Flip needs to go ASAP!!

And take Rasheed with you!!

What a pathetic performance in the 4th Quarter last night by Rasheed and Tayshaun last night.

'Sheed, KG keep hands to selves PLAYOFF TICKER | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press


Wonder what was wrong ??


Ouch.

Yikes, some of that is just . Flipper's not a bad guy, man..now I kinda feel bad for him. And Sheed must not have liked being called out for hugging KG, "the enemy", whether "in jest" or not.

Flip does need to go for not being a good in game coach and lack of better bench integration. But just him leaving will not solve the Pistons lack of a low post player and lack of rebounds issue. Relying on the starting five is not a huge mistake as some make it out to be. The best players have to play at the biggest times and make the plays. Amir and AA may have helped a bit but their lack of PT did not lose this series. The starting five never showed up consistently as a single unit. You will not win hard fought games when only half of your starting unit shows up on any given night. Dice is right, sick of the excuses from the players.

There are some really excellent posts here regarding what went wrong in this series, and what should be done to rectify our weaknesses. Now that the series is over, the analyses are more sober and calmer then some of what was posted after bad games in this round and earlier rounds. But for that reason, the analyses are that much more convincing.

Flip is certainly part of the problem, but of course he is not the entire problem. Game 5 was the killer. A few different substitutions or smart timeouts might have changed the outcome of that game. And if we win game 5, that would have put us in the driver's seat in game 6, and probably changed the outcome of the series. When LB was here, you always got the impression that his mind was working every minute of the game, and he was thinking of every possible way to gain an advantage during the course of a game. A master tactician. You just don't get that feeling with Flip. I think we do need a new coach, and perhaps (as some have suggested) we should promote one of Flip's current assistants.

As many have said, our front line is just too old and slow. Dice and Sheed probably peaked two or three years ago, and are in the decline of their careers. The result is inconsistent performances, and games where they are beaten badly by younger players who are good, but not great (think Perkins vs. Dice in game 5). Some thought Sheed played badly tonight because he was forced to muzzle himself and control his emotions for fear of getting that next technical. That may have been part of it, but the technicals and outbursts have always been a problem that we accepted as a tradeoff for consistent excellent play. It is much harder to accept that tradeoff with a decline in play.

Tay has now shown a pattern the past two (maybe three) ECF finals of struggling badly on the offensive end when he has to guard a premier, slashing type player. It also seems as if his slight build hurts him more in the playoffs, when play near the basket is much more physical than it is in the regular season.

Joe D. seems very high on Amir (he gave him a very good contract to keep him here), but if so why didn't he insist on having Flip play him and develop him more during the regular season, and (related to that) why didn't he insist on more playoff minutes for him, especially in this series when we so desperately needed rebounding help? Joe apparently forced that kind of development of Stuckey by Flip (and the team did a very nice job of that). But why did he not do the same with Amir? Did Joe really fulfill his promise to Amir to give him lots of playing time? I don't think so.

I think Game 3 was a much bigger problem than Game 5.

Perhaps I am not disappointed because I KNOW changes are going to happen. You are right. It is never good to blow it all up. Just ask the Lakers who were a low playoff tier team and who were about to trade the best player in the NBA before they got Gasol.

If we get a new coach, then I would like to see how Sheed plays under him before we make a trade. If one of the starters do not get moved we need more players off the bench that can legitimately play better than the starters consistently. I think Stuckey has done that under Chauncey this year.

We need a backup for Tay and a coach badly.

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"That's the end, man." Rasheed Wallace

The other thing I was thinking about was that the 04 and 05 teams performed at a much higher level than this year's team and really seem vastly superior to this year's team. The dropoff in intensity and execution seems very large, even though the core players are the same.

Game 3 may have been a bigger problem, but I think it is harder to put that loss on Flip than game 5, unless one believes that it is a coach's job to motivate a team that is three games away from going to the finals to play hard on their home court.

That's because we had a huge dropoff in coaching. The Pistons don't have "superstar" players but we had a "superstar" coach. We lost him though.