The ballots for the NBA awards are due on tax day. As a 10-year voter in this process, I've been making lists and looking things up. I take it seriously. The process gives me a framework from which I can assess teams and players as the season winds down. It lends perspective to an 82-game schedule and prepares me for the playoffs.

	Pistons coach Rick Carlisle

But awards have fleeting value, except for the guy who displays the hardware or has an incentive clause in his contract to make the All-Defensive team. Awards are nice but they don't really drive anything of lasting import. Rings do that.

I was a bit surprised, therefore, when Rick Carlisle, coach of the Central Division champion Detroit Pistons, called me recently to put in some good words for some of his players. I have never received a call like that in all the time I've filled out this ballot. You get goofy promotional mailings and packages from PR guys ("Enclosed: Tracy McGrady's MVP Kit" or "Grand Kenyon for Rookie of the Year").

But not phone calls from coaches.

Carlisle told me that he felt it was part of his job description. Carlisle feels that he should coach, guide, help and promote his players -- and that campaigning for his players in worthy categories was part of his day. He was calling about Ben Wallace for Defensive Player of the Year (Wallace already had my vote). He was also promoting Corliss Williamson for Sixth Man of the Year. And he put in some words for Jerry Stackhouse for Second or Third Team All-NBA, reminding me that Stackhouse has adjusted and sacrificed his game for a team that won its division.

Carlisle also said that when he's finished trying to reach all the voters, he will have placed more than 100 phone calls. A coach getting ready for the playoffs probably has other things to do, but Carlisle has made these awards a priority for a few weeks. I don't know what the results will be. But I imagine Wallace, Williamson and Stackhouse appreciate it. Carlisle is showing real loyalty, and players appreciate that.

But as a former, unnoticed role player, Carlisle is probably sensitive to the often-unnoticed things players have to do to help their teams win. Nobody knows what Corliss Williamson is doing better than his coach. So I think it's smart of Carlisle to let the media know that Williamson, a vagabond NBA player, is having a good year on a team that won its division. Ben Wallace wasn't even drafted. Stackhouse couldn't coexist with Allen Iverson in Philadelphia and was exiled to Detroit. Yet here's their coach saying, "My guys are getting it done this year and I'd appreciate it if you think of them come voting time."

This seems to me to be a creative and labor-intensive way of being a player's coach.

We hear so much about the NBA being a player's league -- that coaches have to capitulate much more to players than legendary Celtics coach Red Auerbach ever did.

And while I don't see what Carlisle is doing with his phone campaign as overly coddling, I do see it as a constructive way to keep his team on his side. This seems to me to be a creative and labor-intensive way of becoming a player's coach while still being able to yell at a guy when he blows an assignment or breaks a team rule.

Carlisle has proven he'll support his players all the way. That counts for something when he has to get down on somebody. And it appears to be working on the court. Just look at the Central Division. At the beginning of the season, you had to have Charlotte, Milwaukee and Toronto ranked ahead of Detroit. But the Pistons won the division.

Carlisle hitting the phones to promote his players doesn't seem like such a big deal, now that I think about it. Those are the guys, after all, that got a former role player's head-coaching career off to a pretty nice start.