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More than halfway into season, SVG about to finally face decisions with a healthy roster

AUBURN HILLS – Stan Van Gundy figures to have something this week – perhaps as soon as Monday – that he hasn’t had all season: everybody.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope went through all of Sunday’s practice after missing the past four games with a left shoulder injury and there’s a shot he plays against Sacramento on Monday night. If not, the Pistons could hold him out and give him four more days to recuperate before their next game, Saturday at Miami.

Whenever he comes back – barring any injuries between now and then – the Pistons will have 15 healthy players for the first time this season.

It will force decisions upon Van Gundy that he’ll relish – deciding which worthy players get left out of the rotation. With Reggie Bullock recently back from knee surgery and Stanley Johnson playing much more like the player the Pistons anticipated after a rocky first few months, minutes will become precious commodities.

Van Gundy’s comfort level with numbers in the rotation settles at nine. Any more than that, he feels minutes get distributed too thinly to either allow his best players the time team success demands or fringe players enough opportunity to get into a groove.

Yet he hopes to find a way to play both Johnson and Bullock enough that they can thrive in the difficult position of contributing in what figures to be limited opportunity. It could be, Van Gundy said, that Bullock plays one night and Johnson the next.

“Even if you did try to play 10 every night, then the minutes would be really limited. So we’ll just have to see how it goes,” Van Gundy said Sunday. “I think now we’ve established who our 10 are going to be. But that does affect guys’ minutes, so I’ll have to see as I go. I haven’t had that all year. I don’t think we’ve had one game with all 10 of those guys.”

Bullock is Van Gundy’s best 3-point shooter and Johnson provides unique versatility at both ends of the court. But every minute Johnson spends at forward takes away from the 32 minutes apiece Van Gundy can allocate to Marcus Morris, Tobias Harris and Jon Leuer at the two forward positions. And every minute he spends at shooting guard cuts into the limited minutes for anybody playing behind Caldwell-Pope.

Too many options are always a better scenario for Van Gundy than too few, though, and the fact the Pistons beat the Lakers and Hawks to start their current three-game winning streak without both Leuer and Caldwell-Pope have put them right back in solid shape for a playoff run. They came out of Saturday’s win over Washington on Morris’ buzzer-beating tip one game out of the eighth spot with more scheduling factors in their favor than many of the teams immediately ahead of them.

“I kept saying to our players, the numbers, the standings are fine,” Van Gundy said. “But we have to play better. If we play better, we’ll certainly be OK. But you have to play better. If we play better, the standings set up so that we’re OK.”

Van Gundy said if Caldwell-Pope comes out of Sunday’s practice without residual issues and feels OK at Monday’s shootaround, he’ll start against Sacramento. Whether Leuer goes back in the starting lineup depends, in part, on how Sacramento lines up. If the Kings go big with DeMarcus Cousins at power forward next to Kosta Koufos, he’ll likely go with Leuer as the starter. If the Kings put Cousins at center with Anthony Tolliver at power forward, Van Gundy indicated he’d be inclined to keep Tobias Harris as the starter at power forward.

It took more than half the season to get there, but he’s finally grappling with the pleasant decisions a fully healthy roster dictates.