Always fun to see a win at the Palace. But look, an 8 man rotation will lose in the playoffs, so tonight was yet another setback as far as preparation for the playoffs. Hayes, who is simply given minutes for what?, Stuckey, and Maxiell were the only subs. (Excepting 2 minutes of garbage time where everyone played.)


Rip was awesome, hitting 5 of 6 from 3 land and ending up with 39 points. A couple of those threes were setup by Stuckey drives to the basket. Billups had a good shooting night. Our bigs did a lot of work inside, setting up those easy outside shots for Rip and Billups.(20 points.)


Dyess had a particulary excellent game. His hands would not be pried off any contested rebounds, or loose balls (many that he created while denying post entry passes.) He had a career high 7 steals to go along with 13 rebounds. He only had 9 points, but most of those were the inside variety, exactly what we need from the guy.


Maxiell got several offensive rebounds for us. He looked realy good inside on one play, taking up a lot of space and then just flipping the ball up and in. And he made 4 of 4 from the line.


Stuckey did some scoring, 8 points I believe. His highlight was one drive where he did quite a bit of weaving and layed the ball in. Pretty impressive.


Hayes made one outside shot. Several of his misses were at least post up tries.


Tay hit a few shots, played good D. His highlight was a dunk off a drive in.


Delfino had a nice 2nd quarter for Toronto, as they ended up just one point behind at the half.


Even though it was an 8 man rotation, Flip did keep his bench players in for quite a while in the 1st half. Rip is the only guy who really got overplayed tonight, but he was on fire, did not play last night, and does not need to play tomorro night either. However, Afflalo being out of the rotation does not in anyway help the team. Rip might feel great about scoring all those points, but if he thinks he will not need any help in the playoffs, he is fooling himself.


I am sure a lot of people will applaud Flip for coaching a win. Never mind he got a win that won't translate into playoff success. His vision all along has been to use this exact rotation he used tonight. If he gets his way, there will be no championship this year. Everyone has the right to root for Saunders for another win.. Me, and many like minded people, would rather point out that the playoffs are coming up soon, and point out that this game got us nowhere toward the goal of winning in the playoffs.