Gee, I looked at the time Arroyo was in the game. Memories sure play tricks on a lot of people. Four minutes into the 2nd quarter, the score was tied. Both teams had pretty much scored every time down. At that point, can you really say Carlos Arroyo was doing horrible? No. Running the offense great. The other team was scoring, but note the other team was scoring step for step with us the whole 1st quarter. This just continued while Arroyo was running the point. So what happened to make that stint seem so bad? Two straight turnovers, neither of which had anything to do with Carlos Arroyo, gave Orlando 5 points, putting us down 5. Arroyo came out of the game. About the only thing he did wrong was be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Arroyo hit Ben with a nifty pass, leading Ben right to the basket unimpeded. Later, he drove in a bit, drew defenders, and kicked out to Delfino for a triple. He also got to the line once and made one of two. When Evans hit that shot off the dribble, it was Arroyo who gave him the pass at the right time, allowing Evans to use a good pick set by Dyess to free up that shot.
[/font]

[font=Arial]On his defense of Nelson, Nelson got away from him on a few pick and rolls. Poorly defended pick and rolls. Not poorly defended by Arroyo mind you. The other guy, or the team. Twice, poor rotations on defense gave them scores on those pick and rolls. None of which Arroyo was at fault for. The one time Nelson appeared to have Arroyo beat, Arroyo caught up with him, Nelson missed the shot but was bailed out by a bogus call. Arroyo clearly did not foul Nelson on that drive.

Other than that, Delfino's drive was just barely caught, as the camera was staying on Billups until he passed Delfino the ball. Delfino had two Orlando bigs between him and the basket. Sounds about fair to Delfino. But I bet he would think that three of them would be more fair. Delfino exelerated in, easily leaving his own man in the dust. He got past one defender, and right up to the next. Up he goes, a nice nifty shot off the glass right over the guy. Pretty impressive. Besides a few of his own rebounds, Delfino also outjumped Howard on one rebound and managed to knock the ball to our team. The one mistake I thought Delfino made on defense was not his mistake. Hedo had the ball and had just used a pick to get free. Sheed made a mistake right there. You got to stay with Hedo if he is sitting there with the ball on the perimeter. Sheed left Hedo to shoot, choosing to follow his man who had rolled to the basket. Delfino could have covered the big who rolled in. Yes, Delfino, at 230 lbs, can take care of chores like that just fine. Another mistake of Delfino's passing to someone who was wide open and would have scored if he had received the pass. But you got to pass the ball to someone who has enough court awareness that so that he knows the pass is coming. This particular player don't have that. Nice pass though none the less.

Evans got that offensive rebound putback off one of our trick plays where a guy from the perimeter comes in and steals the rebound. I guess it has become too obvious when Delfino pulls this little trick. Other than that and that close in shot from the Dyess pick, Evans messed up a few times on his defense. (How did you think Orlando scored those points.) Just a reminder, thats two straight games the other team has scored every single posession in the first half of a game while Evans is in the game. Yep, it is from his own mistakes too. Not just a coincidence.

Anyone watching, ignore the announcer saying that one shot was beyond Dyess' normal range. It was 3 feet inside the line, which is at the edge of Dyess' normal range, not beyond it at all. In this game, Dyess only nailed two shots, both with some good range. Which means yes he can hit longer range shots without warming up from the post. Nice to know.

This is like 2 out of 4 games now where Delfino only, and not Evans, gets off the bench in the 2nd half of a game. And the 3rd in that stretch where Delfino is seen out there in a game long after Evans has sat down for good. More and more trust is being shown Delfino by his coach.