But he might as well have been talking about Ben Wallace.

Because Big Ben’s greatest strength – an inexhaustible supply of pride – became his greatest weakness.

Pride took him from an undrafted free agent from Virginia Union – a kid the Boston Celtics took a look at and decided to recast as a small forward before waiving him off their summer roster – and turned him into a four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year, an All-Star, the greatest rebounder of his generation, a world champion and the face of his franchise.

None of it would have happened without that boundless wellspring of pride gurgling within the block of chiseled granite who called Detroit home for six giddy seasons.

But when he lashed out at Flip Saunders the way he did this week to an ESPN.com writer – and cited his relationship with Rick Carlisle as fruitful in the process (hah!) – it emphatically confirmed what many around the Pistons had grown to suspect: It was absolutely best that these parties go their separate ways.

“I didn’t like the way we handled things,” Wallace told ESPN. “We got away from our bread and butter, and that’s on the defensive end. I hear him saying now that I’m gone he can open up the playbook. I laugh at it. Everyone’s looking for something, and for him to say that, he’s fishing for getting a reaction out of me. It’s funny to me, real comical. I never thought you could win when you’ve got five guys on the floor looking for the ball and no one out there doing the little things. So that’s on him. If he feels like that, go ahead.”

Whoo! Where do you begin?

With this line: “I never thought you could win when you’ve got five guys on the floor looking for the ball and no one out there doing the little things.” Wait a minute? Wasn’t that the problem? Ben Wallace “wanting the ball” is what made it five guys looking for the ball. No one doing the little things? Isn’t that what made him rich, a Detroit icon and the most coveted free agent in the class of ’06?

Saunders took the high road – mostly – Friday when prodded for a reaction to Big Ben’s rant. But this whole issue clearly chafes him, and for good reason.

The Pistons brought him here not only because a championship-ready team needed a coach with credentials and he was the best one out there at the time of the messy Brown divorce, but also because Joe Dumars understood the changing NBA would require more offense of the Pistons – Saunders’ forte.

“Ben gave a lot to this organization,” Saunders said, but when asked for comment on Wallace’s contention that when they talked at the start of last year and nothing changed, Wallace cut off communication, he added, “We had three or four talks. The first time was after the Utah game and the first thing we talked about was him getting the ball more. That’s where it usually initiated.”

Another major burr in Big Ben’s behind: In desperate straits in the fourth quarter of Game 6 at Miami, trailing 3-2 in the series, Saunders sat Wallace for the duration, partly because of Wallace’s 27 percent playoff foul shooting and the certainty that Miami would deliberately foul him, partly because the Pistons just plain needed points.

“Let’s just put it this way,” Saunders said. “That’s the only quarter we outscored Miami. … Hey, it was tough for me to watch, too. As a competitor, you always want to be out there. I don’t fault him.”

There were moments under Larry Brown, when Ben got the ball and moved it somewhere else quickly, when the offense was a model of clockwork efficiency.

But let’s be honest: Most of the time when Big Ben got the ball, it was a Keystone Kops adventure. His jump shot was thoroughly unreliable. He was about a 70 percent dunker because of disproportionately small hands. And when he’d try to make like Dr. J, taking the ball from the wing to the rim in a series of swoops and pirouettes, it never quite ended the way that other famous ’fro’s forays would.

And then there was his free-throw shooting.

On top of a league determined to alter the balance between offense and defense to the former.

So Flip Saunders would have been madly irresponsible to put his efforts into appeasing Big Ben’s enormous pride – his strength, his weakness – at the expense of what was best for his team. And Big Ben’s teammates, as much as they admired him and genuinely liked him, knew where the line between right and wrong was on this, too.

“The game is changing,” Chauncey Billups said Friday. “After we won the championship and San Antonio won it back to back, two great defensive teams, they changed the rules. They wanted to make the game a lot more exciting. Because of that you’ve got teams playing small ball. For somebody like Ben, who is the best rebounder and defender in the league, it’s starting to make it difficult.

“Ben’s the best defensive player in the world. And you like to have it where the things you do best, the coach believes in the most. When Flip came here he was in a tough position. He came to jump-start our offense a little bit. Our defense had been so dominant. I guess Ben didn’t like that. At times, it made us better, I thought, but at the end of the season it didn’t work out.”

It’s now becoming increasingly clear that high on the list of reasons that it didn’t work out – somewhere between Rasheed Wallace’s tweaked ankle and the physical and emotional fatigue of a season that began as a sprint – was Ben Wallace’s discontent.

Because he had been such a good soldier for his first five-plus seasons, everyone rightfully gave him the benefit of the doubt when Ben refused to re-enter that late-season game in Orlando. Turns out it was much more telling than anyone wanted to believe.

The fact that he cited Carlisle along with Larry Brown, Jim Lynam and Doc Rivers as his favorite coaches is a window into how suicidal it would have been for the Pistons to bring him back – never mind the paralyzing effect it would have had on their salary structure and their future roster maneuverability.

Ben wouldn’t even talk to Carlisle after Carlisle’s first season, when he caused Wallace great affront during his exit interview. Wallace told Carlisle he thought he could improve as an offensive player, Carlisle told him to never mind and just concentrate on defense and rebounding, and that was it.

Carlisle handled it poorly, of course – what harm would it have done to encourage Wallace to hone his jump shot, ballhandling and foul shooting? But that misses the larger point: If Ben Wallace now ranks Flip Saunders somewhere beneath Rick Carlisle on his list of favorite coaches, it was time to cut bait.

Not that it really would have mattered who was coaching the Pistons this season. Big Ben wanted the ball in his hands more than a player of painfully limited offensive ability should have it. He wanted to win games 68-66 in a league that has done everything in its power to legislate against that model for winning. Most of all, he wanted to be at the center of success for the franchise that he led back to glory.

Ben Wallace became the Pistons’ greatest strength as they became champions. But his anti-Flip diatribe this week confirms the suspicion that, had he stayed, he might well have become their greatest weakness.