fire flip! he was brought here for :
1. Offense...failed
2. Develop Darko...failed
3. NBA Finals......failed
I know we played awful, but did he relly have our respect? I'll see yall...vacation time.
Blaha already pushing next year's tickets...I hate marketing.....

Just saw the interview by Gray with Rip---that imbecile kept asking the same tired questions and Rip just kept answering the exact same thing, open looks, shots wouldn't fall and come back next year.

great one ahb, we will see if kenny adds Hearns or kid rock to his picture

Mo looks like mini-me... LOL

Good one, lol

A few random thoughts:

1) Our 36 and 5 start was deceptive, because we finished 28 and 13, which was very good, but not that much better than Miami, if it was better at all. As Micro pointed out, Miami gelled at a time when we were not at our best. Our fantastic start contributed to an overconfidence of the kind that afflicted the 2004 Lakers. Once that overconfidence was punctured (as it was by Cleveland), this team became very vulnerable.

2) The emphasis on getting home court advantage in the playoffs helped spur that 36 and 5 start, but it also led to very conservative coaching decisions regarding playing the bench. Flip would not play the bench during the regular season if it meant creating even a slight risk of a loss. We never found out what Cato, Davis and our rookies could do, and Delfino's confidence was shattered and never given an opportunity to be restored.

3) Flip was revealed in the playoffs to be a second or third rank coach who really had no positive impact on any of the games, either in terms of coaching decisions or motivation. He is not an elite coach, by any stretch, and it showed in the playoffs. Whatever Larry's faults, Flip does not even close to him in coaching ability (he looks bad by comparison to Riley as well). Flip's lack of emotional intensity (remember how Larry used to run up and down the sidelines barking instructions) was very evident, and he often had a kind of nervous or lost demeanor during tough times in these games (something that Larry, Riley and other elite coaches don't show). Unless Larry did something absolutely intolerable that we do not know about (e.g., threaten to resign during the NBA finals unless Davidson renogotiated his contract), I think in retrospect it made no sense to get rid of an elite coach, if all we had to replace him with was a middling coach who had never distinguished himself in the NBA. (To those who say that Larry was not fired, but instead quit, I must ask, "If he quit, why did we pay him seven million to buy out his contract?" Plainly, he was let go.)

4) Our newfound offense in the regular season was a bit of a mirage, because defensive intensity is so much greater in the playoffs than it is in the regular season, especially in the later rounds. As good as our three-point shooting and jump-shooting was during the regular season, our shooters are not the kind of great shooters that (like Wade) that can excel even in the face of a swarming, playoff-intensity defense. Rip is a good example. As good as he is, if he has a split second less of a look, he is prone to misses. We saw this in the San Antonio series last year (when Bowen was guarding him), and we saw it in the Miami series. When pressed defensively, he will force shots that at least for him are low percentage shots, rather than pass the ball.

5) The fact that our starting five has been together for so long was viewed by many commentators as a great accomplishment. But maybe having the same group together for so long leads to complacency. Riley realized he had to shake up the Miami team (both by making over the team and by assuming the coaching reigns), and maybe every team has to do that after a couple of years like the ones we had in 2004 and 2005. You can never stand still.

6) We fought for home court advantage during the regular season, which was understandable in light of the way things turned out in the finals last year. Buy maybe the emphasis on home court advantage was overdone, both by the players and by the coaching staff. Miami lacked home court advantage, and it did not hurt them in this series. Indeed, I wonder if we would have been better off playing our first two games in Miami in this series.

There's nothing like getting eliminated to bring out the trolls.

For the last few seasons, I just assumed that peaking in the playoffs was part of the Pistons' identity. In 2004, they peaked in May and June. Not this year--the high water mark was months ago, and it's been downhill since, with a free fall in the playoffs. Joe D. has a lot of work to do. He has a team with a identity crisis that is now obvious to everyone. But let's not forget how quickly he conjured up a winner out of a team that had been mediocre to dreadful for many years. I think he can do it again.

He's on thin ice.

__________________
To all of my friends, comrades and companions at PF.com

Thank you for another great season!

Good work, Pistonloyalist. The offense was a mirage. Right now, it is in a shambles. Eleven games of nothing. Right again, it is hard to stay at the top and be the target. Everyone saw us and not SA as the real target. But...

We have not offense. Just come out on Chauncey and he will have to drive which he is not good at. Right, if Rip gets the quick look--great--but soon as he puts the ball on the floor his percentage goes down. But a lot of that is coaching/adjustments. Our players played to their weaknesses and not their strengths.

We need a speedy point guard who can break down the defense to go along with Rip and Chauncey. We need a scorer. Our only one on one scorer was Sheed, and he was out of it.

But is it Sheed's fault. He really doesn't have a role. Where do we want Sheed and Rip to do damage from? Look at Haslem--an average player--but they ask him to do only a few things--things that he can do well.

We don't have a great defense either. We did not adjust to take away anything. But we need perimeter speed and we needed it last year.