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Officially, Villanueva, Tayshaun Prince, Rip Hamilton and Ben Gordon are all game-time decisions for Sunday’s matinee in Toronto, but the expectation is that unless their bodies object to going through practice for the first time in a while – nearly eight weeks for Prince, about three weeks for Gordon and nearly two weeks for Hamilton – they’ll all be available to John Kuester in Toronto.

“It was good to see them all on the floor,” Kuester said. “(Teammates) were excited to seem them in practice and in live contact. It was a lively practice. There were things going on that I was real pleased with.”

Hamilton (sprained right ankle; hamstring) and Prince (ruptured disc in his lower back) have each missed 26 of the Pistons’ 29 games and Gordon has missed 11. Hamilton returned for two games after missing 21 straight following the season-opening, pulling a hamstring Dec.15 at Houston and missing the next five games. Hamilton played 36 minutes in his first game back without the benefit of a practice beforehand, which has Kuester more vigilant about monitoring the multiple returns.

“(Players) will not play 36 minutes this time,” he said. “We’ll try to monitor their minutes – and so watch them play 39. No, we won’t do that. We have to have a gauge of what they’re doing, all four of them.”

Kuester won’t commit to a starting lineup until he knows for certain who’ll be available to him, but it’s likely that if Hamilton and Prince are OK to play, they’ll start, with Gordon resuming his role as sixth man. Whether Jason Maxiell maintains his starting position at power forward isn’t clear. One option for Kuester should Prince and Hamilton both play would be to return Jonas Jerebko, who has started the past 26 games for Prince at small forward, to power forward, the position he played almost exclusively in the preseason.

Returning from injury is uncharted water for Prince, who hasn’t missed a game due to injury going back to high school and, in fact, had rarely sat out a Pistons practice in his eight NBA seasons.

Prince said he felt fresh and his back mostly pain-free, but as he’s ramped up his individual workout routine in preparation to a return to practice, he was experiencing aches and pains.

“The last couple of days, I came in here and got some work in, me and Rip, trying to get our wind up a little bit because we knew we were going to start practicing. First time being hurt, so I realize how much soreness you have. Sometimes you think it’s a lot of pain, but it was more soreness than anything after I started working out.”

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