Good win. Good use of the bench. Good amount of playing time for the young guys. Amir did not play much, but he got some important 2nd half minutes. With him and Afflalo in the game, we took some control of the game to end the 3rd quarter.


I guess some people would miss it, since maybe they don't pay attention to what Saunders says much. Saunders had kept talking about how Afflalo had to play within his game. Not try to do too much. Basically, he was saying it was not Afflalo's role to shoot the ball. This was over several interviews. Well, tonight, they let Afflalo shoot. The Pistons were looking for him to shoot. And the announcers were saying how Afflalo had to start looking for his shot more. Hopefully, this is a trend, as Afflalo is especially good at getting into the paint and making his short jumpers. (or getting fouled and making his free throws.) Afflalo was his usual outstanding self on D, although Williams scored on him some.


Jason Maxiell had a pretty awesome game. Dalembert is a fairly good center in this league, but he was defended just fine by Maxiell and Maxiell scored over him repeatedly. Jason basically just goes up into rarified air and cans those jumpers. Remember just a game or two ago Jason missed some shots. Thats in game practice, allowing him the success he had tonight. Jason got the start for Sheed who is still nursing a bone bruise in his knee. Supposedly, this is not serious and they expect he will play Sunday afternoon against Utah.


Mohammed played extensive minutes in this game. He did well on the boards. Not so great on D, not so great on offense. To my perspective, Flip Saunders at one point pulled just about the entire squad rather than embarrass Mohammed by pulling just him for his poor D.


Rip hit several shots in the second half after struggling in the first. He was a game time decision due to the flu.


Tay got player of the game with 15 points, just about all from outside jumpers - including our only two made threes for the game.


Billups had a solid game. Not a lot of scoring, but not many shots taken either. He ended up with about 8 assists. Thats pretty good, but even better when you consider all the scoring we got from Maxiell posting up. You don't get an assist for feeding the post. (The perfect offense would have no assists. You would just feed the post everytime.)


Murray did not do bad in this game other than some dead spots where he was pretending to be a point guard. He gave us a bit of scoring and was an ok matchup on defense for the most part. The play of the game was a nice assist for a Maxiell fast break dunk.


Amir did not play much. His highlight was a dunk to end the 3rd, on a nifty assist from Afflalo.


Hayes, other than getting that garbage time bucket last game - well, I can't remember him scoring a meaningful point in quite a while. He is shooting little and missing the shots he does take. He does receive a lot of defensive pressure, and he does play inside quite a bit. His most important function seems to be as a spare power forward - althoug Amir could be getting those minutes sometimes.


Dyess never went on any tear in this game. Instead, a bucket here, a bucket there. It all added up to about 12 points on good enough shooting percentage. Some of those buckets were timely ones ending scoring droughts for us. But I will still complain some because I believe Dyess should be playing more inside and getting to the line for us. (And that means drawing fouls that can be very helpful getting the opponent in foul trouble.)


Samb did not play. He certainly could have considering all the minutes Mohammed played.


The bench played a whole lot in this one. Including all but the last few minutes of the 2nd quarter. Why the starters came in then was a mystery to me. They did not do so well, and the bench was still doing just fine when they came out of the game. The announcers contributed this better performance to the fact that the subs were brought in one at a time, starting a bit early in the 1st - compared to an average Flip coached game. Afflalo came in early. Mohammed was in early too due to foul trouble.


8-4. Good. Young guys are playing. Good. Stuckey back in 10 days. Very good. Am I happy. Kind of. I still would like to see more of Amir playing, and I don't want to see Samb disappear from the rotation. Still in all, good job Flip Saunders.
GO PISTONS!!!!!