Blue-collar Piston Ben Wallace plays hard till end

AUBURN HILLS, Michigan — He's among Detroit's sports icons, a group with different backgrounds, motivations and triumphs. But for Ben Wallace — the most unlikely of a collection that includes Stevie Y, Isiah and Barry — he's cut more in the mold of Joe Louis or Thomas Hearns.

As he prepares to suit up tonight for what might be his final NBA game, it's almost as if Wallace is looking for another fight. What other reason could there be for a three-hour workout with a handful of hours left in his career?  "We still have one game left," he said.

Wallace will sit down with Pistons management and his family and won't rush himself to make a decision: retire or return for his 17th season. It's at this precise moment where Wallace reveals his biggest battle: with himself, admitting he has lost that cerebral tussle before.

He has conquered essentially every challenge he has encountered, but the prospect of walking away from basketball has Wallace grappling with his life away from the game that defined him.

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Ben Wallace, #6 Detroit Pistons, Virginia Union University (1994-96), Cuyahoga Community College (Ohio)(1992-94), Central High School  (Hayneville, Alabama).

As season's end nears, Pistons' Ben Wallace is still at work and isn't sure he will punch his time card for the last time

AUBURN HILLS, Michigan - He spots a Pistons pocket calendar on the table and, for a moment, gives it his full attention. His team's schedule is burned in his memory, but it looks different on paper -- those red-and-blue colored squares counting down the remaining home and away games of the season.

"Not many left," Ben Wallace says.

He knows what he has said in the past, including statements he reiterated two months ago: On Feb. 13, the day after the 37-year-old Pistons veteran tied Avery Johnson for most games by an undrafted player (since the 1976-77 NBA-ABA merger), Wallace told reporters that this season, his 16th, would definitely be his last.

But now here it is, a recent Monday -- the afternoon after a night game in Chicago -- and Wallace is sitting in an empty room at the Pistons' practice facility smiling as he wipes streams of sweat from his face and neck with a towel. He talks about how he couldn't get to Auburn Hills fast enough that morning to work on his game and be with the guys.

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