darko isn't an outwardly emotional player. he's the 4th or 5th option on offense so he makes his impact defensively. he plays defense with passion. he was very effective except for 2 plays in the whole game. you mentioned his stats but you forgot his 2 blocks. since you were watching the game you should have seen his alterations first hand yourself. then again you are making conclusions from only watching half a game.

Jay - I thought for sure you would say Darko had a bad game. Looking at the box it does pretty much match his stat line. I was not impressed. His defense was not that good and he was not helping the team out very much.

From what I saw in that game, unless Darko takes a pay cut I doubt the Magic will re-sign him.

You know when you can expect that to happen...

Watching some of the rebroadcast and trying to pay more attention to Darko. He actually did a pretty good job guarding Dyess in the 2nd. I guess with all the props since the trade I was expecting more.

You are seriously INSANE if you think that Orlando doesn't want to resign Darko. Why wouldn't they? The only guy to score on him was Sheed on his first shot taken on Darko, after that Sheed went at least 0-3 on his next shots defended by Darko. Jmax drew two fouls on Darko, but for the most part, THE PISTONS WEREN"T SCORING IN THE PAINT, all of their damage came from the perimeter.

The Magic didn't give Detroit layups, the Pistons relied on jumpers to win (which has been proven not to work in the playoffs when your legs are dead) while the Magic got points in the paint AND GOT TO THE FT LINE (where they did a very poor job of converting, missing 12 FTs).

The key to the game was DETROIT EXECUTED down the stretch and made HUGE PLAYS. Billups was on fire in the 3rd quarter and hit big shots in the fourth before Rip sealed the deal with a couple clutch jumpers.

Orlando isn't going anywhere, Dwight Howard and Darko Milicic aren't going to shrink and get smaller, they will learn from games like this and they will be back, bigger and better. They will grow from losses like this. They had a chance to take this thing and they gave it away with inexperience and mistakes.

Orlando's defense was tough, we didn't get inside on them and they didn't foul us too much. 19 fouls to our 24 fouls. They are a solid team and one that I don't think the Pistons would want to face in the playoffs.

I don't see how anyone can say this Orlando team isn't for real, what's not real about them? They played Defense. They didn't give up many layups or FTs. They get to the FT line, they have a stud bigman in D. Howard. They have pretty good depth.

Darko didn't play a great game, but he wasn't bad either. He did a very good job defensively (as evidenced by very few layups allowed and HIS MAN not getting good shots). He just doesn't get touches in their offense. Arroyo ain't giving the ball up, so DMC just doesn't get his number called, but if he starts to get touches and develops his offensive game, the Magic will be a very dangerous team. He did make a couple nice passes to Dwight Howard out of the high post and found Dooling for an open look off of a postup and things like that go un-noticed by the casual fan.

I don't have the +/- numbers for the game, but I would like to see them.

It seemed when Darko was in, the Pistons just weren't getting in the paint. He did make a difference defensively.

I have seen Orlando play a bit in other games. As the season progresses, teams will stop their offense. They remind me of Denver about two years ago. I feared this game only because the REAL GAME was last night against Dallas.

Orlando has no go to guy. Howard has some moves but he is not at the level of carrying his team in a series. He gets many calls from the refs as does D. Wade. Who else is suppose to score in the 4th quarter on their team?

Anyway, the Pistons are our team and they just pulled off a back to back that stamps them as a real contender. Joe needs to get a back up by hook or by crook. We need to see a bit more what kind of front line we have. But the Pistons are there...

If you're the Magic's GM, do you throw big $s at Darko or Chauncey?

If you did not see the first half, you did not see Darko trigger a big run by Orlando-with his D. Take a good look at Dyess stat line tonight. And Tay's. Darko played a lot of darn good D. His coach simply does not run a whole lot of plays for Darko to score. If Hill wanted Darko to score, he would run plays for Darko to get free on the perimeter, where he is a very good shot. For now, Darko is slowly gaining experience, slowly healing from two years of sitting. A lot of damage was done to Darko while in Detroit. Ok, I am rambling a bit so good night.

PopcornMachine's GameFlow - Detroit @ Orlando

I can't believe these guys get the gameflow done that quickly.


Amazing game by Billups. It reminds me of the games last year that made him an MVP candidate. And we finally get to see a little bit of why they say Flip Murray is a streaky scorer. Sheed was also being very tough. That is actually the most trouble that I have seen Dwight Howard have this year. It didn't really stop him, but it made him work for it a lot more than usual.

So, did Sheed intentially bank the first 3 tonight to show that the bank 3 last game was not an accident? And WTF was he thinking with that horrible 3 point chuck with 1:30 left in the game? The one that he shot 3 feet outside the arc while he was fading away with Darko in his face, than hit backboard first...

All in all, two great wins on the road on back to back nights. They deserve some love.

__________________
"If I'm sitting there arguing with the officials, I'm giving an alibi for the team." MC

By the way, how unlikely to work was that no look lightning pass to Darko in traffic at crunch time by Nelson? Did he really think that Darko was going to anticipate that, catch it, and convert it?