If the Portland game is not the game to get Darko in, EARLY, rather than Davis, it is time to put him on someone else's roster. I am in no way advocating trading him now unless Flip trusts him less than Davis.

Davis has had no impact in any game I have heard about this year, and if you check the stats between them, DMC comes out ahead, during their appearances this year in the regular season, and in the pre-season, there was just no comparison.

Ben played huge minutes tonight and with his legs or feet hurting him, and especially with San Antonio and Miami coming up, for heavens's sake, put DMC in with the starters and tell him to "gitr dun".

If he cannot do it in this game with these starters against this team this year, then I think we should write him off and either trade him or pay him that exorbitant amount to sit on the bench. Take your choice, but do not put Dale in ahead of him.

With at least 15 or 20 minutes to play, and giving him something concrete to do, I would say with 95% guarantee that DMC would outdo Dale Davis. Amd I think it would be too disruptive to put JMax in as he would not be sharing the ball and that would be a problem for our offense.

It'll never happen, but it should.

Agreed totally. I don't mind losing this game. With the SA and Mia games coming up, we need the starters with fresh legs. Winning against SA and Mia is far more important. It is also the game where Darko should come in for Big Ben to play alongside Sheed instead of Dyess. Flip got to play him with the starters more, maybe he will pick it up and improve from there. If he still can't do, TRADE his LAZY %%%%% out of DETROIT!!! Delfino has shown nothing but improve in all aspects of the game since Flip has been mixing him with the starters lately. Hope Darko does too.

All 12 players should get some minutes in this game. Flip, please keep the starters below 32 min in this game and if possible, for every game. If this is not the time to play your bench, when will be the time?

__________________
DETROIT BASKETBALL

for the bench tonight. Can they deliver? It's time they stepped up. Too much spectating when the game is on the line. Tonight would be opportune for Darko and Davis to both play. Starting on the 23rd, Detroit has five games in nine days. Need to get ready. I think Detroit can still win tonight but Flip will need to do a masterful coaching job.

I know our guys are extremely tired but I see a blowout tonight. Portland is terrible.

Bench smench. Flip's not going to play them. They might get a FEW more minutes but flips going to ride them until the bitter end unless its a blowout. They got 2-3 days to recover after this.

__________________

Maybe I heard wrong but I thought Ben is injured. Bad legs or feet. You don't recover that in a couple of days, and we have Shaq coming up, and SA before that.

Ben play hurt against Miami and SA, on national tv; I hate the sound of that.

I haven't seen anything on the wire. He has bad wheels and played nearly an hour of game time. But nothing has been reported.

__________________

expect sheed to take it to his former team not only because that i expect him to do good, but i expect him wanting to comeback off yesterdays performance at memphis.

This is the guy the will be huge if his game can get to the level I think he can. He is the one that can create a shot off the dribble and has unlimited range. If we have a future manu on the roster than the Pistons bench will be solid going into the playoffs.