Great fun watching the Pistons win. Really nice seats, midcourt, 1st row, right on the midcourt line. My very favorite seat in the Palace. (Upper bowl of course, birds eye view.) The lady next to me was almost cussing under her breath about Flip Murray being cut. Good crowd. The group I was with all had the same opinion about Murray. Cut him now. Bad shots, 2nd straight 1-6 shooting night, while continuously letting the other team score on him. Flip Murray did make a few passes, and he did drive in 3 times, once getting the basket, and twice getting fouled and making both free throws. But the rest of his game was a disaster. One thing at least the Pistons coaching staff avoided tonight is trying to have Murray set up plays.

Hunter played, looked good making some shots. Anyone who knows anything about my opinion about Hunter can skip the next sentence. Hunter is the worst all time shooter in the history of the NBA playoffs. A few shots made in preseason are meaningless.

Next, the good stuff. I won't talk about the starters at all, as hey, its just preseason and who really cares. I hope Rip is alright after apparently twisting an ankle.

I will talk about Dyess, a guy who fits in with our starters like oil and water. Sheed already shoots way too many outside shots, and Dyess just does nothing but add to the problem. Dyess pretty much played for the other team tonight, with his missed shots starting nice fast breaks for Denver.

JMAX, the guy who should be starting for us had a very decent rebounding night, but I must caution that Denver did not play much of a rotation in the front court. Camby did play, but not that much, and he was it as far as good rebounders for Denver. Still, JMAX certainly outrebounded the rest of our team pretty strongly. He also made some outside shots. And free throws. He did miss a couple late that could have made the win a bit easier, but those were the only two he missed out of 8. He finally did seal the deal with two cluth free throws at the end. We got some dunks from JMAX too.

Denver started a pretty sorry bunch in the first half, but our starters apparently were not too interested and did not get ahead much. Despite all of Murray's missed shots in the first half, we did expand the lead with him in. A lead that pretty much evaporated in the 3rd quarter with our starters in. But note Denver started a better group in the 2nd half.

Despite some stars being missing for Denver, Denver still had some serious fire power out there. This game was no cakewalk. A Saginaw guy, Roberson, was on fire, and a guy named Van Wafer can light up the scoreboard too. And Bobby Jones. Still, with little front court help, this was not a really good test of our team.

Not much in the way of highlights from Stuckey or Afflalo. Just the one fairly spectacular drive in by Stuckey. But Afflalo managed a triple, and several made free throws while Stuckey hit some key free throws down the stretch. Indeed, as a team, the Pistons hardly missed any free throws.

No Amir again. No Mejia. Both injured to some extent. No Samb. No Dupree. No Afflalo in the 1st half- for the 2nd straight game. Here is a good thing about Afflalo - Denver very seldom tried to score on him. Nor on Stuckey for that matter. Any guesses who they did light up all night - anytime they had the chance? I won't even bother saying it.

Now for Hayes. The guy was just awesome. Nice post up move going to the middle, and a whole lot of made jumpers off the catch and shoot or the cut and catch and shoot. He only tried one pull up, and missed it of course. Now if he can that down to zero tries. Hey, this was one awesome shooting display by Hayes. The guy don't need much space to get that shot off, with lots of confidence. And I could not find much fault with his D either. He played a lot of power forward tonight, with Afflalo playing small forward and Stuckey and Flip in the backcourt. In other words, he looked fine defensively, as a power forward, but again against a pretty weak frontcourt. (Like 39 year old Augmon.)GO PISTONS!!!!!