Terry Foster: Pistons Ride Out Stormy Waters
Rip Hamilton and coach John Kuester made peace. They are tolerating one another in an attempt to get through the season.
It's just one of the many odd happenings with the lottery-bound Pistons. For six weeks Hamilton was one of the biggest outcasts in Pistons history. Now he is as engrained in the Pistons fabric as anybody.
He scored 23 points during the Pistons' 100-88 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Saturday night and afterwards seemed eager to talk about his new relationship with Kuester.
"It was a big breath of fresh air," Hamilton said. "It was never a thing how people talked about it and how they wrote it down and things like that. How much we supposedly hated each other. We went through a period of time where we didn't talk. And the lack of communication kind of put everybody on pins and needles."
This Kuester style has put plenty of players on pins and needles. There are too many guards and there are too many outward displays of disrespect for the coach. We all know that is why guys sometimes get benched. It happened after the Philadelphia shoot-around boycott. It happened when Hamilton and Kuester got into it. And it happened again when Charlie Villanueva yelled at his coach last week.
