| game report This game was more about Flip experimenting with stuff than anything else. One, lets see if we give Tay enoungh shots he will come out of a shooting slump. He didn't. Two, lets see if Delfino can guard James. He couldn't. Not that bad really, but not needed at all. Prince could have played a bit more until Bron came out of the game. Three, lets see if Evans can do better. No, he missed all his shots. Except for a few rebounds, he gave us no points, no assists, no ball handling at all. Worse, he was playing when Delfino should have been playing.
We fell in love with outside shooting. Got behind. To start the 2nd half we were not shooting any jumpers and were getting back into the game. CB decided to lead us right back down the wrong path. Missed another triple. Not to mention he threw the ball away several times. But that does not matter so much. You will throw the ball away on occasion trying to go inside. What killed us is everyone else imitating Billups, trying to be a hero from the outside. We needed to go inside in this game.
There is nothing wrong with trying some outside shots. But if they are not going, you switch up. Altogether, the Pistons failed to do that in this game.
Ben Wallace on many occasions guarded Wade just fine. Further pointing up the simple fact we could go big with Ben at small forward. This leaves Delfino as the shooting guard, where he should be playing, and Evans right out of the rotation. Or play Maxiell. Or Johnson. Got to change something because this experiment with Evans is not working. Evans was given a quick shot at guarding Bron and it ended real real bad. Bron lost Evans so easily and came in and scored at the basket with Evans no where in sight. Again, if Evans can't defend, don't play the guy.
Arroyo made some mistakes in this game. And missed a couple of shots. That pales in comparison to all the shots Billups missed and all the bad passes he made. But I suppose there will people who find reason to hate on Arroyo. But think about this. Flip is foisting Evans on Arroyo's unit. Not easy to work around that. Not that both Arroyo and Billups did there best at it. Hey, much easier to just remove the player than try to work around a guy not contributing to the offensive sets.
Dyess was off. Not good on a day where everyone else was too. Arroyo left Dyess as wide open as possible on one shot.
The only real effective play we saw in this game was the brief time we had Arroyo and Delfino in together with Evans over on the bench. I'd say if Flip wants to try an experiment, try Arroyo and Delfino in the backcourt, with Delfino bringing the ball up. Then if it bogs down into a halfcourt set, let Arroyo run that. And please remember, no Evans. That is too much to overcome. |