The much ballyhoo-ed "best starting 5 in the league;" the well oiled machine that's logged the most games as a unit. Yeah the Pistons rolled over the competition in the regular season but there is a cloud to that silver lining.

Sure you can say 5 will beat 1 or even 2 but on the flip side, can 5 outlast 8? Any given team is 1 part talent and 1 part utilization. I kind of think Flip was infatuated with the way the starting 5 was executing his offense. Who wouldn't be.
Pick your favourite pine rider. Delfino, Mo, Delk, Dyess, Davis, Darko, Arroyo. NOBODY got a chance to make a difference on this team.

Well, we are the ultimate 1 trick pony. If our 5 starts ain't getting it done, Flip will keep going to them. I don't get the feeling that we're bringing in a full team to the playoffs. Its more like 5 guys and the insurance policy.
Right now, I'm kinda thinking, it would have been worth a few games to develop a team that is 8 deep rotation wise....its got the talent. HCA? screw HCA. The pistons squander that every time.
The truly annoying thing is that this has been the tone of the whole season on this board. Bench needs more burn. Play Darko, Play Davis. Starters logging too many minutes as a whole.

Well, i guess now all we can really do is watch our 5 +1 (dyess and hunter = .5 apiece) go up against deeper and deeper teams. From here on out we play team designed to win championships not just get into the playoffs.

If the Suns do in the Mavs development could have carried a nine game price tag and been enough to retain HCA.

I don't think Mr. D appreciates that kind of talk. I'll bet the Piston beancounters have enjoyed the heck out of the extra home games.

Apparently the bench agrees with you. And not just the soft, whining, complaining, good-for-nothing, selfish, trouble-stirring, squint-eyed, untrustworthy South Americans.

But one of the knocks on Flip in Minnesota is that he never established a rotation there, either, and his lack of trust in anyone other than the starting 5 and, to a lesser degree, McDyess and Evans, is turning out to be an issue when most of the starting 5 has gone John Starks on us. It wouldn't have to be a play-by-numbers scheme or a platoon system, but regularly using 9 or 10 players in specific, consistent situations during the regular season probably would have made the Pistons more prepared, versatile, and dangerous going into the postseason and probably wouldn't have cost the team that many wins, either.

I find it impossible to believe that Dale Davis, in one year, transformed from a very serviceable starting center for a playoff team into someone whose career rusted shut on the bench to such a degree that his coach trusts him less to play power forward in crucial playoff games than a journeyman shooting guard - or a hobbled starting big who's firing blanks.

It is frustrating seeing players like Devin Harris, Boris Diaw, Howard, Diop ect contributing in these playoffs and we have guys who are just as talented getting traded away or stashed away as opposed to helping. Yeah we have a very cohesive and experienced starting 5, but they aren't perfect. When they aren't getting it done Flip shouldn't be afraid to give someone else a shot. Darko, Maxiell, and Delfino could have been a huge lift this year, but again we have a coach playing favorites and coaching scared.

Flip has shown in these playoffs that he can't make adjustments. He is afraid to do what needs to be done. Hell, why wouldn't you give Dyess more minutes when Sheed is napping on the court? Or play Dale Davis or Cato when Ben can't make a free throw? Why not play Delfino when Tay and Evans are struggling?

Flip is sticking with the same lineup no matter what and it is going to cost us.

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I have nothing to say.

90% of playoff teams shorten up the rotation. No back-to-backs, long TV timeouts. Playing for all the marbles.

Diaw and Howard are full time starters. Diaw for most of the year. Howard all season long.

A coach has to believe that his best players can pull it out. Those three young guys haven't been on a playoff team with modest expectations. Unfortunately they landed in a high profile, great expectations situation.

It's the classic Catch 22. I can't get a job without experience, I can't get experience without a job.

It's funny the way folks memories work. Dyess has been totally ineffective and foul plagued at times. Not to mention he has little chemistry with CB, and doesn't play outside the arc.

I LOVE McDyess. But I'm not blind to the fact that he is not the cureall for scoring droughts or rough nights from Sheed/Ben. He's a lot like Vinnie Johnson. When he's on, you go to him. When he isn't, you ride your starters.

