1st half

The only thing bad about Evans tonight is he could not guard Baron Davis. But neither can Arroyo. Evans also might have pulled that one offensive rebound back out. But he hit his shots. Between him and Arroyo, they gave Rip and Tay plenty of rest in the first half.

Delfino should be making his free throws. Other than that, pretty good play from him. He knows where to be to scrap for a rebound for sure. And did you see that drive and dish to Billups. Good stuff from Delfino. I like the fact that Delfino was the first guy off the bench in this game. This simply keeps things organized. Ok for Evans to come in afterwards.

Experience is a great thing. Last game, Fisher came in and burned Arroyo several times. But later that game, Arroyo met Fisher a lot earlier, forcing Fisher to give the ball up. This game, Arroyo knew what to do immediately, and he did not let Fisher hurt us one little bit.

Arroyo's play running the offense was positively dynamic. A great lead pass to Tay for an easy score. Scored an assist on a timely pass to Evans in the corner. And etc. Lots of great ball handling, lots of great passes from Arroyo.

Dyess worked the post some, and hit his shot. Not a great deal more than that. But he rested both Sheed and Ben plenty. Plenty good enough defending and rebounding from Dyess.

Tay has yet to get all that aggressive on offense in this game. He has tried a couple of shots though. They missed and I think he kind of gave up after that. Of course, he was off the court a good long stretch too.

Rip is playing. Looking a bit hurt maybe, but not that hurt. He is still running like mad and nailing those midrangers, along with getting right ot the hoop.

Sheed should have two triples in the book already. One just would not quite go all the way in. Darn. Another fine assist Arroyo would have had right there. Drive and dish. Good stuff.

Evans dribbled toward the center of the court on hit a pull up. Good to see that. Creating some of his own shots will surely help this team.

CB is just being CB. Good choices, although his play seemed a bit off for that last minute or so of the half. Gee, I wonder if he will be benched for not being able to get off the bench and produce. Just a joke. But CB did not play Davis all that tough for that stretch. But to the positive, Arroyo and CB have again combined to have virtually no turns.</B></B></B>

Game report

Wow, more of the same in the 2nd half. Again, Delfino is the first guy off the bench, and again, our offense stays well organized. Again, we get good use of four bench players. Indeed, our bench would have made this one a blowout except Diogu went ballistic on us.

We see Delfino again attack the basket, this time making his free throws. And again, looking just fine on defense. Evans continues to hit his shots and pull down rebounds. As well as hustle for loose balls, winning the ensuing jump ball. Dyess continues to nail his jumpers like that slump just could not have really existed. Confidently. With range.

Delfino took an outside shot, just barely rimmed out. Arroyo I don't recall even taking an outside shot this game. Some shots inside and thats it. Evans did his damage outside for the most part, but he did get to the line and make free throws on fast break situations.

Tay just never really did get it going tonight, but Rip never let the fire die from the first quarter. Can't wait to see the boxscore for this one and how few minutes our starters played.

Sheed hit another 3. CB seemed to be pretty quiet on the scoring front for this game. Ben had a darn good offensive game. As just another option out there, he is fitting in real well. And he continues to post up weaker players they put on him. He is making them pay. Ben still needs to hit more free throws to make his post game really effective.

No Darko. And that is a problem. See what Diogu did? Just maybe a guy with some real height and quickness could have actually stopped Diogu a few times. But really, even though Flip did not play Darko in this game, he made a big leap as far as the bench play. Real simple. Delfino the first guy off the bench. It just makes us a lot better of a team. Hopefully, getting Darko back in the mix is next.

I totally agree, Lee. May I suggest:

sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/3863

"...Darko...just maybe..."

Sorry...grab all you want...there are no more straws left in the dispenser to go with your Darko Happy Meal.

Flip knows it...Joe knows it...nuf said

Someone should have sent Diogu to the floor. Maxiell?

I had ESPN on while I was asleep and I was listening to what happened, the almost woke up crying. When I heard that there was no signs of foul play, it broke my heart. No one took his probles as serious as he did. No one saw the signs. What's worse is that someone may have know what was going on with him, but did nothing. Sad.

One thing I have noticed about Delfino is he plays with a ton of energy out there and maintains his level of play after both a mistake and a good play. How can you bench a guy that gives it 110% out there? The same cannot be said of Darko.

Bench played great but we still need a 4th big. Perhaps its more apparent since Dyess has chosen to be more of a perimiter player but we really could use someone to come in and match the intensity from some of these young PF's and C's.

GS does not have a good front-court but they were getting a lot of production out of it last night. Seems to be a trend lately. I don't want to knock the team sitting at 21-3 but the Pistons frontcourt could be defending and rebounding better. My only conclusion is that 3 is not enough.

Someone should clue Flip in on what happened during the 4th quarter of game 7 last July. If not Darko then there are 3 other guys sitting there. Davis, Maxiel and Johnson.

sheed didn't talk much that game. early sheed took his emotion out in the first 2 plays and almost dunked twice, one was a very hard foul that was needed to stop him.

Last night after the game, Flip's excuse for the GS front court production was that the Pistons were concentrating on stopping the Warriors' perimeter players who really hurt them in the last game. Maybe.

I'm more inclined to think that the problems stems from the inability of our guards to stay in front of penetrating guards, who then get into the paint and either dish (creating an easy basket for a big when our big goes to help) or an easy offensive rebound and put back (for the same reason).

I'm curious to say what happens tomorrow with tony Parker, who currrently leads the NBA in points in the paint (with Duncan 3rd, i think).

By the way this isn't to suggest that you are wrong or that we don't need a 4th big in the regular rotation. I think we do. It's just to say that even if we get that, we've still got another issue that I think we need to work on.

The other teams young big men are not dominating the wallaces straight up--thus raising the alarm on their play, but rather getting uncontested dunks off of guard penetration.If you watched the game, you would have seen that diogus 12/13 shooting including like 10 dunks under the basket from Baron Davis drives. Also, if you watch the body language of Sheed in particular (even Ben somewhat) you can tell they are comfortable letting a lot of the easy dunks go when they are up a lot and don't feel like "locking down"

Sheed didn't really seem to be in the game in the last half, with Diogu beating him down the floor and a certain listless quality in his play. I was hoping they'd pull him from the second unit because he was one of the poorer contributors, but Flip explained that he wanted to keep him out on the court so his mind would remain on basketball.