i'll try to throw some things out there that others haven't touched on:

there were a TON of raptors fans in the crowd. i'm guessing this is similar to last year when toronto offered ticket deals for Pistons to sit behind their basket. same thing here - my friend and i pulled in to see a LOT of charter buses, and most of the raptors' crowd was behind the basket near their bench. the loud cheer after toronto's first bucket was surprising, and it definitely got their players fired up in the 1st quarter.

this was the 1st real sellout i've seen this year, and they actually announced it over the PA this time. there was also a fun skit on the jumbotron of the raptors' mascot. he came to detroit and stole a lollipop from a little girl, pushed a lady out of the way for a cab, something else i forgot, and then wrote bad stuff about Hooper on his parking space. then Hooper backed into him with his car and all was well. pretty funny skit actually.

there were 2 raps fans sitting near us, and being extremely judgmental about all canadians based on these two, they like to look like euros and be annoying they were very supportive of their team and cheering louder than most pistons fans for the first few quarters. actually, the palace is one of the best places to go if you're a fan of the visiting team - most pistons fans are too apathetic and disinterested in heckling...unless it's the playoffs (or palacevision when you've got 10,000-20,000 young people in the stands).

as for the game, bosh was getting pissed that sheed was doing so well, and tried to force his game on the offensive end to no avail. sheed wore him out and this was the best game i've seen him play all year.

tj ford is super quick, but still prone to turnovers. he can get in the lane but often has no idea what to do after that. bargnani got our bigs to bite on his pump-fake at the 3-point line about 4 times in a row. kid has some skills and he should turn into a pretty decent player.

the main thing that toronto gives us trouble with reminded me of our Finals series against the spurs. toronto has several players capable of hitting the three, and use their guards to penetrate very deep in the lane and then throw a very long kickout pass for the open 3. san antonio loved doing this to us since we collapsed whenever a player got that deep in the lane. toronto is uniquely setup to take advantage of this - although i imagine that the Pistons are not the only team to get burned by this.

not sure what the replays showed, but it looked like calderon totally flopped on rip. from the stands it didn't even look like rip's elbow touched him. but we got some bad calls early, and favorable calls late.

there were an extraordinary amount of good looking women in their 30s and 40s here, which was a bonus.

about 700 fans got to shoot a free throw on the court after the game, and usually it's ugly, but there were a lot of nice swishes from the crowd.

you probably didn't need to know some of that, but yeah. this was a great game, was actually fun to attend, and it was a good crowd. can't wait until the playoffs...

oh, and jose calderon = the geek fraternity president from van wilder...