First this game was lost at the beginning of the second qtr when Cavs went on their 9-0 run to begin the second qtr. If I recall Arroyo, Delfino, Dice and two starters were in there and both the defense (giving up 2 quick treys) and the play and shot selection by our guys was atrocious.
Shot selection in the first qtr was bad too as Rip, CB and Prince could not hit the perimeter shot and only Rip tried to penetrate for a higher percentage shot. I am not sure why if the shot is not falling, Prince does not drive to attack the rim and dish off if necessary. They were killing us in the paint and we failed to adjust anytime during the game. I'm
Lee, but this loss should not be blamed on Evans, even if didn't he have a good game, because we would have lost whether he was in there for his non-productive 12 minutes or if he had missed the plane ride over there.
This is another game where we got out hustled for a stretch of about 6 minutes or so and gave up an extended scoring run that we could not answer due to poor shooting/shot selection. Even in the third qtr when we were in the penalty with a full 7 minutes left in the period & we
still took questionable shots that should have been in the paint instead of outside. Yeah we got
14 of our 23 points from the FT line, but I expected that the coaching would have emphasized going inside to slow the game down and put points on the board while the clock wasn't ticking.
Even when we made a run to cut it down to 10 in the 4th, we were still jacking up threes when we had plenty of time (7.5 mins) to complete the comeback. They only made two more threes than we did, but three of them counted, (the 2 at the beginning of the 2nd qtr and the one James hit
to put the score back up to 13 when it appeared we were making that run in the middle of the 4th. It seem that everyone of our long misses turned into a bucket on the other end.
Game lowlights>
CB & Prince shooting
4-23.
They outscored us
46-32 in the paint
They outpaced us 20-6 in fast break points
Never really thought about the 72-10 record, but a win today and we could have been looking at a possible 15 win streak before the meeting with the Spurs on 1/12. With an average of two losses a month, we could be looking at 70-12 maybe
Right now, a game at time will do and the Pistons need to forget this one and go out an party.
