Well, slow night on the boards. Not a whole lot of posts on the game. Thanks for the few who did take the time to post their thoughts. Thanksgiving and all. Hope everyone is having a good holiday so far.
Mohammed had a role in this game. He helped check Curry in the 2nd half where otherwise the guy was out of control. I kind of thought it was wrong though to keep him in the game after Curry came out. He picked up two fouls while Curry was out of the game. JMAX had some success guarding Curry in the 2nd half also.
NY chose not to guard Dyess, and Dyess had a field day shooting. Billups had a whole lot of assists to McDyess, and ended up with 14 for the game along with 20 points. And I don't think he ended up having even one turnover.
Rip did not do a whole lot. But hey, our starters rocked, so you can't complain too much about his game.
Tay was on fire thruout the game on his outside shooting.
Amir got to play some in the first half, but Saunders chose to pick on him by taking him out quick when things were not going well. But note, we still had a nine point lead when Amir came out. Amir had just gotten an offensive rebound putback just prior to coming out of the game.
Afflalo was also victimized in the first half. He got inside, was goal tended, and poof, taken out of the game after making one of two. These happened to be the only times we scored for a long stretch. But Afflalo got a 2nd chance in the 2nd half. He came on early for Rip in the 3rd quarter, and stayed out there well into the 4th quarter while the Pistons took pretty much complete control of the game. Note, Afflalo was guarding their shooting guard during this stretch - see below.
What happened after Afflalo came out in the 2nd quarter was ugly. That left Murray to try to guard their point guard. Afflalo was doing the job before that, with Murray of course getting the easier job following the shooting guard. The last of our lead evaporated as NY got past Murray like he was not there. The throw - a - way by Murray did not help either when we were still up by 9. Yeah, and Flip tried to run Flip Murray at point some more in the 2nd half after the game seemed to be well in hand. That big lead did not seem so big with Murray in the game pretending to be a point guard. Billups came back in rather fast.
Maxiell was also in their as we did just fine at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th quarters. JMAX did not get his first foul for the game until the 2nd half of this one.
JMAX missed some shots from the outside. Guess what, you got to practice shots in the game. Jason can hit those. One of Jason's highlights was a dunk off a nice feed by Murray. Otherwise, just tough inside D.
Samb did not play.
Sheed knocked down a pair of threes in the first quarter. Foul trouble kept him playing a whole lot. He is not a good matchup on Curry or Randolph defensively, one too big, one too quick. But on the other hand, Sheed can hit those threes, and they don't gaurd him. Between him and Dyess, we had two guys who could pretty much choose between them who took an open shot.
Dyess did do one post move. A drive to the middle and a score from the left.
We had a lot of scoring in the paint, even though it did not seem like it. At one point, despite all those baskets by Curry inside in the 1st half, we were way ahead of NY on paint scoring. Basically, we had just a bit here and there from several players.
GO PISTONS!!!!!
Comments after reading the boxscore. I will add that Sheed was not in foul trouble. I must have missed that he got injured. Come to think of it, I still have not watched the first two minutes of the 2nd half.
I forgot to mention Hayes. He only played 10 minutes, as Tay played all 38 of his minutes at small forward and Maxiell was taking up all the backup power forward minutes. Hayes, on a broken play, gathered the ball in and took it to the rack and scored - his only shot of the night. He was in the 2nd quarter as the team did badly. I won't say he did anything in particular wrong. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time I guess. I did like that he tended to play toward the basket on offense.
On minutes for the young guys. Afflalo got 16 minutes in this game, not bad. Amir only played 5, and this included a bit of
garbage time at the end of the game. But considering Mohammed did have to play a lot to check Curry tonight, and Maxiell got lots of minutes, I can't complain too much about that. (As long as its no trend.)