It is not unusual for most teams to "shorten" their bench for the playoffs.

"I think we can play the same way," Curry said before the Pistons played the New Jersey Nets on Friday night at the Palace.

"You usually play four bigs, and Kwame and Max have been coming off the bench and doing a tremendous job," he said. "Will Bynum will continue to backup Stuckey."

The ninth player in the rotation will depend on matchups.

It could be either Aaron Afflalo or Walter Herrmann, depending on the team the Pistons are meeting. Matchups also could mean both play and the Pistons would go 10-deep, as has been Curry's plan from the start of the season.

Brown scored a season-high 15 points at Philadelphia last week, and Bynum scored a career-high 32 points the next night.

"We're getting good things off the bench," Curry said. "We expect that to continue."

Pistons missed Dice

Curry noted Friday the ramifications of giving up Chauncey Billups and Antonio McDyess for a month, for Allen Iverson in a November trade.

"Missing McDyess -- he is like a glue to this team -- was tough," he said. "Any transition we went through would have been a lot better if we had McDyess that entire time. We struggled to blend everything else together."

Keep on fighting

Curry thinks the Pistons can enter the playoffs on a positive note after battling through several challenges this season.

"We battled through them and our heads are still above water," he said. "So I think we can learn from that and become a better team, not just right now, but in the future."

Big games await

Though the Pistons currently sit in the seventh spot in the Eastern Conference, they are just two games out of the fifth slot.

If Detroit can win out this weekend and in Monday's home finale against Chicago, the Pistons could improve their playoff draw.