Former Pistons forward Antonio McDyess slams last year's trade
BY VINCE ELLIS
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER

DALLAS -- It looks like things have worked out for Antonio McDyess.

The former Pistons crowd favorite who left this past off-season to join the Spurs as a free agent has found a role on a team that looks poised to at least give the Lakers some competition for Western Conference supremacy.

But the veteran power forward is still thinking about the events that led him to leave the Pistons last summer.

In comments to the San Antonio media Tuesday, McDyess openly questioned last season's infamous trade of Chauncey Billups (McDyess' best friend) to the Nuggets for Allen Iverson, which effectively ended the Pistons' era of Eastern Conference dominance. He also didn't express much sympathy for the organization that took a nine-game losing streak into Tuesday night's game against the Mavericks.

"I think ever since they traded Chauncey away, everything just kind of went downhill from there," said McDyess, who will face the Pistons tonight. "It's like they broke up all chemistry, and I really didn't understand the whole logic of that trade.

"I guess they really were in a rebuilding stage, and it's showing now."

Pistons president Joe Dumars made the deal for cap space and felt the run was over. But McDyess saw a team that still could have contended if it hadn't been completely dismantled.

The team's direction was a major reason he ended a five-year stint with the Pistons by signing a three-year, $15-million deal with the Spurs.

"Detroit was my home and I felt comfortable there, but after I seen all the things down spiraling and I felt it was going to be no good this year, it was pretty easy to me after that," McDyess said.

He even thought aloud about what would have happened if the trade hadn't happened.

"I thought we would still be pretty good if you kind of think about it," McDyess said. "Ever since (Billups) left, then Rasheed (Wallace) ... everything was all messed up. It was pretty much a no-brainer after that."

But he did express some sympathy for his former teammates.

"It's sad to see those guys go through that because nobody wants to be on that end of losing nine games in a row," McDyess said. "Even when you get out on the court it just seems like everything is meaningless -- like you ain't even got no effort to play for anything because you so far behind. Once you got nine losses under your belt, it's kind of like, 'Hey, man, what I'm going to step out on this court for?' You kind of lose confidence."

Contact VINCE ELLIS: 313-222-6479 or vellis@freepress.com

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