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Originally Posted by max  Jay - I thought for sure you would say Darko had a bad game. Looking at the box it does pretty much match his stat line. I was not impressed. His defense was not that good and he was not helping the team out very much.
From what I saw in that game, unless Darko takes a pay cut I doubt the Magic will re-sign him. |
You are seriously INSANE if you think that Orlando doesn't want to resign Darko. Why wouldn't they? The only guy to score on him was Sheed on his first shot taken on Darko, after that Sheed went at least 0-3 on his next shots defended by Darko. Jmax drew two fouls on Darko, but for the most part, THE PISTONS WEREN"T SCORING IN THE PAINT, all of their damage came from the perimeter.
The Magic didn't give Detroit layups, the Pistons relied on jumpers to win (which has been proven not to work in the playoffs when your legs are dead) while the Magic got points in the paint AND GOT TO THE FT LINE (where they did a very poor job of converting, missing 12 FTs).
The key to the game was DETROIT EXECUTED down the stretch and made HUGE PLAYS. Billups was on fire in the 3rd quarter and hit big shots in the fourth before Rip sealed the deal with a couple clutch jumpers.
Orlando isn't going anywhere, Dwight Howard and Darko Milicic aren't going to shrink and get smaller, they will learn from games like this and they will be back, bigger and better. They will grow from losses like this. They had a chance to take this thing and they gave it away with inexperience and mistakes.
Orlando's defense was tough, we didn't get inside on them and they didn't foul us too much. 19 fouls to our 24 fouls. They are a solid team and one that I don't think the Pistons would want to face in the playoffs.
I don't see how anyone can say this Orlando team isn't for real, what's not real about them? They played Defense. They didn't give up many layups or FTs. They get to the FT line, they have a stud bigman in D. Howard. They have pretty good depth.
Darko didn't play a great game, but he wasn't bad either. He did a very good job defensively (as evidenced by very few layups allowed and HIS MAN not getting good shots). He just doesn't get touches in their offense. Arroyo ain't giving the ball up, so DMC just doesn't get his number called, but if he starts to get touches and develops his offensive game, the Magic will be a very dangerous team. He did make a couple nice passes to Dwight Howard out of the high post and found Dooling for an open look off of a postup and things like that go un-noticed by the casual fan.
I don't have the +/- numbers for the game, but I would like to see them.
It seemed when Darko was in, the Pistons just weren't getting in the paint. He did make a difference defensively.