Joe Dumars didn’t need any reminders of how critical Chauncey Billups remains to the Pistons. But if the rest of the league did, his eight-game absence with an injured calf muscle over 18 agonizing days provided them. Eastern Conference coaches voted him to the All-Star team, revealed Thursday night, despite the fact that he’d missed nearly 20 percent of the schedule at the time the votes were due.

The fact that Billups is a pending free agent isn’t stirring up much angst among Piston Nation, nor should it. But it is a tad surprising that there isn’t more hand-wringing going on considering that a year ago at this time, 100 percent of Pistons Nation was 99 percent certain that Ben Wallace would forever wear Pistons blue – and a headband, too.

Maybe it’s because there has been too much else going on this season – the furor over the “zero tolerance” policy early in the season, the new ball, the inconsistent play and sudden vulnerability to mediocre teams and home-court losses, the disciplinary action taken when Rasheed Wallace turned up late to practice, the signing of Chris Webber.

All in all, that’s a normal NBA season – a little injury, a little inconsistency, a little unrest and a little roster tinkering. But so much went so right during last year’s regular season – too right, as it turned out – that there wasn’t anything else to rivet anyone’s attention except winning streaks and Wallace’s contract status.

But it’s worth remembering that Chauncey Billups has the contractual right to opt out of the final year of his contract on July 1, and – barring any catastrophic health issues – he surely will. Perhaps we should all be gun shy given the Wallace experience, but the odds remain great – despite what’s happened over the past month to augment Billups’ bargaining position – that Joe D’s handpicked point guard isn’t going anywhere.

In retrospect, Wallace’s signing wasn’t much of a shocker. Even before last season started to fragment – before Big Ben’s sit-down strike in Orlando late in the regular season, before his loud sniping at Saunders and the direction the team was headed during the playoffs, before the ignominious end in the Eastern Conference finals – there were indications that the Pistons and Ben Wallace were growing apart, the team grasping the need to exploit rules that catered to offense, their emotional fulcrum insisting that to admit as much was a betrayal of the core values that delivered them to championship status.

There are not only no such indications regarding the Pistons and Chauncey Billups, there is not – at present, at least – an environment that would foster those possibilities. It’s his team, he’s simpatico with his coach and – most critically – he’s in lockstep with Joe Dumars on where the Pistons are and where they’re headed.

Chauncey Billups is Joe Dumars’ most trusted sounding board on the state of the team. They talk frequently. Billups understands how pieces fit and personalities matter. They’ve agreed to not talk publicly about his next contract, and they probably talk very little even privately about the details or even the framework.

But know this: Joe Dumars doesn’t see any downside to bringing Chauncey Billups back, and Chauncey Billups doesn’t see any upside to leaving. Do the math. Unless somebody blows the Pistons out of the water contractually, he’ll retire a Piston.

Now, OK, somebody might open their checkbook and offer Chauncey Billups the maximum contract, which would put the ball first in Joe D’s court – can he afford to go six years on a point guard who will be 31 when training camp opens in October? – and then into his point guard’s court.

There is, after all, this similarity between Wallace and Billups: Joe D found them both at a point in their careers when, by NBA standards, they could be cheaply had. Both quickly outperformed those contracts. And both will have come to free agency at an age that makes investors a little nervous, both players in part motivated by the certainty that this will be the last significant contract they’ll ever sign.

Wallace was not going to lure many attractive suitors last summer and Billups won’t, either, simply because not many teams have the salary-cap room to shop in the main showroom, and those that do are usually franchises spinning their wheels.

The two teams that bear monitoring in this equation – bearing in mind that much can change between now and July, what’s being hailed as an incredibly deep draft among the factors – are Milwaukee and Orlando.

What will be the Bucks’ interest? Maybe it’s cooled since the season started and Maurice Williams has had a breakout year. Then again, Williams is himself coming up on free agency. Maybe he’ll want out. Maybe the Bucks will make him their focus instead of Billups. Too early to tell.

Orlando has Grant Hill’s enormous contract coming off the books. (Pistons fans probably would not appreciate the irony if Hill’s expiring contract – the one he signed in July 2000, jilting the Pistons and his one-time mentor, Joe Dumars, a month into his new job – is the opening that allows Chauncey Billups to wiggle away.) The Magic say they’re happy with Jameer Nelson and Travis Deiner at the point – Carlos Arroyo has effectively played his way out of another team’s rotation – but if the season plays out badly perhaps the Magic will re-evaluate.

Conventional wisdom is that the contract Joe D will offer Billups will be modeled after the one Phoenix gave to Steve Nash three years ago, given the fact that both would have been 30 as they arrived at free agency and both had two recent All-Star appearances on their resume. Adjust that contract for inflation and you’re probably looking at five years and $70 million.

The 3-5 record the Pistons put up in his absence – one I conservatively believe would have been no worse than 6-2 with Billups – and the fact Eastern Conference coaches voted him to the All-Star team despite his time away certainly bolster Billups’ bargaining position.

Maybe by a million here or a million there. The strong hunch is that won’t be enough to break the bonds between Chauncey Billups and the Detroit Pistons. The fact Ben Wallace’s transition to another team has been a long way from seamless isn’t lost on him, either. So you’re right: Spend your time fretting about Chris Webber’s assimilation or how the Pistons manage to regain their home-court invincibility. Let Joe Dumars and Chauncey Billups handle the other stuff.