Corey Maggette thinks he'll be ready to play tonight against Sixers

I'm not sure that Corey Maggette could be considered Detroit's knight in shining armor, but the winless Pistons are about to get additional scoring prowess off their bench as the reserve small forward thinks he is finally read to make his season debut.

Asked if he was ready to play, Maggette told the Detroit Free Press:

"I think so," he said. "I think the biggest thing is just conditioning. It's going to take awhile just getting back into game condition, but at the end of the day, it's up to Arnie (Kander)."

Coach Lawrence Frank also was encouraged by Maggette's first contact practice but stopped short of committing to his return tonight, reserving judgment until talking to Kander, the team's strength and conditioning coach.

"He looked good," Frank said. "We'll kind of evaluate it after practice, and we'll just figure it out as we move forward when we're going to activate him."

With Maggette back some slight tweaks will need to be made to the playing rotation, as I think Frank intends to use the longtime player.

And I think that is a large part of the reason we have seen more and more of Kyle Singler playing the shooting guard position with Tayshaun Prince or Jonas Jerebko playing at small forward.

Singler is certainly the most consistent bench player for the Pistons and I don't see him losing any of his playing time. Jerebko has had his ups and downs but he has been one of the lone bright spots on this Pistons team so far this season.

As much as it pains me to say it I think this further cements Kim English outside of the primary playing rotation with the primary backups being Drummond at center, Jerebko at power forward, Maggette at small forward, Singler at shooting guard and Will Bynum at point guard.

If this plays out as I've outlined it certainly won't win head coach Lawrence Frank many fans in the DBB community but, hell, at this point I just want to see a victory.