He really hasn't been doing much of anything lately. He hasn't been finishing games. Dyess has been playing in crunch time now. Hope he's not sulking . . .

Tay needs a break. 39 min after playing 40+ last night. He looks awful.

Chauncey as mentioned the whole 2nd half again

We need direction in our offense.

He did have one of the Pistons' dunks of the year tonight though.

Good to see Billips show some offense lately. We will need him to do even more and return to pre-last year's playoffs form to go far. Tay looked awful out there tonight (except for that dunk) and they should give him some rest. He is a way better shooter than that.

Don't know about Webber. Have they scouted him out or is he just waiting for the playoffs? We need some steady offense from him.

Dyss has been like money in the bank lately.

Murray ran a good point with good passes and then getting offensive to keep the defense honest. A few bad shots as Lee pointed out but still a good stint. Why he doesn't do this more often is a mystery?

My concern is still with the offense. Again that drought hit us. When we go cold it seems to just get worse as if we were in quicksand. It wasn't great Knick defense. We need to have plays that can get us some easy reliable points since we don't have that great penetrator to bail us out. That has been my beef with this coach--that we don't run as smoothly as some of the other elite teams on offense. If we did, we would clearly be the most dominant team.

The other remedy (for the offensive droughts) is to play Detroit defense for 48 minutes. This team still needs to rely on defense if it is going to go far in the playoffs. Tough defense eliminates offensive droughts as it gets us some easy points.

Lapiston, the issue is that no matter how much we criticize Billups, when he goes out to sit in the second quarter, the offense stalls then. Usually the culprit or force emitting this negative vibe is Hunter. We all know that he and Flip jr can't be on the floor at the same time as their no direction and over dribbling lead to too many perimter or forced shots with the clock running out. Hunter didn't play tonight, but he must have rubbed some of those vibes off Dale Davis, as the Pistons didn't regain control of the second qtr until DD sat down. Yepadoodle, Davis was out there with Junior..

In the second half there a couple of times where Davis was right by the hoop and still passed out to someone else to shoot.???? Has anybody noticed that Junior plays better in the second half than the first??

Lets hope Joe's reluctance to trade for another consistent backup PG doesn't comeback to haunts us the post season. Can't have to many scoring droughts in the playoffs and then over play your starters to stay in the game and get into the later rounds.....

__________________
"Once you go Barack, you never go Bak" Mario Cantone 2008

C-Webb got his first tech as a Piston!

Dale Davis looks like a caveman!

Tayshaun deserves rest after playing 43:06 in the Cavs game and then playing 39 minutes tonight. That being said, beautiful in-yo-face dunk against Curry!

Nate Robinson is so widdle.... AWW! I felt bad for him, out there working his ass off and hustling like no other. And I thorougly enjoyed his near-save that led to a little dunkage from 'Fino. And I loved 'Fino's reaction after he slammed the ball home. He's one sexy Argentinian! Why didn't he play in the 2nd half?

Oh, Billups. What can I say? I love you!

Very nice follow up dunk from the 'Sheed. I enjoyed watching the bench's reaction to that. The judging on his vertical ranged from like 3 feet to to 9 inches... I love how everyone on the team seems to have fun even when the game is so close and the tension in the arena is suffocatingly thick.

No Hunter....?

McDyess is my hero. Thank goodness someone could rebound the ball! I can't believe C-Webb had 0 boards. I thought he was going to have a great game as soon as he scored that slow motion layup on Detroit's first posession. Oh, well...

...here's to going 4-0 against Orlando (and Darko!) on Wednesday! Cheers!

a haiku for the game:

did what we had to.
knicks had no chance to win it.
why was it so dark?

Yeah the Zekes brought some tenacity early in the season with their 5 OT wins. Zekes in the Lotto, do they have a pick? Sounds like they were all we could handle.

Dre,

I am not sure if it is so simple as the back up point (the droughts) but they do bother me because as you say, we can't afford too many of them in the playoffs. Certainly the back up point has been key in our problems on and off with that second unit. Murray has the talent to do what is necessary but he doesn't always show up.

Yes, usually the drought is with Billips out but sometimes we start the game slow too with our starters. We can't afford that either.

I think the problem (with the first unit early) lies somewhere in our APPROACH to the offense. It is too loose--a sort of create as you go. We have so much talent that our guys can do a lot of things. I would like to see our guys do less things but do them very well (Sheed on the block, Rip mid-range, Tay with a catch and shoot, etc.).

I won't worry about the droughts if we play Detroit defense including bringing in energy with the second line players and play tough defense from the first quarter.

Against Miami, it will mean giving some real playing time to Davis and let Nazi come in for a few minutes to serve up some fouls on Shaq also.

CHI has their pick AGAIN

NNNnNooooo.