COAST TO COAST

Pistons in need

of adjustments

The Detroit Pistons are facing some issues.

Beyond the eye rolls directed at Coach Flip Saunders last spring, there are questions about his relationship with Rasheed Wallace, who has that look again.

There are also questions about how many games Wallace will finish.

Under the new zero-tolerance, which he calls “the ‘Sheed rule,” he lasted 40 minutes of the Pistons opener before being ejected, going 0 for 3 from the court as the Milwaukee Bucks dumped the home team.

“A rule is a rule,” said Chauncey Billups, no longer sympathetic. “If you violate that, you’re going to pay.”

There was no comment from Wallace, who likes to do his talking on the court. Unfortunately, that’s literally as well as figuratively.

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New York, New York,

it’s a wonderful town ...

... Especially if you write an NBA column.

With characteristic chutzpah, New York Knicks corporate boss James Dolan tried to get out from under fired coach Larry Brown’s guaranteed $40-million contract on the laughable pretext that Brown broke team rules, such as when Brown gave his “dead man walking” roadside interview without a team official present.

What was Brown to do? There were the writers, who’d been banished from the practice site while waiting to see whether he’d be fired, flagging him down at a stop sign.

Did you ever notice there’s never a Knicks official around when you need one?

Ending the soap opera, Commissioner David Stern delivered his decision as arbitrator. It was probably something like $25 million -- with the proviso that when Brown gets his next job, the Knicks get part of his salary as an offset.

That’s nice. Brown may be crazed, but unlike Dolan, the son of Cablevision Chief Executive Charles Dolan, his success is based on more than the circumstances of his birth.

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Giant contributions

If Red Auerbach’s accomplishments weren’t enough, they might have been dwarfed by moves such as drafting the NBA’s first black player, Chuck Cooper; becoming the first to put five black players on the court and hiring the first black coach, Bill Russell.

As the Boston Herald’s Steve Bulpett noted, Auerbach didn’t do it to be a pioneer but for the same reason he did everything, to win.

With Deval Patrick, who is black, now leading polls in the race for Massachusetts governor, Rep. Ed Markey noted Auerbach’s role in changing the racially polarized city.

Said Markey: “I honestly believe that one of the reasons that Deval Patrick is doing so well... is the example that Red set in the ‘50s and ‘60s in his relationship with Bill Russell and Tom Sanders and Sam and K.C. Jones and Wayne Embry.”

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Last words

Bob Cousy on Auerbach: “They claim records are made to be broken in sports, but 11 championships in 13 years in any sport will never happen again. You can talk Green Bays and Yankees and Montreals in various sports and they’re all wonderful franchises, but they never dominated their sphere in that kind of time frame....

“Arnold will be missed. The world thought he was tough and mean and gruff and underneath all that he was really a pussycat if you knew him well. He’d be mad at me if he knew I said that now.”

Larry Bird on playing tennis and racquetball with Auerbach: “He used to take timeouts and come back and say, ‘OK, I’m up 40-30.’ You’d argue a little bit and then keep playing.

“Then when he got ahead, he’d quit and walk off the court and go on to something else.”

Bob Ryan, the longtime Boston Globe writer, on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters,” remembering Auerbach’s reaction when told he’d been close to death a year ago: “I’ll decide.”

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Mark Heisler