The All-Also Rans: The Pistons had two chances at Randolph Childress

In case you haven’t noticed, although I’m sure you have, this has been a pretty quiet off-season for the Pistons since the draft. So, in the spirit of having something (anything) to write about, I’m going to try to help pass the time by profiling some of my favorite Pistons who never made much impact on the team despite the fact that I irrationally expected great things from them.

Few people can say that they’ve overshadowed Tim Duncan at any point in his career, but Randolph Childress is one of those people.

I’ve always had a weird affection for Wake Forest basketball — Michigan native Kyle Visser developed into a solid big man in that program. But I fell in love with that program watching the team led by Duncan and Childress in 1995.

In the 1995 ACC Tournament Final against a North Carolina team that featured future Pistons Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace, Duncan was his typical dominant self with 16 points and 20 rebounds. But the player on the court who was impossible to take your eyes off of was Childress, who finished with 37 points. Here are some highlights:

I loved the fearlessness he played with and the fact that he looked genuinely pissed off that entire game, I loved the inside-outside connection between Childress and Duncan and, other than the Fab Five and UNLV, that is one of the first college basketball teams that I vividly remember watching.

So when the 1995 NBA Draft rolled around and the Pistons called his name with the 19th overall pick, I was momentarily excited — until it was announced that they were trading him to Portland as part of a deal for Otis Thorpe. Despite the obvious need Thorpe filled and the fact that the Pistons also traded the awful Bill Curley in that deal, I was a little disappointed I wouldn’t get to watch Childress as a Piston.

As fate would have it, though, Childress would eventually be a Piston. Portland traded him, along with Aaron McKie and Reggie Jordan, to the Pistons in January of 1997 for Stacey Augmon. That reunion, however, last just barely longer than when he was momentarily a Piston on draft night.

Childress reportedly, like so many others, didn’t get along well with then-Blazers coach P.J. Carlesimo. He also had a knee injury that severely limited him his rookie season. He played 10 minutes in his first game as a Piston, scoring eight points on 3-for-6 shooting in a win over Philadelphia, but he’d make just one more shot as a Piston in three more games that season. The team eventually released him and Childress didn’t play another NBA game, although he did go on to a long and successful career in foreign leagues.

I was convinced that Childress’ mix of scoring and playmaking ability along with his intense demeanor would make him a fantastic Pistons. Although he made no impact on the court, he did play a minor role in shaping the recent history of the organization — he was part of a trade that brought in McKie, who was used to trade for Stackhouse, who was used to trade for Rip Hamilton and he was part of the trade that brought Thorpe, who led to Darko Milicic, who led to Rodney Stuckey.

I’ve never been shy about my unabashed fandom of Will Bynum, but Childress will always be my favorite former ACC-turned-Piston point guard.

Previously

• Gerald Glass and Isiah Thomas will always have one iconic connection
• The Pistons once employed two of ‘B-Ball’s Best Kept Secrets’ at the same time
• The Pistons and hometown reunions

The All-Also Rans: The Pistons and hometown reunions

In case you haven’t noticed, although I’m sure you have, this has been a pretty quiet off-season for the Pistons since the draft. So, in the spirit of having something (anything) to write about, I’m going to spend the next two weeks profiling some of my favorite Pistons who never made much impact on the team despite the fact that I irrationally expected great things from them.

In one of the essays I wrote in my Pistons book (Hey, it’s been a while since I’ve plugged that … you can buy it either as a printed or Kindle book through Amazon here) last year, I wrote a bit about Mateen Cleaves and the fascination the team has always seemed to have with in-state players:

Drafting Cleaves, a point guard who famously played in the national title game on a badly sprained ankle, to his hometown team, a team in need of a savior, a team whose most famous player ever just happened to be a point guard who had a well-known performance while playing on a badly sprained ankle, was not the best move for either party.

The Pistons have strangely had a weird fascination from just before the teal era on with acquiring players who have ties to Michigan from their amateur days. Occasionally, that’s worked out OK — Romulus native Terry Mills had a very good career with the Pistons, Detroit native Chris Webber made decent contributions as a rental player one season during their most recent run as title contenders, Saginaw’s Darvin Ham was a Larry Brown favorite on a title team and Rochester’s Walker Russell Jr. was a nice story last season, finally getting to make his NBA debut in his hometown.

But there’s also a long list of players from Michigan the Pistons have brought in who have not had great success playing for their hometown team — Flint’s Cleaves was traded after one season, Detroit native Negele Knight was soon out of the league after a brief signing by the Pistons and draft pick Ricky Paulding, also a Detroit native, never made the roster.

There are plenty of reasons to route against hometown team reunions. Sure, when they work, they’re incredibly fun, but they also make players much more susceptible to hangers on or distractions that might not be as present if playing in another location. Still though, I’m a sucker for them, and three of my favorite hometown reunions happened in the 1990s.

Grant Long, a standout at Romulus and Eastern Michigan, was a natural fit as a Piston. His uncle, John Long, was a star with the team in the 1980s and his cousin, Mills, had become a key player on the team by the time the Pistons traded for Long and Stacey Augmon in the 1996 offseason, giving up a collection of draft picks that never amounted to much.