Cato is a non-factor. Davis, I cannot explain. I find it difficult to believe that after so little PT and none of that recent that he can suddenly come in and be effective. Yeah, he should have been played earlier in the year. But until the season is over, there is not time to look back and lament.

You can't play Delfino when Evans struggles because he plays less than 5 minutes of meaningful time. There is no time to make the sub. Tayshaun is our most consistent matchup advantage. He's a steady defender and has the best post game thus far in the playoffs.

That's why he was so great in 2003. No one saw him coming, and he kept posting Aaron McKie and lesser Orlando players. They couldn't handle his wingspan and soft touch. I haven't seen any matchup difficulty Delfino presents to an opponent. He may be good, but he's not going to blow-by someone off the dribble. He's not going to back someone down in the post. And he hasn't shown he can shoot or finish with a lot of consistency. Simply put, if this team sucked more, he would be a better player.

I'm not sold on this. Consistency is key. If these guys played the way they did to close out the season, we would be rocking teams into an early grave. The dropoff from the starters to the bench is huge. Subbing in modest players for struggling stars is not necessarily going to yield tremendous results.

All year the bench underperformed even when given minutes. The few times Flip put them in with a lead, they tended to blow it.

At some point, the players have to produce to justify more PT. How would you as coach explain to your starters night after night that the bench needs to play and put the game in doubt? That the 30+ minutes they gave might be wasted for a greater cause? It's not an easy sell.

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."

John Starks.

And I don't buy this:
"When given minutes"? It's funny the way folks memories work.
or this. Lindsey Hunter has been better than Billups for nearly a month. Tayshaun Prince ain't that great. Dale Davis is probably better than Ben Wallace half the time. In any case, that's exactly the point. The dropoff from the starters to the bench would not be huge if Flip had actually played them. Except for Rasheed Wallace and Rip Hamilton, each of the Pistons' starters tends to be somewhat to ridiculously overrated, and the bench is not as talentless as Flip's substitutions would lead you to believe. The catch-22 only exists to a man who's coaching scared.
or this, particularly as inconsistent as the starting 5 has been in the playoffs. As the saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Most of success in basketball is exploiting advantages, and while the results of trying something different may not be "tremendous", neither will they necessarily be worse than sitting on the sidelines twiddling his thumbs and hoping that problems will solve themselves and advantages will spontaneously develop.

Tayshaun Prince has no matchup advantages in this series, and is at a disadvantage against Antoine Walker, James Posey, and Dwyane Wade (and apparently Gary Payton as well). He's been ineffective defensively all year long, and cannot effectively guard any offensive player on the Miami Heat except maybe Derek Anderson. The starter-bench double standard I can accept as common, if misguided, practice. Overgeneralizing the effectiveness of a player won't help overcoming it.

I don't know how I would go about that as a basketball coach. I do know that countless coaches in history, some of them with the egos of better players than the ones you're talking about to massage, have managed to do just that.

How does Phil Jackson do it? How do Gregg Popovich or Mike D'Antoni do it? How could Mike Brown bench All-Star Ilgauskas in favor of second-rounder Varejao? I noticed some bench players in Pat Riley's lineup the other day - and he's not averse to yanking Shaquille O'Neal in favor of Mourning when the fat man isn't performing. How does Avery Johnson explain to reliable veterans Adrian Griffin and Jerry Stackhouse that Devin Harris and Josh Powell should get minutes, or to prized free agent signing Erick Dampier that unproven bust DeSagana Diop should start? Even that pathetic hack Mike Dunleavy managed to take chances, and in the playoffs no less. Why is Flip Saunders unique in shriveling under the pressure of a challenge?

Wow, come hard hunh?

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."

Microwave how can you write so much without saying anything? I don't give a crap about shortening rotations- we shouldn't be content when our starting 5 is playing mediocre basketball. It's not lack of talent, it's lack of effort.

Guys like Delfino, Delk, Davis could be starting for a lot of teams!!!

Dyess didn't match up well with Cleveland, but he could have a big impact in this series if Flip wants to play him. If Sheed doesn't step up play someone else.

Tay doesn't need to play 40mpg to be effective.

Not an easy sell to play the bench? Tell that to Dallas, Phoenix, San Antonio, Cleveland and Miami.

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I have nothing to say.