BROWN SEARCHES FOR ANSWERS.

Byline: JOE STEVENS

Larry Brown is one of the most-traveled coaches in the history of professional sports. He has coached seven NBA teams and has had stints with UCLA, Kansas and the Carolina Cougars of the ABA.

The guy has been around - and back, again - and despite all of the travel, he is finding the transition with his new team, the Detroit Pistons, difficult.

Brown and the 76ers agreed they both needed a change, but he left a huge part of himself in Philadelphia.

``I love Philly,'' Brown said. ``It's great place to live, and my kids and my wife were really involved in the community. They haven't moved yet, so it's been real hard. I don't know how guys do it. I've got two young kids, and they've tried to come out on weekends. It's been like being on a road trip all year. I'm not handling it very well right now.''

With the well-traveled 63-year-old, the Pistons believe they've found the missing piece to make them a contender to win the Eastern Conference. But the coach has not boasted that he's destined for the NBA Finals and said his team is ``a work in progress.''

``I've got such a challenge here because this team has been successful,'' he said.

The last time expectations were this high in Motown were when Joe Dumars, the Pistons' president of basketball operations, played there.

When Dumars canned Rick Carlisle and hired Brown, the dog-eat-dog brutality of the league was underscored. Carlisle led the Pistons to two consecutive 50-32 seasons and was not exactly blessed with a four-Hall- of-Famer-juggernaut of a lineup.

Carlisle was sent packing, even though he was NBA Coach of the Year in the 2001-02 season and made it to the Eastern Conference finals last season. Though Carlisle's record could make him look like a magnificent coach and helped him land in Indiana, his relationship with Dumars and Pistons management wasn't exactly smooth, and the Pistons were swept by New Jersey in the conference finals.

Last season, the Pistons were the league's top defensive team, allowing just 87.7 points a game, but Kevin O'Neill, the first-year head coach with the Toronto Raptors, might have been the driving force behind their successful defensive style.

This season, this is what's going on with the Pistons' mediocre 5-4 start: Brown has inherited a different roster, brought in a new coaching staff, and the team is adjusting.

Clifford Robinson (Golden State), Michael Curry (Toronto) and Jon Barry (Denver) are gone. The only new addition making a significant contribution so far in this young season is 35-year-old veteran Elden Campbell. The team is searching for an identity.

``We talk about being a great defensive team,'' Brown said. ``But if you're an 80-possession-a-game team like they were and maybe somebody's a 110-possession-a-game team, surely the stats are going to look better, but it doesn't mean they're any better.''

In other words, the Pistons might have allowed fewer points, but that might not mean they were a stellar defensive team. They just played molasses ball.

With his new Pistons, Brown isn't exactly sure what to do. They had success playing a slow, methodical game, but without Robinson and Curry, he already has had them speed up their style.

``I'm used to coaching a certain way,'' Brown said. ``But sometimes that might not be right for a particular team, so that's what we're trying to find out. They walked it up last year, played a low-possession game and ran set plays every trip down. I've never coached that way.''

No matter what style Brown decides works best, a heap of the Pistons' success will rest on second-year players Tayshaun Prince and Mehmet Okur. Both played well enough last season to carve out significant spots in Detroit's rotation, and Prince, the Dominguez High graduate, is starting.

The Pistons' backcourt is solid with Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton. Rebounding menace Ben Wallace likely will be an All-Star candidate, and the Pistons' reserves are deep enough to allow Brown to not stunt the development of 18-year-old, No. 2 draft pick Darko Milicic.

Even though the season is so young, Detroit looks to be in an eerily similar position as Brown's 76ers last season.

You can count on them to make the playoffs, but after that, who knows? They could get bounced in the first round or make it to the conference finals.

``I think right now we're just trying to figure out what our coaches want, how they want us to play,'' said Billups, who is averaging a team-leading 20.2 points. ``I think they're still learning about the guys that we have.

--Champions of mediocrity? Even the most casual fan accepts the NBA truth that the East is a junior varsity league compared to the West. If the top eight playoff teams were seeded last season, the only Eastern team that should have been in that group is the New Jersey Nets.

This season, the Nets are off to a sub-.500 start, and despite the Pistons' early mediocrity, maybe they'll be good enough to win the conference. Heading into Saturday night's games, only two Eastern Conference teams - Carlisle's Pacers and the Hornets - had better records.

--Brown's perspective: When asked about Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal's in-fighting this season, Brown practically shrugged it off as unimportant.

``Nothing ever surprises me, what's read or said,'' he said. ``I always look at how they play on the court. I always think of something John Madden said. He had three rules with the Raiders - be on time, pay attention and play like hell.''

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- Ross Siler