PHILADELPHIA – When Darrun Hilliard checked his phone after shootaround this morning, he had a message from his college coach, Villanova’s Jay Wright. At least a few of his Wildcats teammates will be at tonight’s Pistons game against the 76ers. His high school coach is taking the Bethlehem varsity about an hour south to be at the Wells Fargo Center.
They might even get to see him play.
Stan Van Gundy didn’t go into Wednesday’s game with Memphis intent on using Hilliard as the 10th man in the rotation. He’s been going with a nine-man group almost exclusively since early-season bench troubles led to a reordering of his rotation, using Stanley Johnson as the backup to both Marcus Morris and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
But necessity forced his hand against the Grizzlies.
“There was a long time between timeouts so we didn’t get (Caldwell-Pope) out until like a minute and a half to go in the quarter and then Marcus finished the quarter,” Van Gundy said. “We couldn’t go back with Pope that quickly, so we put Darrun in the game and then he played well and that group played pretty well, so we left them in the game. He did a good job.”
It might not happen that way again tonight, of course, but Van Gundy says he has full faith in Hilliard because his play in practice has warranted exactly that.
“He’s playing well and he’s playing with confidence,” he said.
Hilliard has proven adept at finding shots, part of what the Pistons found appealing about him, but making them has been another matter. He took only one in his 6:51 of playing time against the Grizzlies and he didn’t launch that one until six minutes into it, cleaning nailing a wing 3-pointer. But he’d helped the offense’s ball movement prior to that and showed off another trait the Pistons found appealing – the ability to make plays off the dribble, especially when he penetrated and hit Aron Baynes for an easy short jump shot.
“Just learning the game more, how to pace it and what Coach expects from me,” Hilliard said. “It’s just a learning process. He kind of wants me to get more into my defense instead of just hunting for shots – same thing as coach Wright. I just wanted to get my defense going and get my teammates involved before I went out and shot.”
When Hilliard got his first chance at rotation minutes last month at Milwaukee, it was planned. Van Gundy told him the morning of the game he’d be playing. There was no such warning before his Memphis appearance. But two things enabled him to catch Van Gundy’s eye: diligent preparation and knocking off a lot of rust in his D-League debut four days earlier.
“I didn’t really expect it, but I was ready. I was prepared. I prepare like I’m a starter – go into every game ready to play,” he said. “If he calls my name, I’m ready to go. He called me and I think I did a pretty good job out there. I took care of the ball and got on the board and made some decent passes and got some stops on defense to help the team.”
Hilliard helped the Grand Rapids Drive to a 29-point win over the weekend, scoring 31 points, hitting 12 of 22 shots and 6 of 8 free throws.
“The D-League really helped me with scratching that itch to play,” Hilliard said. “I wasn’t used to playing and I had a lot of steam to let off – not out of frustration, just to go play and compete. You play this game, you’re a competitor. You want to compete at all times and I think when I went down there, I was able to compete and I think I played pretty well.”
Maybe he’ll get to show the old crowd some of what they’ve seen him do over the years tonight, assuming he can wrest all the necessary tickets he needs from another homecoming teammate, Marcus Morris.
“He’s from Philly. I’m really outside of Philly. He’s got a lot of people coming,” Hilliard grinned. “We’ll work it out when that time comes.”