Thats twice now Detroit has looked pretty awesome against New Orleans. Yes, Paul was playing injured, and West was out, but this was still a quality team we played. Look, they went up 11-0 on our starters to start the game. They can play, even as they were today.


Maxiell, like so many times this season, came on and injected energy. In his first minute in, he made a jumper, then got a spectacular block. (which he repeated in the 2nd half but got a bogus foul called on him.) I believe it was Ely. He was up to dunk the ball. JMAX was still down on the ground. The ball was pretty much at the rim about to be slammed thru when JMAX explodes upwards like a rocket to swat the ball right out of the guy's hands.


Tay played shooting guard to backup Rip in both halves. And this looked like a great idea since Hayes was totally on fire. 29 points with 7 made threes. That tied his career high I believe. Tay is the only guy who played heavy minutes in what ended up being a 21 point blowout for us. Since Rip only got like 30 minutes, he could have played a bit more while Tay played a bit less, and neither would have played too many minutes. In any case, Rip got some rest in this one.


Billups also got some good rest. Stuckey is on quite the up-note of late. He hit an outside shot. He got to the bucket and scored. He nailed a couple of free throws. He personally got N.O. in foul trouble in the fourth quarter. Decent defense as always. Billups did not need to come back in for the 4th quarter.


Amir got a few minutes of garbage time at the end of the game. Theo got a few minutes to end the 2nd quarter. Theo's highlight offensively was a move to the lane from the left where he finished with a high hook off glass. Not bad on D either.


Billups quietly had a very good game, getting to the hoop some, hitting some shots from the outside.


Rip did so so. His highlight was nailing a three for us. Sheed nailed a couple of threes himself.


Tay did not do that great on offense, but the team did very well indeed with him at shooting guard, mostly paired with Stuckey, who was plus 24 for the game as I see someone mentioned. (and Hayes and JMAX were also plus 24 or so if I recall what I read.)


Dixon only played garbage time. Still managed to fumble the ball in his short minutes. He did nail an outside shot right after Afflalo had done the same. I do not like seeing Afflalo not playing, but I am equally as relieved Dixon did not get into the rotation tonight. That we certainly do not need. Tay as backup shooting guard can work. (Though Hayes is not automatically the right guy to backup small forward just because of this one game. In effect, he backed up shooting guard and small forward since he was sub used to spell both Tay and Rip.)


After starting down 0-11, we outscored them by 32 the rest of the way. Pretty much identical to the last time we played them.

Flip said after the last game "Don't think the young kids are out of the rotation just because they did not play one game." Well, Afflalo and Amir have now been sat out two straight games, and Afflalo has played very little of late. Note, Dixon has still not replaced Afflalo. Afflalo has been taken out of the rotation, but Dixon hardly played the last two games. (and the last time he did play, the few minutes in the last game, was a disaster for us.) There is no reason not to end the Dixon experiment and simply start playing Afflalo again. Now watch Flip say we got to play Hunter to fill the void. Nope, Afflalo is still quite available, and still playing great whenever given minutes.


Amir is still a very good player who needs to be part of our rotation. JMAX did well in this game tonight. Who knows just how good Amir could have done. It is not a competition between these two. There is room for both to play, and Dyess, and Theo, and Sheed.