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Detroit Pistons coach Maurice Cheeks takes his team into Portland tonight, where he used to be head coach.

(The Associated Press)

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The

have done nothing to suggest they are anything more, or less, than preseason projections which pegged them as a borderline playoff team, improved yet flawed, possessors of a threatening front-line identity but also enough sticking-and-chugging parts to undo it all against high-level teams.

They're 2-3, won two games as favorites, lost three as underdogs, and haven't proved much either way.

That's about to change.

Coaches aren't much about discussing peer groups in the NBA, for the obvious reasons displayed in the upper-crust upheaval evident in the first two weeks this season. The old any-given-night thing, you know.

But the Portland Trail Blazers host the Pistons tonight, and while it may not have been close a few years ago, they live on pretty much the same level in the NBA caste system these days.

Both are well-removed from championship heydays -- Portland much more so -- and on the playoff fringe, but with young teams and big front lines making them threats in different conferences.

Meantime, crossing conference lines, at least geographically, has been one of the biggest issues plaguing the Pistons the last few years.

The Pistons have lost 42 of their last 43 road games against Western Conference teams, which heightens the importance of this week's four-game western swing, which also includes games at Golden State, Sacramento and the Los Angeles Lakers.

It's a stunning statistic, 42 of 43, even as bad as Detroit has been in recent years.

"That'll change this year," Chauncey Billups said recently.

"That's gonna end," Pistons coach Maurice Cheeks promised on the night of the most recent road loss to a Western Conference team, when the Memphis Grizzlies trailed by five points with less than a minute left in the fourth quarter

on Nov. 1.

Since the last time the Pistons won a road game against a Western Conference team, on March 14, 2012, at Sacramento, all of the following happened in western road games:

--Ben Gordon tied his own NBA record for 3-pointers in a game without missing, 9 of 9, against the Denver Nuggets, and rallied the Pistons from a 25-deficit and into the lead, only to commit a foul for a four-point Denver possession with five seconds left, the final points of a 116-115 loss;

--Lawrence Frank left the Pistons to attend to his ill wife and Brian Hill went 0-4 as acting coach, during which Brandon Knight got posterized by the Los Angeles Clippers' DeAndre Jordan in one game, then rolled his ankle the next game at Utah -- and that was basically the last Pistons fans saw of Frank, Hill and Knight;

--The Pistons' most lopsided loss in the last decade was

, 114-75;

--Pistons owner Tom Gores, who lives in Beverly Hills, Calif., has visited nearby Staples Center three times to see his team play the Lakers or Clippers, one a heart-wrenching overtime loss, and the others 29- and 32-point executions;

--There was JaVale McGee's 40-foot dribble for a dunk without a response by rookie Andre Drummond in Denver, and Jimmer Fredette basically shooting Kim English out of the NBA in Sacramento, and the track meet at Oklahoma City, and the track meet at Houston, and the track meet at ... you get the point.

The Pistons have shown some things already in their 2-3 start.

Greg Monroe is playing like an All-Star, and the part that distinguishes his season thus far isn't the uptick in scoring (17.8) and rebounds (11.8), but blocked shots (1.4, up from 0.7 career) and steals (1.6, up from 1.2 career).

Rodney Stuckey is playing like a Sixth Man of the Year candidate.

Josh Smith stuffs the boxscore in a variety of categories, and Brandon Jennings is a high-level creator, even if Smith's shot selection and Jennings' shot volume can be maddening. They're also the new pieces integrating themselves with each other and their new teammates. It takes time.

Otherwise, the 2-3 start has been fairly predictable. Washington and Boston are teams the Pistons should beat at home, and did. Indiana, Memphis and Oklahoma City are big challenges for anyone, regardless of venue, and all three beat the Pistons.

But Portland tonight is a game in which the Pistons can match big interior vs. big interior and young point guard vs. young point guard, against a team also trying to find its way in the playoff mix.

And while Golden State on Tuesday, in the second game of a back-to-back, is the toughest game of the trip, Friday's game at Sacramento and S

unday's against the rebuilding Lakers aren't so much daunting road challenges against Western Conference teams as winnable games for a team with real playoff aspirations.

The Pistons have endured a lot of bad starts in recent years, usually with one common theme: a miserable western trip.

If they want to start really proving how things have changed, this week is a good time for it.

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