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Camp Qs: Can SVG foster chemistry recent Pistons teams lacked?

(Editor’s note: Pistons.com today concludes a five-part series on the key questions to be addressed in Pistons training camp with a look at whether they can start to develop the chemistry in training camp that eluded them last season.)

If anybody ever asks you to provide an example of chemistry brought to life by a basketball team, tell them to watch the San Antonio Spurs carve up the Miami Heat in last June’s NBA Finals. If you want to bring the example closer to home, show them how the 2004 Pistons played defense en route to stunning the world in beating the heavily favored Los Angeles Lakers in their “five-game” Finals sweep.

Those teams exemplified teamwork, a whole that exceeded the sum of their considerable parts.

Recent Pistons teams groped desperately to achieve even a measure of that type of synergy and repeatedly came up short. Chauncey Billups was brought in a year ago and hoped he could recapture the Goin’ to Work bunch’s magic and galvanize a team more talented than previous editions carry the franchise back to the playoffs.

It never happened. Billups spent almost all of what would become his NBA swan song nursing a degenerative knee, the frustration he felt in not being able to effect change in the locker room he once owned evident in his words and body language. The same mistakes that prevented the Pistons from getting off to a strong start resurfaced throughout the season. The same defensive breakdowns that undermined them in November and December were recurring in February and April.

Optimism is rarely absent when any of the NBA’s 30 teams convene for training camp, but those who count as longtime Pistons now – players like Will Bynum and Jonas Jerebko – say there’s something different this year. “Everybody is buying in,” Jerebko said. Kyle Singler has played for three head coaches in just his two NBA seasons, but he, too, senses a different vibe. “The energy in the gym has just been different since day one,” he said.

Stan Van Gundy requested players come to town in early September this year and he got a 100 percent response. The only player who didn’t spend virtually the entire month leading to the opening of training camp in Auburn Hills had a valid excuse: Andre Drummond was helping Team USA to the FIBA World Cup title. Less than 48 hours after pocketing his gold medal – in spite of a seven-hour layover on the return flight from Spain – he was shoulder to shoulder with his teammates in a group workout at the Pistons practice facility.

There are coaches who know how to tend to the most obscure detail but can’t see the forest for the trees and coaches who are big-picture orchestrators but fall short on the day-to-day minutiae of the job.

There’s no doubt about Van Gundy’s prep work. All who know him say the Pistons will be as well prepared as any team in the league. And the only player on the roster who has played under him, Caron Butler, says Van Gundy absolutely knows how to foster the chemistry all playoff aspirants must display.

“One thing they will understand and know how to do is play the game the right way and play with each other,” Butler said of his new teammates, “The camaraderie will be strong.”

The Pistons will have depth and competition at virtually every position and especially on the perimeter, where there are no stars but more than one player at every position with a history of playing starter’s minutes. That reality, Van Gundy believes, will increase the team’s competitive edge. If that translates into a greater collective urgency to win games, so much the better in the quest to develop the chemistry so essential to winning environments.