I'm not sold on Billups being all that great a motivational leader. Better than average I'll say yes but not a great motivational leader like Kevin Garnett or Tim Duncan or even Dirk Nowitzki.
I'd really like to see more coaches being good motivational leaders but I realize that's much more of a college thing in the modern age. Coaches motivating extra effort and speed and so forth is much more of a thing of the past in the NBA than a thing of the present. If you go back in time in the NBA, especially if you go back to the 1950's and 1960's, there was much less difference back in those days than there is today between how college coaches and how the pro coaches coach, and specifically with respect to how much the coach tries to motivate players to keep their energy and effort levels up.
While I wouldn't go so far as to claim that today's NBA coaches in general or George Karl in particular have no motivational leadership impact at all, I would say that the very high levels of energy and aggression that the Nuggets are showing this year are much more generated by the players themselves, acting collectively, than they are by the Nuggets' coaches.
To me Billups is leading more in the deciding what to do aspect but not as much on the motivating aspect. The Nuggets are motivated to win simply because they are a lot more happy than most teams are to simply be in the game. Individual Nuggets players have been hammered by injuries and other trials and tribulations over the years much more so than average.
As for the Pistons, I don't think Detroit is worrying about not having Chauncey Billups' leadership in the playoffs, regardless of the breakdown between and quantities of his X's and O's and his motivational leadership. They have a bunch of very veteran players all motivating each other, so they don't need it very much. Not to mention they have as many or more players than any team who motivate themselves extremely well.
Stupid sportscaster alert: if and whenever you hear a sportscaster claim that the Pistons "are missing Billups leadership," he is a bonafide fool for saying that. Rasheed Wallace, Prince, Dice, Stuckey, AI, Hamilton need to be motivated? I don't think so. The Pistons who were on the 2004 Championship team mostly motivated themselves, individually and as a team collectively. While there was a lot of X's and O's leadership going from Billups to the rest of the Pistons, there wasn't much motivational leadership.
The reason that the X's and O's leadership of Billups is so important to the Nuggets is simply that the Nugget's coaches are very weak on X's and O's leadership. The Pistons have more X's and O's leadership coming from their coaches and managers, including General Manager Joe Dumars who, don't kid yourself, is undoubtedly assisting rookie Coach Michael Curry with the X's and O's matters. Maybe not as much as I, a perfectionist, would want, but they probably have more than enough of it.
So in conclusion, I am not worrying about the Pistons in the playoffs with respect to either X's and O's leadership or with respect to motivational leadership. Whereas, with the Nuggets, I am quite worried about where the playoffs motivational leadership comes from. I think they still have a big problem in that regard just as they did last year.
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