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Leuer likely back, KCP closer; Pistons nearing full strength to mount a charge

Stan Van Gundy bristles at the suggestion that some games are bigger than others and gets especially chapped when he hears games labeled as “winnable.”

“They’re all winnable. All 82 are winnable,” he said after Friday’s practice when asked about if the upcoming stretch of games provided greater opportunity than others, perhaps. “The implication is that some games are easier than others, which really hasn’t held up for us, anyway. We beat the Clippers at home, pretty handily; we get bombed by the 76ers at home.”

But he’ll concede, just a little, that games against the teams immediately ahead of the Pistons in the standings – like Saturday’s 6 p.m. tipoff with Washington – carry slightly more juice.

“It certainly helps,” he said of winning over the Wizards, who at 23-19 are four games – and five spots – ahead of the Pistons in the standings. “But if you beat Washington and then lose to (Sacramento) and then Washington loses to us and wins their next game, you haven’t gained anything. Yeah, at the end of the year you could get to tiebreakers, so those things are a little bit more important, maybe. But, in large part, it’s one of 82 games.”

The four-game gap between the Pistons and Wizards isn’t quite as large as it seems. The Pistons have 24 of their 44 games on the road, while Washington has played 24 of its 42 games at home. And nobody has a bigger home/road disparity than the Wizards, who are 18-6 at Verizon Center but just 5-13 away from home.

Players are usually a little more open about the relative importance of games against teams in their same area code of the standings.

“Every game is a chance to improve your record and especially the way the East is now,” Tobias Harris said. “Everybody besides the top two teams is like a logjam. Every game is a great opportunity, but especially teams in front of you. You want to prove yourselves vs. them.”

There appears a decent chance that Harris will go back to his role of sixth man, in which he’s thrived, against Washington with Jon Leuer going through practice on Friday and feeling encouraged about the status of his right knee. He hurt in early this month before the Pistons left for a five-game road trip, tried to play through it and wound up having fluid in the joint and discomfort from the knee locking up. He’s missed the past five games.

“We’ll see what happens tomorrow, but right now it’s progressing as well as I could’ve hoped,” he said. “It’s just a matter of having confidence when I go out that nothing will flare up or it won’t catch or pinch.”

The news is less optimistic for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who went through one non-contact defensive drill before resuming rehabilitation on his injured left shoulder. Caldwell-Pope suffered the injury Jan. 11 at Golden State and has missed the past three games.

“I would assume if he did no contact today that he’s not going to go tomorrow,” Van Gundy said. “My assumption is getting in that first drill yesterday, he did the non-contact work, that we’re starting to ramp him up, but he’s not ready to go.”

That means another start for Reggie Bullock, who scored 15 points and played well at both ends in Wednesday’s 23-point win over Atlanta, which came in having won 9 of 10, and more minutes for Stanley Johnson, a much improved player over the past few weeks.

With Caldwell-Pope’s return near and Bullock and Johnson’s emergence giving Van Gundy options at the wing he hasn’t had all season, the Pistons are nearing full strength for a critical stretch of the schedule. Just don’t call it that around Stan Van Gundy.