Long was seemingly the kind of tough, blue-collar frontcourt player the Pistons lacked, averaging 13.1 points and 9.6 rebounds per game in his final season with the Hawks. With the Pistons, however, his numbers and minutes plummeted. He went from 36 minutes per game in his final season as a Hawk to 17 per game in his first as a Piston. Then, in his second season with the Pistons, he had one of the worst shooting seasons of his career. He left as a free agent and re-signed with the Hawks after that season. I was sure a hard-working, goggle-wearing lunch pail type of player like Long would succeed in Detroit, but for whatever reason, both he and Augmon struggled to fit after that trade.

Those same qualities are why Grand Rapids native and Michigan great Loy Vaught should’ve been destined for success as a Piston. Vaught helped Michigan win a national title, then went on to an unappreciated career with the L.A. Clippers as a perennially underrated player because, well, he played for the Clippers. He averaged double-doubles in back-to-back seasons in 1996 and 1997.

Cruelly, though, Vaught suffered a knee injury just before he was set to hit free agency and escape Clipperdom. He never got the opportunity to show that he was an underrated player post-Clippers. He signed with the Pistons in 1999 and played parts of two seasons with the team, but was never close to the same type of player he’d been pre-injury.

Mark Macon, a Saginaw native and Temple great, came to the Pistons as a bit of a reclamation project. The Nuggets traded him to the Pistons for Alvin Robertson midway through Macon’s second season, strange considering the Nuggets had just used a lottery pick on him and Robertson was being shipped out of Detroit for fighting then-Director of Player Personnel Billy McKinney. Incidentally, I loved this quote from Robertson on that incident:

“It was a split second when I lost my cool,” Robertson said of the fight. “And that split second is going to get me more media attention than I have had for the last two years, so I certainly regret the incident.”

Macon came into the league well-schooled defensively, obviously, playing for John Chaney at Temple. He was also a big combo guard, something that the Pistons have always had an affection for. His offense — he was a big-time scorer at Temple — never really translated to the NBA, though. It’s a shame too, because the former Mr. Basketball winner really was an elite, tough high school and college player.

As someone who runs a site partially dedicated to celebrating the basketball legacy in the state of Michigan, I’m obviously a huge fan of in-state players. But I always worry a bit when they join my favorite pro team, just because it puts so much unnecessary, behind-the-scenes pressure on them that might not otherwise be there, although it’s obviously cool to see up-close what guys who starred here in high school or college grow into as pros too.

Previously

• Gerald Glass and Isiah Thomas will always have one iconic connection
• The Pistons once employed two of ‘B-Ball’s Best Kept Secrets’ at the same time

The All-Also Rans: The Pistons once employed two of ‘B-Ball’s Best Kept Secrets’ at the same time

In case you haven’t noticed, although I’m sure you have, this has been a pretty quiet off-season for the Pistons since the draft. So, in the spirit of having something (anything) to write about, I’m going to spend the next two weeks profiling some of my favorite Pistons who never made much impact on the team despite the fact that I irrationally expected great things from them.

Athletes trying to become musicians has always been a running punchline. But ‘B-Ball’s Best Kept Secret‘ was no joke. That album was one of the many CDs I got for a penny from BMG Music in the 1990s. The reason I had to have it: Ced Ceballos can rap. He had the above video with Warren G and it actually got played on MTV Jams fairly regularly for a little while.

There wasn’t much else particularly memorable about the album, other than the fact that somehow a bunch of random NBA players decided to put out a hip-hop album together which is memorable in itself. But I was pretty excited when Ceballos and another player featured on that CD, Dana Barros, became Pistons late in their careers.

Ceballos played 13 games for the Pistons during the 2000-01 season, which turned out to be his last in the league. He didn’t have much left by the time he was a Pistons, but he was always one of my favorite underrated players in the league. He had the famous blindfold dunk to win the 1992 NBA Slam Dunk Contest, he was an All-Star during the 1994-95 season with a fun pre-Kobe/Shaq Lakers team that featured Nick Van Exel, Vlade Divac, Elden Campbell, Eddie Jones, George Lynch, Anthony ‘Pig’ Miller, Lloyd ‘Sweet Pea’ Daniels, Sedale Threat, Anthony Peeler and, amazingly, Kurt Rambis, who played in 26 games that season.

Ceballos was great around the basket and one of the better players in the league at moving without the ball. He never quite replicated the production he had that season, but he was a legitimate rotation scorer who didn’t need many plays run for him to get baskets throughout his career. He had one great performance for the Pistons, scoring 19 points off the bench in a loss to Indiana, and was eventually traded to the Miami Heat for a second round pick.

He didn’t make much impact for the Pistons, but he, along with John Wallace and Eric Murdock, at the very least was part of a trade that rid the team of Christian Laettner, so that’s a positive contribution in my book. And on top of that, the Pistons were eventually able to use Wallace in a trade that got them Clifford Robinson.

