Perry A. Farrell

Detroit Free Press

No. 1 will go up to the rafters at the Palace of Auburn Hills on Wednesday night, when Chauncey Billups gets his Detroit Pistons jersey retired.

Yes, Reggie Jackson still wears the number, but there is only one “Mr. Big Shot.”

“I never thought I’d be in this position,’’ Billups said during a conference call this week.

Former NBA coach P.J. Carlesimo, also on the teleconference, disagreed.

“He said he didn’t realize or think he was that good,’’ Carlesimo said. “He wasn’t that good. He was better than that. He absolutely deserves to be there. And believe me, anybody that sat on the other bench and coached against his teams, they expected that number to be hanging there.’’

Billups said No. 4 had been his number growing up because he liked Joe Dumars, who eventually became his boss with the Pistons.

“At one point, I was a big Pistons fan,’’ the Denver native said Saturday on WMGC-FM (105.1). “I loved watching Joe Dumars play, and Isiah Thomas was my favorite point guard.’’

Billups’ career started with unimpressive stops in Boston, Toronto and Denver. But before he got to Detroit, where he eventually played eight seasons and averaged 16.5 points and 6.2 assists per game, two key figures in Minnesota gave him the work ethic needed to become a leader: Terrell Brandon and Sam Mitchell.

“When I went to Minneapolis, that was my third or fourth team in three or four years,” Billups said. “I was trying to find myself. It was those two guys -- Terrell took me in and showed me how to work, how to work smart, how to study film and how to study my opponent. He was telling me that if Kevin (Garnett) didn’t have 13 points and six rebounds and two or three assists at halftime, it was because I wasn’t playing well.’’

Billups initially didn’t understand Brandon's point.

“I said, ‘That’s KG,’” Billups said. “He said, ‘No, that’s you.’ You have to put him in great positions. You’re the point guard. You have to think for him. He gave me the game. I’m forever indebted to him, and Sam Mitchell, as well. Sam made me beat him to the gym. He told me he should never beat me to the gym, and I shouldn’t leave before him, either. He made that a standard. How to dress. They raised me and, I mean, in two years.’’

Once he got to Detroit, he was mentored by coaches Rick Carlisle and then Larry Brown, who is as tough on point guards as any coach in NBA history.

“I’m thankful and happy that I was mature enough and I was ready for that kind of coaching,” Billups said. “Now, with that being said, it wasn’t always easy. I would come home at night and sit in the mirror and talk to myself. Like, he drove me crazy, man, and I loved it. I loved Larry Brown. We had a lot of good players on that team, but if it’s not for him and the way that he coached and the way he demanded for us to play a certain way ... he held us accountable every single day.

“Not just myself, not just Ben Wallace. Everybody. If it’s not for that, we never become champions. We would’ve became one of those really good teams that didn’t get over the hump.’’

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The trade-deadline addition of Rasheed Wallace in 2004 cemented the deal. Billups said, after one practice with Rasheed, he knew.

“I thought we were good enough to be in the Eastern Conference finals before we got ’Sheed,’’ Billups said. “But I didn’t know if we had enough to get over the top. When it clicked for me was after the trade with ’Sheed, our first practice. None of us had ever played with ’Sheed. Maybe he had crossed paths with Ben in Washington. We’re practicing and scrimmaging, and this dude was so vocal, and he called out every defensive play we had. This was his first practice, and he’s calling out help everywhere. I’m picking up the ball at half court. He’s telling me where the screen was, who was coming, what coverage we were in.

“I’m telling you, when we got in the huddle and walked off of the floor that day, I said there is nobody that can beat us.’’

The Pistons would go on to beat the Los Angeles Lakers for the 2004 NBA title.

A year later, Billups would have his greatest Pistons season, statistically: 18.5 points per game, 8.6 assists, 3.1 rebounds and 43.3% shooting on three-pointers and 89.4% from the free throw line.

But it also was the season of his greatest disappointment: losing to San Antonio in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, who formed the Spurs’ nucleus in 2005, are still together. Billups wishes Dumars and the Pistons would’ve used the same blueprint in Detroit. Instead, he was traded in 2008.

“I think they’ve done a brilliant job of not only keeping those guys at a high level, but just filling other pieces around them,’’ he said of San Antonio. “I really felt, our Detroit teams, that we were in a position to do the same thing. I wasn’t an aging veteran, but I was getting older, and so was Rasheed and Ben. You go and draft (Arron) Afflalo and Amir (Johnson) and (Rodney) Stuckey, and you’re in the same position. You go in and start getting those pieces that are not ready now, but you let your veterans teach them and mentor them and show them the way, then they become guys that are able to take over.’’

Like he did when he got to Detroit.

“Guys trusted me,’’ he said. “For one, they respected me. They trusted whatever decision I felt was right at the time was the right decision, whether it was their number or somebody else’s number. That wasn’t easy to come by. That takes awhile to get guys to trust you.’’

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