The Billups Barometer

Rarely does the game plan for a team playing the Pistons include the word contain. After all, Detroit finished the season 26th in the league in scoring and generally treats offense as a chore to be completed before it is allowed to play defense again. But lo and behold, much of the talk in the Orlando Magic locker room on Sunday before Game 7 of the teams' first-round series was about containing 6'3" point guard Chauncey Billups, who had poured in 40 points in Game 6. Not that it had any effect; despite being chased by 6'8" Tracy McGrady for much of the game, Billups scored 37 on Sunday, leading the Pistons to a 108-93 victory and a second-round matchup against the Philadelphia 76ers.

Most of the attention in the series will rightly be on Allen Iverson, who is going to rack up points, win or lose. But Billups's output, while less consistent, could be more decisive. Call it the Billups Barometer: Against Orlando he averaged 26.8 points on 49.3% shooting in the four wins; in the three losses those numbers were 17.0 and 26.2%. During the regular season no player in the conference was more important to his team as a scorer: The Pistons won 69.2% of the time when he put up 20 or more, the best mark for any player in the East.

That the 26-year-old Billups holds such sway is a bit of a surprise. Detroit is his sixth team in six seasons, and he's so accustomed to living in hotels and apartments that he hasn't even looked into buying a place in Detroit. What's more, he'd never been a starter for an 82-game season before coming to the Pistons—and in this league, if a guy hasn't pulled that off in a half-dozen years, it usually means his backside is indelibly stamped PLACE BENCH HERE.

The rap on Billups was that he was more of a scorer than a playmaker, but the Pistons needed points more than a point guard. This was a team so offensively offensive that it held the Celtics to 66 points in a playoff game last year and lost by two. So last July 1, the first day of negotiations with free agents, Detroit coach Rick Carlisle showed up at Billups's Denver home with a number I jersey because, Carlisle said, Billups was the team's No. 1 priority. Yes, it was hokey, but hokey can be very effective. Billups, who played for the Minnesota Timberwolves last season, signed a six-year, $34 million contract, fulfilling Pistons G.M. Joe Dumars's off-season promise to acquire a bigger point guard to take over for 5'11" Chucky Atkins. In Billups, Dumars saw a player much like himself—a strong defender who could also shoot threes (39.2% this year).

By midseason Billups was comfortable in his role, which teammate Tayshaun Prince calls "a point-slash-scorer." Billups still isn't going to inspire comparisons with Jason Kidd—he averaged a paltry 3.9 assists this season, often makes poorly timed wing and entry passes, and tends to hold the ball too long. But Detroit can live with those shortcomings because he fills its most glaring need: a go-to player. Six times during the regular season Billups hit game-winning or game-saving shots, and he led the league with II game-tying or lead-changing field goals in the last two minutes of regulation and of overtime. "He comes out like he wants to destroy you," says backcourtmate Rip Hamilton. "You can feel his confidence."

The question now for the 76ers is, of course, Can they contain him?