Quite a contrast in the shooting this game vs. last. We hit a bunch of triples. Some might complain, but this has gotten us to 25-4 now. And in my opinion, we shot well enough last game too. More on that in a moment.

CB got his new career high. 37 points. That included a whole bunch of free throws and 4 made triples. And he got Nelson in foul trouble too. Very important as Nelson is normally the big scorer at the end of games for Orlando. Last the announcers mentioned it, CB had 8 assists. Just one turn.

Rip hit a couple of triples and basically had it going on. Marvelous drives inside (thank Brown for adding that to his game) and nailing his midrangers too.

Tay hit several shots. Sheed did not shoot a whole lot. I know he made that one triple. Dyess hit a shot or two.

The game stayed with our starters in. Delfino and Dyess were first off the bench, with Evans and Arroyo following shortly. We played these four bench players together for about 5 minutes, first with Ben, and then with Sheed. With Ben, we held even. Part of that was Ben himself going inside and scoring. And Evans had an offensive rebound putback along with a short jumper off his own dribble. The last there again is something we have only seen the last, oh, about 4 to 5 games from Evans.

This is how the scoring went with the bench in. Both sides scored every time down for quite a while. But we ended up down 5 points before the bench came off the floor. We failed to score a couple of times, but they continued to score every time down.

This is two straight games where if Evans is in the game in the 1st half, the other team scores every time down. Draw your own conclusions if you will, but our defensive rotations were nowhere. Evans did get an offensive rebound putback. But that has nothing to do with passing the ball either to him or from him. Neither did Evans' shot off his dribble. Yes, I cheered when he scored, but I would be more impressed if he could connect with his team in the flow of the offense. We were scoring every time down due to excellent ball handling provided by Arroyo and Delfino.

In the 2nd half of the game, only Dyess and Delfino came off the bench. There was no garbage time. Our bench, what we have to call our bench, Dyess and Delfino, was in their in the 2nd half as we took a tie game and got a nine point lead. Delfino took turns resting Rip then Tay. Highlights for Delfino in this game included a couple of offensive rebounds, one he put back up and in, a triple, and one drive to the basket for a score. And one missed shot, which we got the offensive rebound on.

Delfino's defense was pretty darn good. His man lost him behind a screen once. Thats not a lot for all the time he played. We even got to see Delfino gaurd Hill some. No real problem there.

Old business. I said last game during halftime that we could still win the game, provided Evans did not come into the game in the 2nd half. After watching Delfino tonight, I am more positive than ever that we win that one if Evans did not play at all. Actually, I bet we would have whipped Cleveland pretty good. A guy who does not know your defensive rotations or offensive sets just messes your team up. You can't always get it back when that guy leaves the floor. Sound harsh. Oh well, its my opinion. Delfino needs to play more minutes yet, or simply find someone else to take Evans' minutes.

Dyess played a whole lot, giving plenty of rest to our bigs. The only guy who played a ton in this one was Billups. We just had a couple days off. Next game Friday. Thats two days off before the next game. Good as time as any for Billups to get some serious burn.

Again, no Darko. I won't quit mentioning it. We won another game. If the coach increases Delfino's time from this game, we got something from this game that will go toward winning the playoffs. Player development is going to win, not homecourt. Homecourt is fine, but not at the expense of not develping your bench. We still got to do better.

Ben was huge in this game, keeping at bay pretty well young Mr. Howard. He got his bounds, and he scored some too. His usual putbacks and his own on pretty good moves. As the announcers pointed out, Ben is just 6-6 1/2. He moves very well for a big and why not use it. (Again, kudos to Brown for working on Ben's O)

I'd say this post is long enough. GO PISTONS!!!!!