Mavs & Pistons: Contending underdogs

If you asked most coaches around the league, the two teams squaring off Wednesday night at American Airlines Center would be considered legitimate threats to end June on top of the NBA Mountain.

If you asked most critics, they’d likely dismiss the Mavericks and Pistons as true contenders. At the very least, those wouldn’t be sexy picks. It’s all about Kevin Garnett and the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference right now. San Antonio and Phoenix, for different reasons, are the darlings out West.

“I don’t think we can control any of that,” Jerry Stackhouse said Tuesday after practice. “Those are teams that have gotten off to hot starts. San Antonio got off to a hot start. They cooled off a little bit. Phoenix was a team that made some moves in the offseason that everybody was kind of excited about. And obviously with Garnett going to Boston and them getting off to the start that they’ve gotten off to, I think some of the talk is due.

“But at the same time we still look at Detroit as the cream of the crop in the Eastern Conference and I’m pretty sure they don’t look past us as being one of the top teams in the West.”

Does it all really matter who the favorite and underdogs are? Especially in January.

“We didn’t come here to be an underdog,” Mavs coach Avery Johnson said. “But because of the way we’ve been positioned this year, we’re more in that role.”

Read more of this note and get a closer look at the Pistons in today’s notebook at mavs.com.