Greetings from the Palace of Auburn Hills, where the Pistons will host the Wolves in about an hour.

Well, it's official. Neither Ricky Rubio nor Shabazz Muhammad will play tonight. Nikola Pekovic will. Coach Flip Saunders said all three would be available tomorrow against Atlanta.

Saunders said that when Rubio came back from his ankle injury that it was with the condition that he wouldn't play in back-to-back games until after the All Star Break. So there was no chance that he was going to play both tonight and tomorrow. That said, the fact that Rubio took some bumps in Friday's game made resting him tonight an easy decision.

"He got pretty banged up in his last game," Saunders said of Rubio. He got his knee hit and his ankle re-twisted a little bit. We thought it would be better to give him a couple days off.

So tonight's starters will be Mo Williams and Kevin Martin at guard, Andrew Wiggins and Thad Young at forward and Pekovic at center.

Here's one more thing. You can't say that Martin doesn't have a sense of humor. We were talking about Dean Smith. I asked him if he'd met the coach, he said no. Martin played at Western Carolina in college, but he grew up in Ohio. So I asked him if he was an Ohio State fan growing up. He said he was, but more in football than in basketball, having grown up playing football, too.

So I asked him: What position did you play?

And he said: "I was a quarterback." Then he paused. "I know what your next question is. I actually passed the ball?''

That's about it. I'll get back to you after the game.