Barros lasted a bit longer with the Pistons, playing 89 games over two seasons after the team acquired him from Dallas for Loy Vaught. Although Barros’ rapping didn’t immediately stick out to me like Ceballos’ did, Barros, like Ceballos, was also a part of a really fun 1990s team, the Seattle Supersonics. I always liked Barros, a smallish sharpshooting point guard, on those teams, but stuck behind point guards Gary Payton and Nate McMillan, opportunities were limited for him in Seattle.

Barros was eventually traded to the Philadelphia 76ers, where he also made the 1994-95 All-Star Team, also his only appearance in the game. He signed with the Boston Celtics as a free agent, didn’t fully live up to expectations, and eventually found himself on a rebuilding Pistons team late in his career.

He had a good season off the bench for the Pistons in 2000-01, averaging 8.0 points per game while shooting 42 percent from 3-point range. The following season, started 19 games for an eventual playoff team, although his shooting dipped to 34 percent from three and he was eventually supplanted by Chucky Atkins as the regular starter.

I’ve met a lot of NBA fans over the years who remember that album for all kinds of nostalgic reasons. And looking back on it, it was pretty terrible music, as most athlete/actor attempts at becoming musicians inevitably are. But to a teenager obsessed with the NBA, it was great, and it’s pretty unique that the Pistons have three connections (the late Malik Sealy, a Piston for one season in 1997-98 was also featured on it) to such a random part of the 1990s NBA.

Previously

• The All-Also Rans: Gerald Glass

The All-Also Rans: Gerald Glass and Isiah Thomas will always have one iconic connection

In case you haven’t noticed, although I’m sure you have, this has been a pretty quiet off-season for the Pistons since the draft. So, in the spirit of having something (anything) to write about, I’m going to spend the next two weeks profiling some of my favorite Pistons who never made much impact on the team despite the fact that I irrationally expected great things from them.

Gerald Glass joined the Pistons when the Bad Boys were at the end of their run, the roster was quickly aging and the team was trying to retool its supporting cast around the few mainstays — Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman and Bill Laimbeer — who remained. In November 1992, fresh off a first round playoff loss to the New York Knicks that featured a few new ill-fitting veterans — Brad Sellers, Orlando Woolridge and Darrell Walker — surrounding  the core guys, the team seemed to realize it needed to infuse some young, rotation-caliber talent. Acquiring Gerald Glass from the Minnesota Timberwolves was part of that strategy.

The Pistons sent Sellers, who was a disappointment in his lone season as a Piston, and point guard Lance Blanks, a former late first round pick of the team who fell just a bit short of being the heir apparent to Thomas as the PG of the future, to the Timberwolves for Glass and Mark Randall, both former first round picks.

Randall’s stats didn’t quite measure up to his phenomenal mullet, so I didn’t exactly get excited that he would be a Piston. But Glass, on the other hand, was an occasionally dynamic wing. A young, athletic, 6-foot-5 slasher, he was a different type of guard than anyone the Pistons had on the roster at the time, and it seemed like he’d definitely find a role.

In just two seasons at Ole Miss, he established himself as one of the top scorers in that school’s history and was eventually named to the school’s All-Century Team. When the Pistons traded for him, Glass was coming off a second season in the NBA where he averaged 11.5 points per game on 44 percent shooting in just 24 minutes per game for the T-Wolves. In a three-game stretch in December of his rookie season, Glass scored 27, 24 and 32 points off the bench in consecutive games for Minnesota. He wasn’t much of a shooter (24 percent from three for his career) or a free throw shooter (64 percent for his career), but he’d certainly shown enough promise when the Pistons acquired him to get excited. Plus, Gerald Glass has to be one of the all-time great NBA names.

Glass’s Pistons tenure had its moments, too. He had 16 points and 6 rebounds off the bench in his second game as a Piston. He scored 20 in a start in place of Joe Dumars in his fifth game. He averaged 16.3 points per game on 61 percent shooting in a three-game stretch in January. Overall, he averaged 5.3 points and 2.5 rebounds in just 13.9 minutes per game as a Piston and probably had more sustained stretches of minimal contributions as the norm moreso than the bright spots I pointed out above. The Pistons didn’t re-sign Glass after the season. He went on to play overseas for a couple of seasons, had another brief NBA audition with New Jersey and Charlotte during the 1995-96 season and then finished his career overseas.

But, as that video clip above attests, he was part of an iconic Isiah Thomas play, one of the last Isiah made in his final injury-plagued seasons as a Piston. Truth be told, Glass didn’t do much of the work on that play. Isiah got the bounce through traffic (after getting a fantastic outlet pass from Bill Laimbeer), got it high enough so that it could be finished with a dunk and actually, it looked like the ball would’ve came damn close to going through the basket or at least hitting rim by itself if no one touched it. But credit where it’s due: someone had to put the finishing touches on that play. It wasn’t Glass’s best dunk, but it was a fantastic play and the fact that Thomas was the one orchestrating it makes it an enduring one in Pistons history, one that Glass will always be attached to.