Pistons Play Waiting Game

Lindsey Hunter enjoys resting and spending time with his family while the Detroit Pistons await their second-round playoff series.

What’s the bad part?

“We give our mad-scientist coach too long to think of new plays,” the reserve guard said Friday after practice. “We’ll probably have about 15 new sets before this is over. We need a game day to get him to relax.”

Piston Coach Larry Brown is famous -- or infamous to his players -- for constantly tweaking what he wants his team to do, with a wrinkle here or there on offense and defense. The Hall of Famer has often said he enjoyed practices more than games because it allowed him to teach.

Brown has had plenty of opportunities to work out the Pistons since they eliminated Philadelphia on Tuesday in Game 5 of their first-round series. The Pistons took Wednesday off, then practiced Thursday and Friday and plan to have more practices this weekend.

If Indiana would have beaten Boston at home Thursday, the Pacers would’ve traveled to play the Pistons this weekend in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.

But the Celtics won, forcing a Game 7 in Boston. That pushed back the start of Detroit’s next series to Monday at The Palace. Game 2 is scheduled for Wednesday, also in Auburn Hills.

Brown said he’s OK with the wait.

“I think it was good that we got some rest because some of our players were a little banged up and played a lot of minutes,” he said. “Now we’ve got to work on our game.

“We’ve been playing so many games the last two months that we haven’t really had a lot of practice time. Not only for our starters, but for the guys that haven’t played a lot, this is really critical.”