kidding Rasheed about his new "little-boy haircut" or making sure that the credit gets spread around. He's comfortable at home, where he and his wife, Piper, are expecting their third child in July, a prospect that has made him hesitant about joining the U.S. Olympic team (for which he is a virtual lock) this summer.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/ap/dtp10105161814.hmedium.jpg
"One thing a player can never do is lose his confidence," says Billups. "But I will admit there were times when I thought, Maybe I wasn't meant to be a great NBA player. So to end up here, at a place where there is no ego, no care about who's getting the most money or making the most commercials or taking the most shots, man, that is like the end of a perfect dream."
He laughs. "But don't think I want to go through the whole thing again."
Issue date: February 20, 2006