WASHINGTON -- One guy thought he had found a home, the other believed he was the centerpiece of an improving team. Both were convinced they were fixtures.

	The slashing Richard Hamilton fits in well with the Pistons' offense.

On Sept. 11, both were proven wrong. Richard Hamilton, honing his game under the close inspection of Michael Jordan, suddenly found himself booted to Detroit. Jerry Stackhouse, the heart and soul of the Pistons' offense as they shockingly won the Central Division last season, was very much surprised to land in Washington, where Jordan already owned the corner.

Tonight, the hard-driving Stackhouse and the mild-mannered Hamilton face each other for the first time since the deal. Who's got the best of it so far? Here's a question to answer the question: What are you looking for?

In Detroit, where Rick Carlisle's system favors players who come off screens firing away, Hamilton is a very nice ingredient. He's averaging 20.2 points and being more aggressive going to the hoop than the Pistons expected, but he's certainly no Stackhouse, who is averaging 23 points a game, possesses far more toughness and is a better guy to build around because he can dominate games -- something Hamilton cannot do and something Carlisle and team president Joe Dumars would never ask him to do.

What Hamilton gives the Pistons is a sense of balance. He can function as the third or fourth option in the offense without being offended and he can still get his numbers. More to the point, he is not a player who dominates the ball and gives focus to the defense. That was the situation with Stackhouse.

The Pistons' thinking is reflected in some recent comments by guard Jon Barry on the value of not having a dominant player: "You saw it with Jerry last year. He gets the ball on the wing and they have one guy on him, another in the post waiting for him and a third guy coming over to double-team him. There was nowhere to go. You can turn a lot of great scorers into jump shooters and a lot of great scorers aren't great jump shooters."

	The addition of Jerry Stackhouse has given the Wiz another go-to guy.

So, the Pistons have Hamilton, Hubert Davis, Tayshaun Prince and Barry. "It is becoming a reality in the NBA that you have to have skilled players on the floor -- at least four or five guys that can hit an outside shot -- to be able to score effectively with the rules changes," Carlisle said.

But with Stackhouse, there is no guessing. Throw a tough matchup at him, give him a big game and he is a guy who will go after it with fire and fury. Stackhouse is a swingman who is a master at getting to the foul line.

"This team doesn't have an identity yet and I want to try to put my identity on a part of what this team is," Stackhouse said. "That's going out, being aggressive and going out and playing hard. From that, you get respect across the board from the fans, other teams and the refs. I always got to include the refs."

"I love him," Wizards coach Doug Collins said of Stackhouse. "Jerry has been great. He's a winner, he's fearless and I love him being on our team."

With Jordan in the starting lineup now, some of the focus comes off Stackhouse, although Collins points out they played 20 minutes a game together when Jordan came off the bench. But as George Karl points out, defenses tend to lose reserves when they enter a game. "They can't forget you when you're a starter," Karl says.

Why Stackhouse? Speculate that Jordan knew months ago that this would be his last season and that he would need to have a dynamic scorer on this team when he went back to the front office. Hamilton wasn't going to be that guy.

But that did not assuage his disappointment when the deal came down shortly after he asked for a long-term contract.

	Stackhouse will almost certainly opt out of the final two years in his contract next summer. The betting is that the Wizards will step up and pay him substantially more than the $6 million he gets now. If not, they will have $16 million in cap money to free-agent shop.

"I was definitely shocked," Hamilton said. "When I found out I was getting my hair braided and my agent called me and told me and I was like, 'You're kidding me?' He said, 'No, you're going to Detroit.' Then I was like, OK.' There was no other way to take it."

Hamilton insists it wasn't his game that led to the deal. It was his desire to be well-paid.

"That was the really difficult part to get over," Hamilton said. "I spent three years there. I gave them everything I had. They're always telling me that I was the future of the team and things like that, but in turn they didn't want to extend me. Right then and there, it told me where they were with me. I was definitely committed to them. I wanted to finish my career there. When they said no, it made it difficult for me to get over. One minute they say I'm crucial to the team, the next minute they say they didn't want to do anything.

Stackhouse will almost certainly opt out of the final two years in his contract next summer. The betting is that the Wizards will step up and pay him substantially more than the $6 million he gets now. If not, they will have $16 million in cap money to free-agent shop, but they will be without a principal scorer.

What's more, Stackhouse's aggressive style is more suited to Collins' style of coaching. "The trade really has worked well for both teams," Collins said. "Rip is playing great in Detroit. He's put up great numbers for Detroit and they're winning. Jerry has been what we needed, that attack guy who goes at defenses and gets teams in foul trouble."

The question is whether the trade changed the course of events and, based on current results, it did not. The Pistons are second in the Central, but they have a terrible time scoring, ranking fifth from the bottom at 86.1 points a game. The Wizards, on the other hand, have a terrible time winning. They dropped six straight before clobbering Milwaukee on Tuesday.

You might want to wait for a verdict on this one.

Jeffrey Denberg, who covers the NBA for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.