NBA | Pistons pull plug on coach Flip Saunders

DETROIT — Pistons president Joe Dumars watched the final 10 minutes of Game 6 against Boston last Friday and saw a microcosm of the entire Flip Saunders era.

"That last 10 minutes played out, and I looked at it and said, 'This is the last three years right here,' " Dumars said Tuesday. "We got a lead, we're good enough, we're right there ... we didn't get it done."

Dumars left the Palace after that loss, which eliminated his team from the Eastern Conference finals for the third season in a row, and felt a surprising sense of calm. He knew what had to be done. He knew it was time for change.

The changes started Tuesday morning, when Dumars fired Saunders as coach after three winning — but not championship-producing — seasons.

And that's only the first step. Dumars said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon that his goal is to break up the team's core of Chauncey Billups, Richard Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince and Rasheed Wallace. No player on the roster is untouchable, he said.

"Make no mistake, everyone's in play right now," Dumars said. "There are no sacred cows here. You lose that sacred-cow status when you lose three straight years like this."

Dumars can't promise that the core will be broken up, but that's only because he needs to find a willing trading partner.

"If I can get someone to dance with me," he said, "I will."

Dumars wants to act quickly and should have a replacement by next week at the latest. Interviews will begin today with the leading candidate, assistant coach Michael Curry. Dumars also said he'd sit down with assistant coach Terry Porter, who has drawn interest from the Phoenix Suns.

Former Dallas Mavericks coach Avery Johnson also could be interviewed but wasn't a confirmed candidate as of Tuesday evening.

Along with any changes, Dumars wants a new sense of hunger, the kind that won't settle for anything less than a championship, comes with them.

"I just think this team became way too content and did not show up with a sense of urgency to get it done," Dumars said. "I can't sugarcoat it. I can't try to make it pretty. It is what it is."

In Saunders' three seasons, the Pistons were 176-70 in the regular season and 30-21 in the postseason, but they lost in the Eastern Conference finals each year.

Notes

• Celtics backup guard Tony Allen, who guarded Lakers star Kobe Bryant in the regular season and held him to 22 points on 6-for-25 shooting, returned to practice after missing the last two games of the East finals with a strained right Achilles tendon.

• Lakers' backcourt defensive assignments: point guard Derek Fisher on Rajon Rondo, and Bryant on Ray Allen. Other matchups were unsettled.

• With 337 of 378 precincts counted, ex-NBA player Kevin Johnson led incumbent Heather Fargo by 2,756 votes, 47 percent to 40, in the race for mayor of Sacramento, Calif., though a fall runoff election might be necessary. Besides the 41 outstanding precincts, another 15,000 absentee ballots are still to be counted.

• Prosecutors in Brooklyn, N.Y., have asked a federal judge to give former referee Tim Donaghy — who pleaded guilty to taking cash payoffs from gamblers and betting on games — a break on his sentence to reward his "substantial assistance."

• Despite reports that Doug Collins already has the Bulls coaching job, Kings assistant Chuck Person got a second interview with the team and ex-Sonics assistant Dwane Casey will get a second interview, the Chicago Tribune reported.

• Kansas State star Michael Beasley, the likely No. 1 draft pick, is not 6 feet 10, as the school had listed him in his one and only season there. Measured at last week's NBA predraft camp, Beasley is 6-8 ¼.