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Mount Vernon, to describe the teenager in three words, Cimmino said, "Work, work and work." This is a player who took a communications class in high school just to learn how to edit film so he could break down his game.
Still his numbers for the past two seasons – 13.8 and then 11.2 points a night while Detroit slid to 27 and then 30 wins – are anything but spectacular.
The real Ben Gordon. Where is he? Is he gone?
Pistons President of Basketball Operations Joe Du- mars signed Gordon to a five-year, $55 million con- tract during the summer of 2009 because he wanted to create the same three-guard lineup Detroit once used so effectively during the Bad Boys era. With Dumars, Isiah Thomas and Vinnie Johnson, no one ever tired, no one thirsted for minutes. It was an easy marriage. He thought he could build that again.
But Hamilton got hurt, then feuded with former Pis- tons coach John Kuester and his play fell off. Rodney Stuckey never developed into the full-time starting point guard everyone expected. Gordon struggled through an ankle injury during his first year in De- troit, and then became the odd man out. Suddenly, people forgot Gordon twice averaged over 20 points a game in Chicago, and has an almost unrivaled all-around offensive game.
"With a guy who has scoring ability like him, in col- lege he'd be a 17-18 point scorer and make it look effortless," says his former UConn teammate, Mar- cus Williams. "And that's the thing, man, if I had the offensive skills that he had, I would probably try to score 35 a game."
But by the end of his first season in Detroit, Gordon
"We've got a new owner (Tom Gores) and he's coming in with a lot of passion and a lot of energy, so I think things are gonna be on the up and up," says Gordon. "I can't see it getting any worse than it already has been the past two years. I think it's only up from here."
This is Ben Gordon, a kid who was so unassuming that he wore a t-shirt under his college jersey despite being one of the most ripped players in America; a man so laid back that his coaches at UConn used to plead with him to shoot more often; a celebrity so out of the spotlight that he can admit to me with a chuckle that the birth of his son Elijah this summer has cut into his partying; a guy so regular that one of his best friends and teammates, Will Bynum, can only say "Ben is just Ben" as if that explains everything.
Ben is just Ben, and at some point that went from meaning some- thing positive to something entirely different. In the midst of two forgotten years, he's floundered. When I ask him about his time in Detroit, he can't even let me finish, has to cut me off by telling me:
"It's been terrible. It's been terrible."
So what happened? How did this guy go from being an effortless talent – Gentle Ben, as Jim Calhoun called him – to so many calling him a gunner, a liability? They dropped him into that class of play- ers who fight years for the money, finally get it, and then fall off. Well, if you know anything about Ben Gordon at all, that smells of nothing but stupidity. Because if you know Ben Gordon, you know this is a player who didn't play AAU ball his senior year of high school, sacrificing hype and accolades. This is a player that when the Chicago Tribune once asked Bob Cimmino, his coach at
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was so frustrated that when prodded, he couldn't even explain to the Detroit Free Press exactly what happened. It got even worse this season. Everything fell apart so quickly that the Pistons eventu- ally used their lottery pick this summer on another 6-3 guard, Kentucky's Brandon Knight.
"I think the last two years I was playing for someone who really didn't know what I was capable of, and I feel like in Chicago, I showed a little bit of what I can do and what kind of player I can be," says Gordon. "In Detroit, I guess nobody had a defined role it seemed."
Gordon's struggles aren't because he isn't working. His legendary work ethic dates back to UConn, when he came into the gym late at night to shoot. As teammates in Chicago, Kirk Hinrich dubbed Gordon a "real pro." Bynum refuses to even call the two of them gym rats because they're there so often. "We're more like the se- curity," he laughs.
Another teammate in Chicago, Aaron Gray, tells stories. Every drill Gordon ran, he would run it until he made 10 or 15 shots in a row.
"He's just so intense, man," says Gray, who still can't get over the game-winning, pull-up runner Gordon hit against him in the Big East Tournament while Gray was at Pittsburgh. "His work ethic and his attention to detail is beyond anyone. I played with him for two years in Chicago, and he was just…the amount of hours he puts in, the repetition that he puts in (to shoot). People wouldn't even believe it."
So what gives? In early 2010, Gordon hit a jump shot against Philly
PHOTO. NBAE/GETTY IMAGES