Theo Ratliff: Another John Long, Lindsey Hunter For Pistons?

The guard’s ranks were depleted, and concerns were raised that, despite their under-30 age, Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars might have to log too many minutes during the regular season. Vinnie Johnson was solid as a reserve, but there was an old favorite wasting away on a bench in Indiana that still had that smooth-as-silk “rock set” jumper, as George Blaha used to say.

Enter John Long, University of Detroit alum, and a Piston from the Dickie Vitale days. He, unlike Thomas and Dumars, was over 30 — 32 to be exact — when GM Jack McCloskey called his number once more. Long didn’t play much, but was nice to have on the bench. Coach Chuck Daly no doubt felt some relief when he looked down the row of players and saw Long in his warmups. Eventually, Daly would see Long in the Pistons locker room, drenched with champagne, as the team won its first of two straight world titles.

Fifteen years later, the Pistons — once again nervous about the playing time of their backcourt starters — brought Lindsey Hunter back into the fold after a brief hiatus. Lindsey Hunter — one of the team’s two first round picks in 1993 (Allan Houston was the other) — had been a Piston for seven seasons before moving on to Milwaukee, Los Angeles (where he won a championship as a Laker), and Toronto. Now he was back, at age 33, older, wiser, and still with that ball-hawking defensive gene. And again bringing back an oldtimer worked; the Pistons won another championship in 2004.

Earlier this week, the Pistons followed form, but with a big man.

Theo Ratliff, a teal Piston from back in the day, is a red, white, and blue Piston now. Once upon a time, Ratliff was a youthful bundle of energy, running up and down the court and swatting away enemy shots like a seven-foot tall octopus. He could score a little, and there was no telling how much his raw talent could be developed. Sort of like Jason Maxiell is today. Or Amir Johnson.

Dumars, now the Pistons’ architect, signed Ratliff away from the dreadful Minnesota T-Wolves, just after Theo got in a few games, returning from injury. Ratliff says he’s healthy and ready to go. Of course, who wouldn’t feel energized, going from the league’s worst to among its best?

There’s something that tells me that the Pistons’ history of bringing old players back into the fold prior to a championship run might work yet again, in the matter of Theodore Ratliff.

Ratliff, like most players his age (he’s 34) — especially big men — isn’t the same player he once was. The arms are still as long as ever, but the springs might not be as bouncy. Regardless, Dumars figures Ratliff to get into a playoff game now and again, play a few minutes, disrupt some things, and maybe, just maybe, slow down the likes of Ben Wallace, Josh Howard, and Kevin Garnett. Even for a little while. Every little bit helps in May and June.

Ratliff left the Pistons in 1997, traded away to Philadelphia in the deal that brought Jerry Stackhouse to Detroit. He’s never been a GREAT rebounder, but he’s made up for it at times with his shot-blocking ability, which is spectacular. He’s batted away over 1,700 shots in his NBA career – an average of about 2.6 per game. Even this year, with Minnesota, at age 34, Ratliff blocked 19 shots in 214 minutes — an outstanding ratio.

The Pistons will need to “get big” in crucial times in the playoffs. They always do. Dale Davis had been that guy in the recent past, but it didn’t work. Davis isn’t half the shot blocker that Ratliff is. How will Theo’s swatting skills play out this spring?

History might be on the Pistons’ side.

Now, It’s "Little Isiah" Hunter’s Time To Mentor

It was 1993, and it was Draft Day, and the NBA that June was having its coming-out circus under the big top of the Palace of Auburn Hills.

The smiling cherub Isiah Thomas grabbed the microphone and addressed the crowd after the Pistons made their first of two consecutive #1 picks, at 10th and 11th overall.

“This guy,” Isiah said of Lindsey Hunter out of Jackson State, “is a little Isiah!” The crowd roared. They were eager to embrace another smiling assassin at point guard to take over from Thomas, who would retire at the end of the 1993-94 season.

The next pick down, the Pistons grabbed the shooting guard Allan Houston, out of Tennessee. The two of them — Hunter and Houston (they even rolled off the tongue) — were to do for the Pistons what Thomas and Joe Dumars had done in the late-1980s and early-1990s.

Well, it didn’t exactly work out that way, of course. Thomas retired, the Pistons were awful in H&H’s rookie season, and despite that awfulness resulting in the drafting of Grant Hill in 1994, the Pistons in subsequent seasons were much more like the slapstick teams of the 1960s and ’70s than the Bad Boys who won two championships.

And Hunter eventually was sent to Milwaukee, in 2000. Houston had already fled as a free agent by then. The H&H duo, to put it in cruel terms, had been big flops in Detroit — from the standpoint of team success.

Hunter’s smile may not be as famous as Thomas’s, but his impact on the franchise has been significant

Hunter returned to Detroit in 2003, a world championship with the Lakers on his resume. His homecoming, if you will, came just in time to add another ring to his hand with the ’04 Pistons.

Today, Lindsey Hunter is a soon-to-be 37-year-old who still smiles, still plays tough defense, and who will be a Piston after his playing days are through, thanks to a handshake deal he has with president Dumars and owner Bill Davidson. But this season, he holds the title of player/coach, at an apt time, what with the team adding several young guards to its roster.

It doesn’t seem to have been defined yet, exactly how much Hunter will be a player, and how much he will be a coach. I’m guessing that will be fleshed out as the season progresses. But there’s no ambiguity as to the impact he is sure to have on players like Rodney Stuckey, Arron Afflalo, and Jarvis Hayes.

Here’s no less than Chauncey Billups: “What better guard can you have, especially defensively and with principles and how to play than Lindsey Hunter? He can get out there and not just talk about it but do it, too,” the Pistons’ current assassin at the point said at media day Monday.

Hunter is not a good shooter. Never has been. The fact that he’s logged 14 seasons in the NBA, as a guard who cannot consistently hit a jump shot, is a testament to his defense and leadership. And that’s no backhanded compliment. I would dread to have the ball in Hunter’s hands if a game-winning shot needed to be made, but I’d sure as heck be comfy with him guarding the other team’s guy in that same situation.

When Hunter arrived in 1993 — the Pistons’ “little Isiah” — the basketball team in Detroit was about to slide downhill rapidly. Chuck Daly had been gone for a year, and the replacement, Ron Rothstein (who campaigned for the job shamelessly, a la Dick Vitale in 1978), was a disaster. So the Pistons had Don Chaney as their new coach, an aging roster, and two brand new guards. It wasn’t enough. But Hunter, it is assumed, learned some things by playing with Thomas for one season. And Dumars was still around, and would be throughout Hunter’s first fling in Detroit, as a player. So there was another guard/professor whose brain could be picked.

It’s almost hard to believe, but Lindsey Hunter begins his 15th NBA season next month. All but three of them have been spent as a Piston. He can still enter a game, bring some energy, disrupt some things. He might even hit an occasional three-pointer, bad shooter and all. And there’s that calendar, which he continues to defy, despite it saying that he’ll turn 37 in December.

What better guard can you have, Billups wondered aloud on Monday, than Hunter in this day and age in Pistons history?

Excellent question.