"Not having a solid bench unit to build leads?"
I'd blame it all on inconsistant bench rotations.
But you gotta like how we played just hard enough to get the one seed.
We did the blowing people off the court thing last year.

In the interest of fairness. Did anyone really think Nelson fouled Chauncey on the 4 point play?

Here is the other thing about San Antonio, they started off very slow, so their overall stats don't do justice to their recent play.

If you look at the last 26 games, the Spurs are 23-3 and the Pistons are 19-7. Both good right?

But the point differential for SA is an incredible +13.38 while Det's is +4.85.

During this stretch, the Spurs beat teams by the following margins:
41, 37, 31, 25, 24, 23, 19, 18, 16, 16, 16, 15, 14, 13, etc.


I'm pretty confident in saying that they are the best team in the NBA. We need them to get upset in the West.

Not only are they good, but they match up well against us. Bowen shuts rip down. Tony Parker gets by Chauncey. Duncan makes us collapse and Barry/ Finley make us pay for it.

With Dal and Pho, at least we can take away some of what makes them successful against other teams... and while their D is underrated, it is nothing compared to SA.

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"I don't think MC is going to allow us to shoot as many jumpers." Tayshaun Prince.

At the start of the year Pop was trying a lot of bench players due to injury.

Tashawn, Agree the Spurs are scary.


Doubt Orlando is any threat to us and Micro, it will be hard to gauge our team from the pending series with them. I think that many have the Magic overrated just as the Clippers were overrated. Every year, the buzz goes to some seemingly up and coming team. It is not that easy to reach the top.

My view on Darko is that if he is to be very successful, he needs to get away from Howard and be the starting center for a team (get 35 minutes) where he can roam and see if he can really be a force. After 3 years of that, we would know. I know that this is against the conventional thinking. If I were his agent, I would move him.

If you're his agent, you want to get him the biggest possible deal now, because there are no guarantees he will ever be a full time starter or won't suffer a career ending injury.

Also no guarantees he doesn't dump his agent for a new one at any time.

The Magic can pay Darko the most based upon needs and cap space of the other teams. The question is not just the starting salary, but will it have maximum raises and how many years will it run.

Has anyone seen lazyberbs? It's not like him to miss a Detroit/Orlando matchup.

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

Thank you for another great season!

Jameer had a legit complaint

We all feel pretty good about this Orlando game, but let me point out some counter points:

The Magic have been a horrible road team and they almost won.
They shot 50% on a night when their best player was 3 for 12.
They missed 14 free throws, and we missed 2.
Webber got outscored by Darko, who didn't exactly have a good night.
McDyess was on fire.
Chauncey had one of his best games of the season.

And we barely won.


One of the strangest stats from the game was that we had more turnovers than Orlando. They are the worst and we are the best in this stat. Now we only turned it over 11 times, which is below average, so the real question is why were they so solid with the ball against us? Hopefully the answer is just that we weren't putting our normal pressure on the ball.

Conclusion: if we don't play well, we could easily lose a couple and get a little scare in the 1st round.

I have reason to believe that we can make them turn the ball over 20 times per game in the playoffs if our energy is there. That is the way to beat them handily.

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"I don't think MC is going to allow us to shoot as many jumpers." Tayshaun Prince.

We didn't play a lot of defense. We got by with our clutch shooting from the floor and the line.

It's scary when we don't rebound or defend. Feels a little unnatural as a Pistons fan to win that way. And I am sure THE LOW will be the first one to say, that we need defense to win a championship.

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

Thank you for another great season!

The team with the best record has not won the title since the Spurs did it in 2003. With Pacers, Suns and Pistons all falling victim in the conference finals the past 3 years, I thinking the Mavs suffer the same fate themselves if they meet the Spurs. I'm thinking its a rematch of the Spurs and Pistons for the title.