New York ? As Larry Brown was busy at the Garden taking another crack at solving the Knicks, his former Detroit players were across the Hudson, delighting in the fact that they are through answering questions about their coach’s plans and just about everything else pertaining to their old leader.

“It’s better and it’s different than last year,” Chauncey Billups said Wednesday. “When we come in now, we don’t hear about nothing like we did last year. We just hear about playing the games. There’s nothing else going on. It’s just winning and losing.”

Brown’s status as yesterday’s news in Auburn Hills, Mich., changes tonight, when he brings the Knicks into the Palace. There, he will brace for what could be the rudest reception a returning coach has faced since Pat Riley came back to the Garden.

Do Pistons fans remember the 2004 title Brown helped deliver? Or do they decide to remember last season, when Brown seemed to be coaching the last few months with one foot out of the Palace door? Do they remember the rout of the Lakers? Or do they think back on the constant rumors about Brown running off to New York, L.A. or Cleveland?

“It will be very interesting to see how our fans react,” Richard Hamilton said at the Pistons’ morning shootaround in Manhattan. “I think it will be warm. Why wouldn’t it? The simple fact is, we won a championship and got back there a second year.”

As early as it is, the Pistons look like they can make it back for a third straight season. No one in the NBA is winning at a better clip than Brown’s old team, which Wednesday night raised its league-best mark to 11-2 with a 93-83 victory over the Nets. Brown’s successor, Flip Saunders, has had the benefit of taking over a veteran team that knows how to win.

“When you come into this kind of situation with the success they’ve had, are they going to say, ‘Well, we used to do it like this?'” Saunders said. “But that has never come up.”

What used to come up, when Brown did his two years in Detroit, was that he was the star of a star-less team. The flow of publicity toward the Hall of Fame coach created an undercurrent of resentment among more than a few players. You can still hear traces today.

“What he brought to the Detroit fans – I mean, what we all brought to the fans – you can’t discount that,” Billups said. “I’ll applaud when they introduce him. But we already knew how to win before he got here.”

Just not rings. Before Brown arrived, he was more famous for his nomadic travels than his on-court success. But with a title came a price. Brown’s legend grew.

“Looking back, I don’t think all that other stuff about Larry hurt us, at all, last year,” Billups said. “I think he gave us everything he had, no matter what plans he had after that. I know he wanted to win that championship. We just fell short.”

To this day, Brown swears he wanted to return to the Pistons. He still contends his departure was “a shock to my system,” even though half the NBA believes he had his exit strategy in place long before Game 7 in San Antonio.

But the Pistons wouldn’t have him back. He wore out the front office, which kept track of his back-channel talks with Cleveland as diligently as it scouted college talent.