Coourtside seats were awesome. I bought some new batteries for my digital camera so I could get some photos at the game, and found out that my camera seems to be broken. Total Drag.
Our seats were on the court, about 10 feet from center court, opposite the bench, in the 3rd row. We could hear the players talking during the game.
Quick impressions from Portland:
Although my seats were better than in Seattle, the Sonics game was a much better game to watch. The Pistons phoned in this game, and still easily beat the Blazers. Portland has some talent (Randolf, Aldrige, and Roy) but they are years behind the Pistons for team play.
During one posession , Tayshaun had the inbound pass right in front of us. The ref handed Prince the ball, and Prince threw it back to the ref and ran down the court. Chauncey was standing there waiting for the pass, and when he saw Tay take off, he laughed and yelled "Tay, where ya going? You gotta throw the ball to me!"
Tay laughed and shrugged his shoulders. Seriously, the Pistons didn't
put much effort into this game, and they didn't have to, as they had this young Blazers team beat from the start.
Defense. I haven't watched too many games this season, and I've read lots and lots of posts about the Pistons lack of defensive effort. Of course, it's only based on two games... but the two games I saw, I would have to disagree. I think the defense was execellent. Tayshaun and Rip constantly steer their man into help defenders. Rasheed and Chris are very aware of penetrating guards and talk to each other on the court. I think the problem mostly lies with the age and speed of the bigs. I think there is a magical moment in a players career where they are both saavy vets
and young athletic players. The Pistons with Dice, Sheed, Cwebb and Davis have tipped in the direction of saavy vets.
For the most part, experience beats athleticism. But sometimes, young fast players like Chris Wilcox, Bosh, or any of the other young, strong players can have excellent games against "the old guys". I don't think this is anything Flip can fix. (I've just been removed from TheLow's Family Christmas card list) True, Flip doesn't really seem to put much press conference time into talking about the D, but what I saw, it didn't look like it needed a whole lot of work.
Fourth quarter, Sheed backing down Zach Randolph from 12 feet out. Dice's defender moves to double Sheed, leaving Dice free under the basket. Rips defender rushes to cover Dice. Sheed never looks, but yells: "I see ya baby!" stands up, and tosses a beautiful cross court pass to a wide open Rip Hamilton, who drains the shot.
This team is still amazing.
