LAS VEGAS – The day after the NBA draft, Amir Johnson stuck his head into the office of Pistons vice president John Hammond to say goodbye before he left for the airport and a flight home to Los Angeles. He asked Hammond why the Pistons chose Arron Afflalo over his old high school teammate, Gabe Pruitt, in the first round, and then added this about the Pistons’ other first-round selection: “I don’t know much about that Stuckley kid.”

He’s going to learn a lot more about Rodney Stuckey – no “L” in there, Amir – soon enough. Looks like everybody else will, too.

The No. 15 selection in June’s draft gave a revelatory performance in the Pistons’ second game of the Las Vegas Summer League on Monday, scoring 27 points as Detroit went to 2-0 with an 80-78 win over a Memphis team that, by Summer League standards, was a pretty experienced bunch.

So through two games, there’s still no L in Stuckey’s name and no L on his professional resume, either

It represented a significant step forward from Stuckey’s Saturday debut, when he was solid in a 14-point performance that produced an overtime win over Philadelphia. Stuckey cut his turnovers from six to two and his fouls from eight to three and was the clear standout in a game that featured No. 4 overall pick Mike Conley, 2006 lottery pick Rudy Gay and point guard Kyle Lowery, another ’06 first-rounder.

“Just a matter of getting back in my rhythm,” Stuckey said. “The day before I felt like I did all right, bit I had too many turnovers. I was sluggish. It’s been a long time since I’ve played five-on-five basketball. It’s been one-on-one, two-on-two.”

The Pistons led by as many as 12 points in the first half before Memphis came back to tie with the first basket of the second half, then had to rally from eight points down late in the third quarter. But the Grizzlies did most of their damage when one or more of the handful of players with a clear Pistons future – Stuckey, Afflalo, Jason Maxiell, Cheick Samb and perhaps second-rounder Sammy Mejia – were sitting.

When the Pistons played that group as a unit for most of the fourth quarter, they opened a seven-point lead inside the final minute before Memphis made it close at the end. And Stuckey took over in the fourth quarter of another searing Las Vegas summer afternoon as surely as the man he’s expected to back up, Chauncey Billups, does on winter nights at The Palace.

Stuckey scored 11 fourth-quarter points, including a driving layup to open the quarter and then nine of his team’s 11 points in a stretch that saw the Pistons break from a 68-all tie to a 79-72 lead with 48.6 seconds left when he completed a three-point play. Aside from a pretty step-back jumper from 18 feet, the rest of Stuckey’s points came as a result of getting inside and either drawing the foul or scoring the basket as Pistons coach Terry Porter kept running the same set.

“He was really solid,” Porter said of the 6-foot-5 Stuckey, who was viewed by most draft analysts as more of a shooting guard coming out of Eastern Washington but has shown in Las Vegas that the Pistons’ belief he’ll be able to step in as Billups’ backup at point guard was warranted. “We ran a set and they were trying to go under and we just told him to be aggressive. Turn the corner, or if they go under (the screen), come off and look for your shot.”

“I’ve been aggressive all my life going to the basket,” Stuckey said. “I love contact. I love it when somebody gets in the air and makes contact with me. When I go in there, it’s no fear. You’ve got to go hard and you’ve got to go up strong. When I go in the lane, I’ve got to be aggressive.”

As well as Stuckey played offensively – he was credited with two assists, but several players were shorted assists and blocked shots – it was heartening to the Pistons to see how he handled his defensive assignments, too, which primarily involved checking Conley. The consensus top point guard in last month’s draft, Conley couldn’t get around Stuckey despite being regarded as the fastest and perhaps the quickest player in college basketball last season.

“Conley is obviously very quick and Stuckey did a good job of using his smarts, giving him space when he needed to and crowding him when he had to,” Porter said. “We didn’t get beat much one on one. It was a lot more pick-and-roll situations where they turned the corner and we didn’t get any weakside help.”

Lowery was especially effective at that, leading Memphis with 23 points by knocking down 12 of 13 free throws. Gay added 11 and Rod Benson 10 for Memphis. Jason Maxiell had 14 points and eight rebounds and Cheick Samb 12 and 10 for the Pistons, who also got 11 from Afflalo.

Samb’s performance was encouraging in his bid to force his way onto the roster. Among his nice moments, he had two pretty feeds to Maxiell for dunks – not drawing an assist on either, amazingly enough – drained a 14-foot baseline jumper, threw in a half-hook when he got a rare post touch and went up strong for an offensive rebound, finishing and drawing the foul while officially blocking one shot and contesting several others.

“We talked about giving him the ball and getting him a touch,” Porter said. “Maybe that got him more excited. When a big guy knows he’s going to get touches, he works a little harder. But he did have a better determination about himself than he did the previous game.”

Afflalo again struggled with his perimeter shot, going 4 of 13, but he again flashed strong defensive skills, grabbed five rebounds and nailed a clutch 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter that gave the Pistons a 61-60 lead.

“I told him to stay aggressive and continue to look for his shots,” Porter said. “When your shot’s not falling, you’ve got to try to get to the basket. You can score in other ways to get to the line. That’s huge. Everybody goes through shooting slumps. He’s gong to rebound, he plays hard and he does so many other things in a game that make a huge difference for us.”

But the guy who made the biggest difference this time was his backcourt buddy, that “Stuckley” kid who Amir Johnson and everybody else will know soon enough.