ya know, i'm normally pretty calm. if we lose, whatever. but for some reason i got more and more upset as the game went on and yelled out some pretty nasty things to the tv. why did i get upset? let's see...

- it was clear the bigs got tired in the 4th, they didn't close out on shooters like okur and making sheed log 20 mins in the 1st half...what the f
- interviewing memo after the game and being all buddy-buddy; are you f'ing kidding me? i don't care if he played in detroit, he just owned your team and you're going to give him an interview?
- blaha. love you man, but that sugarcoating was f'ing nauseating. you call a game exciting when we get absolutely destroyed in the 2nd half? you non-chalantly say 'the pistons have elected not to play amir tonight' and that's it? you make it sound like we not only won, but were subjected to a good basketball game, when it was total horsepoop. call it like it is.
- utah was on a back-to-back and had far more energy? bull.

there were very few positives in this game. dice was great in the 1st quarter and rip was great in the 1st half. stuckey and rip have found a nice rhythm together, and he looked pretty comfortable out there. stuckey also played pretty good defense on deron and prevented him from driving the lane. maxiell was a beast (yet only got 21 mins in a 3-man rotation?).

at least we developed stuckey a little bit more so the game wasn't a total loss, but other than that the game was garbage. afflalo got outmuscled, the starters played too many minutes, we forced the offense and got too many charging calls, and we played 1-on-1 basketball in the 2nd half while different pistons took turns playing hero and hoisting 3s. rip was 2-of-9 in the 2nd half. flip refused to call timeouts during utah's big run. we refused to play defense in the 2nd half.

i really, really hope joe tells flip that he can start looking for another job if amir gets another DNP on the year. he earned his time. he started getting the newspaper love and attention. he was making a difference. and he was perfect for this game to take advantage of utah's slow big men.

i've been pretty lenient regarding flip's coaching all year, as i think he's done a fair job, and over the past 2 months has done very well with developing the bench unit. but today he reverted back to his old habis, and not only did it cause a loss but it needlessly overplayed our starters and eliminated bench development time. listen, we're not catching boston for the 1st seed. with 24 games to go, we could most likely lose every single one and still make the playoffs. play the damn bench every game and don't wimp out like a little scared wussy.