AJ is playing.

Would I put him ahead of Maxey at this point? No
Would I play him at the 3? No
Would I put Maxey at the 3? No
Would I play AJ ahead of Nazmo? Yes

Just got back from the game and have to say I missed the hometown crowd versus this lame ATL one. My only observation is that Nazr produced 1 bobbled pass, a missed rebound, and a few blown defensive assignments. I know he has been playing "OK" recently, but are you telling me AJ couldn't have produced that stat line? I am not for playing guys for the sake of playing them, but if a young guy is as good as the other play him. For the record, Nazr is not in any of the longterm team plans so there is no feasable explanation for his PT unless he is contributing something, which he isn't. Also, Maxiel is really coming into his own. I always thought he would only be a bench guy, but the guy could start on many teams. Also, Afflalo is a keeper, reminds me of a shorter version of Battier.

That's cool that you got to see the game, kpaav. You could hear some Pistons fans whooping it up in the midst of the typically sparse Atlanta crowd on the TV broadcast; I assume you were one of them!

Real good Piston game tonight. I like to look at things from an objective position, and this season FlipM and Nazr have been doing OK, even though most folk hate those guys. But Tonight......uuugghh.

FlipM, what a dope. That type of performance should be an automatic DNP-CD for at least 2 games. Sad day in Piston land when I'm screaming for Lindsey Hunter to come into the game.

FlipS did a VERY GOOD job on the sub patterns tonight with one exception, Nazr. Atlanta has a bunch of tweener players that Amir could have really matched up well against, Marvin Williams and Josh Smith will often play the 4 and face up the oppositions bigs, not a good game for Nazr to be in, but a perfect one for Amir and MIP. Normally I'm not one to scream for PT for AJ, but tonight the coach missed a great opportunity to get Amir alot of meaningful-quality PT.

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Play hard, Play smart, Play together, share the ball, have fun....Play the right way!!!!!!

He sure as hell is playing like a guy upset about being out of the rotation, jacking up all those shots. Man oh man. I hope Stuckey can get acclimated quickly otherwise this backup PG situation could get very awkward.

It could be that AJ's ankle is still giving him some problems and tightening up after he comes out, so Flipper doesn't want to give AJ a few minutes here and a few minutes there during a game but play him in longer time stretches for now,which would mean garbage time until AJ's ankle is completely healed. That is the type of problem that the Lakers are faced with regarding C. Mihm, though Mihm's injury was a lot worse than AJs.

Of course this is just speculation or maybe rationalization. LOL

But isn't 6 minutes quality PT > 8 minutes garbage time?

That is true.

Their is and advantage to playing a 20 year old rookie in garbage time and that is that there is a lot less pressure on him and when he messes up, which all players do, especially the young ones, he probably won't get so stressed out about it and as a result compound his errors.

I don't think it would be too good to give him quality playing time and have him not initially cut it because of mistakes due to lack of experience, and then have to put him back to playing garbage time.

Look at Maxey. He was a four year college guy at a very good program and he is just now in his third year getting some serious burn as the main big off of the bench and he is still making mistakes due to lack of experience. Could he have played more the last two years? Yes. Would we be better off today for it? Probably. Would we have been better off the last two years? Open to debate.

AJ is only 20 and this would be his junior year in college. The season is young and he is young. We are winning and playing good ball even without Hot Rod, who will lots of mistakes, especially as a rookie at the point, but will still be a big upgrade from Murray and Hunter, so why put the pressure on AJ.

Let the game come to him. Who knows what his role will be by the end of the year.

My only concern if that if we get a stretch of 5 or so games or even more that are all close that AJ may not get any burn for a couple of weeks. This I don't think would be good, but for now I am glad to see him out there and gaining experience, but I will be a lot happier when he can play at the same time as Hot Rod rather than Murray.

FM was definitely ball-hogging, I can't deny that, but that dunk was sweet.

Maybe Dumars let Murray know that we are trying to trade him and he needs to increase his ppg by any means necessary. The Pistons are probably mailing DVD's of all his highlights to other teams and editing out the misses.


Amir with 5 blocks? That is insanity.


The best part about this game was that Saunders didn't freak out and re-insert the starters when it got close at the end.


Also, just a note for all you guys on the local feed, the Atlanta announcers were in shock at how much better Det looked than in the last meeting.

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"Will was rolling, wasn't he? I roll with the guy that's hot." MC

Totally agree with you here.