(Editor’s note: Pistons.com concludes a five-part series examining the top five storylines of training camp, which gets under way later this month. Today: A smorgasbord of lesser issues for Stan Van Gundy to address.)

Stan Van Gundy had more daunting challenges in his first two seasons as Pistons coach than he’ll face when he gathers the Pistons for training camp in a little more than two weeks. But nothing he decided in his first camp would have transformed the 29-win bunch he inherited into an instant playoff contender.

So the relatively fewer questions facing him today are ones with greater consequences awaiting the franchise. We’ve tackled the larger ones already: whether he’ll tinker with his starting lineup to achieve better balance between units; how much greater a role Stanley Johnson is ready to assume in his second season; the decision to expand the rotation past nine and the battle Darrun Hilliard and Reggie Bullock figure to wage for that potential 10th spot; and how much improved Andre Drummond returns as a foul shooter and what the options are in the alternative.

Beyond that, there will be a handful of relatively lesser decisions awaiting Van Gundy, his coaches and front-office staff as they prepare the Pistons to top last season’s 44-win campaign and playoff appearance.

Here are four of them:

The choice of a third point guard – Lorenzo Brown enters camp as the favorite to land the No. 3 point guard position based on his familiarity with the organization, his outstanding Summer League and his size. But Ray McCallum Jr. is an intriguing challenger. Brown spent the bulk of the last two seasons playing for the Pistons’ Grand Rapids D-League affiliate around 10-day deals with Minnesota, Philadelphia and Phoenix. But he ended the season with two 10-day stints with the Pistons and then was re-signed for the playoffs – plus Summer League and training camp – as insurance for a late-season minor abdominal injury suffered by Reggie Jackson. He was the Pistons’ most consistent Summer League player and among the best in Orlando, giving him a head start in the race to win the final roster spot. McCallum, 25, played prep basketball at Detroit Country Day and spent three seasons playing for his father – a colleague of Van Gundy’s at Wisconsin when both served as assistants to Stu Jackson in the early ’90s – at Detroit Mercy before skipping his senior season to come to the NBA in 2013 when he was drafted 36th overall by Sacramento. Brown, 26, was part of the same draft class, going 16 spots lower to Minnesota, after also skipping his senior season at North Carolina State. McCallum has 154 NBA games under his belt, Brown 63. McCallum is the more naturally gifted scorer and shows promise as a 3-point threat, where Brown is a .152 shooter in his limited NBA exposure. But with the Pistons adding the 6-foot-0 Ish Smith as their backup point guard, Brown’s greater size – he’s 6-foot-5, McCallum’s 6-foot-3 – on top of his terrific Summer League puts him at 3A to McCallum’s 3B going into camp. They might not get big sample sizes to prove themselves in the six preseason games – two fewer than most past preseasons – so this battle will be largely waged in training camp practices.

Meshing Ish Smith & Jon Leuer with the bench unit – Let’s assume Van Gundy keeps his starting lineup intact based on the consistent leads it built last season –both before and after the February trade-deadline deal that added Tobias Harris. Whether he expands the rotation beyond nine or not, it figures that the two key free-agent additions, Smith and Leuer, are going to spend a lot of time in training camp practices and preseason games getting accustomed to playing with the two holdover bench staples, Stanley Johnson and Aron Baynes. Leuer’s shooting and Smith’s pick-and-roll acumen and penchant for pushing the pace are going to be critical elements of the bench’s playbook. Van Gundy got a lot of mileage, starting from about mid-season on last year, out of the Johnson-Baynes pick and roll. Striking a balance between those qualities will be critical to establishing second-unit chemistry. A little more potency and consistency from the bench, coupled with a repeat of the starter’s production, and the Pistons will be that much further ahead of the game this season.

Fostering a new leadership core – This isn’t so much something Van Gundy can “decide” as “nurture,” and even that will be somewhat beyond his reach as the coach. Leadership is largely an organic process conducted mostly in the locker room and on flights and team buses and over dinners on the road as part of the bonding process that’s gone on among teammates since teams were formed. But Van Gundy has carefully selected his roster and cultivated an environment where players are rewarded for actions conducive to team success. He’s had conversations about leadership with his key players. It’s an issue this year because of the void created by the departures of three of the most professional players of the NBA’s current generation in Anthony Tolliver, Joel Anthony and Steve Blake. Van Gundy is sure of the character of his roster and expects that despite its youth – Aron Baynes will be the oldest player at 29, Marcus Morris the oldest starter having just turned 27 – the players have been around long enough and seen enough of the examples set by the likes of Tolliver, Anthony and Blake to stay on course. Yet it still entails the necessity for players who’ve not been in leadership roles previously to assume that responsibility. And Van Gundy will be observing how that process unfolds from the first training camp practice on.