They say those who do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them. Fortunately for the Detroit Pistons, it appears Flip Saunders learned his lesson after last season’s postseason failure.

The Pistons’ head coach guided his team to a 64-win campaign in his first year at the helm a year ago, giving Detroit the league’s best record and making his squad the favorite to win the championship entering the playoffs.

Alas, his team peaked far too soon. After a 36–5 start to the season, the momentum slowly petered out. Detroit was a more human 28–13 after the break, and in the postseason its offense inexplicably unraveled. Up 2–0 on the Cleveland Cavaliers in the second round, the Pistons lost three straight before squeaking out the series win, and suffered a six-game defeat to eventual champion Miami in the conference finals.

Tasting playoff failure wasn’t a new experience for Saunders — his Minnesota team failed to win the conference despite being the no. 1 seed in 2004, and prior to that season his teams worked on a sevenyear string of first-round eliminations. Nonetheless, last year felt different. Detroit was being compared with the greatest teams of all time at midseason; for it not to even win the conference was a far greater disappointment than the failure of the Timberwolves to get past Shaq and Kobe in 2004.

To his credit, Saunders took action, and handled affairs this year with a longer-term view. Detroit’s 24–17 first half didn’t engender any comparisons with the 1996 Bulls, but look a little closer and you’ll see that seeds were being planted for a more rewarding spring.

Saunders was using — and trusting — the bench more, developing players like Carlos Delfino and Jason Maxiell so the team could be more resistant to injuries in the stretch run. That way when stalwarts like Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton missed games in the second half, the Pistons kept chugging en route to a 28–13 second half — matching the mark of a year earlier, and with their elevator still going up.

Now that it’s playoff time, we’re seeing Saunders’ strategy bear fruit. The positive signs first became apparent in the first round, in which Detroit easily swept aside an overmatched Orlando team. While that didn’t raise too many eyebrows around the league, discerning viewers will note a contrast from a year earlier — a blowout loss to Milwaukee in Game 3 of the first round was the first sign that all was not well.

In the second round series against Chicago, Detroit’s strength has been even more obvious. Despite the fact that one of last year’s stalwarts, center Ben Wallace, now plays for their opponent, the Pistons have totally dominated the first two games of the series.

And unlike the Magic, these Bulls aren’t pushovers. Chicago won 49 games in the regular season, led the NBA in Defensive Efficiency (my measure of a team’s points allowed per 100 opponent possessions), and had become one of the first round’s biggest stories after a surprising four-game sweep of defending champion Miami in the first round.

Yet the Pistons have made the Bulls seem like rank amateurs thus far, winning the first two contests by a total of 47 points. The domination in the backcourt has been particularly striking. Helped by a size advantage at both guard positions, Detroit All-Stars Chauncey Billups (6-foot-3) and Richard Hamilton (6-foot-7) have toyed with Chicago’s smaller Kirk Hinrich (6-foot-3) and Ben Gordon (6-foot-2) — two players who had befuddled Miami just days earlier.

In Game 1, the Detroit duo each scored 20 points to lead Detroit’s 108–87 rout, with Billups’s points coming in an easy 27 minutes of work. His superior strength overwhelmed Gordon in the early going, sending Chicago’s leading scorer to the bench with two fouls just two and a half minutes into the game to pave the way for the rout. It didn’t help that Gordon found little space at the other end as well, scoring just seven points after shredding Miami for 25.5 a game in the first round.

“I guarantee there won’t be any more games like that,” said Billups after Game 1, but that quote was about Detroit’s only mistake in the playoffs thus far — it turned out there was an exact replica just 48 hours later. On Monday, the Pistons again buried the Bulls with their defensive effort and offensive execution, with the final score this team being 108–87.

Again, the “Palace Guards” did most of the damage. The Bulls switched Gordon onto Hamilton in this one, and he immediately went to work, finishing with 24 points, nine boards, and six assists. Billups threw in 14 points and 10 dimes of his own. Meanwhile, Gordon again struggled, making only three shots from the field, and Hinrich missed all seven of his shots from the floor — including an airball on an open look from 15 feet.

All told, the Pistons are 6–0 in the postseason thus far. They are no. 1 among playoff teams in both Defensive Efficiency and Offensive Efficiency (my measure of a team’s points scored per 100 possessions). They are beating their chief rival for the Eastern Conference championship in every way possible and seem to have little reason to fear either New Jersey or Cleveland in the next round.

However, I bring up Detroit’s play at this very moment because of what happened a year ago. Then, the Pistons had a 2–0 lead on Cleveland in the second round, with the first game being an even bigger blowout than this year’s win over Chicago. But their fortunes turned suddenly from there. Detroit went 5–7 in its final 12 playoff games and bowed out of the postseason unexpectedly soon.

Don’t expect a repeat. Detroit’s starters aren’t running out of gas this time, with in-season injuries to Billups and Hamilton providing a silver lining by replenishing their energy reserves for the postseason charge. They’re getting big contributions from the bench, as Delfino, Maxiell and long-time stalwart Antonio McDyess have all performed well. And even without four-time Defensive Player of the Year Wallace, the Pistons’ defense looks as ferocious as it has ever been.

But the most important reason to expect this year to be different is the awareness in the Detroit organization of what happened a year ago. Saunders took a completely different approach to this campaign, devaluing the early portion of the season with the goal of building to a crescendo in May. Thanks to his success in learning from last year’s failure, he won’t be doomed to repeat it.

jhollinger@nysun.com