Stan Van Gundy, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope bury the hatchet

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Stan Van Gundy both gave quotes Wednesday on that little exchange they had after KCP was ejected from the game vs. the Chicago Bulls on Monday.

Stan Van Gundy via the Detroit Free Press (additional quotes in parenthesis from MLIVE):

"I don't care about that," Van Gundy said. "I used to go through that with guys more than this. I'm worried about how they play and what kind of people they are. The guy was really frustrated. If you're gonna say something to a guy in a situation where he's already frustrated, any of us would do the same thing. I shouldn't have said what I said to him, because it wasn't the time and it wasn't productive. I should have just let it go.

"(He and I had a good talk yesterday.) He's a great guy, works his ass off. He's not a hothead or anything like that. He had a bad day in terms of that, and he got frustrated. That's all it was. (He yelled something back at me and that part was actually meaningless. The tough part was him getting thrown out.)"

KCP via the Detroit News:

"We're good. We had a talk before we got to Houston," he said. "Everything was in the heat of the moment, but we talked about it and squared it away."

Caldwell-Pope said he was preoccupied with some other off-court issues and let them fester during the game, which affected his focus.

"Throughout the game. I also had other things on my mind from off the court. There was a lot of stuff going on and I tried to juggle it," Caldwell-Pope said. "Out of frustration, I kind of exploded, and it wasn't me. I jumped out of character.

"Just a lot of stuff was going on before the game. I didn't handle it pretty well and it carried over into the game — something that shouldn't happen. (Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes you can't get rid of it. But you can't let it get to you like that. I just let it overwhelm me.)"

KCP was fined $10,000 for kicking a chair as he was walking to the locker room, a chair kick that frightened a nearby little girl. KCP made things right with that fan by signing a jersey and giving that and another game-worn jersey to her along with his apologies.

KCP was then the Pistons' leading scorer in the team's win in Houston.

All is now right.