Ask last years' Phoenix Suns, baseball's St. Louis Cardinals, The Indianapolis Colts, this years Detroit RedWings and now our beloved Pistons about finishing with the leagues best overall record.

No ring, no cigar, no celebrations. Only questions from their fans and themselves wondering what happen?? All of these teams busted their behinds doing what they could do to be the best, to get the #1 seed, the get home court throughout the playoffs...to win the Championship.

Questions??? What happen, who is the blame? Was it an injury, did they run out of gas, did they peak to soon? or did another team peak at the right time?

In the case of our Pistons, yeah there was a couple of ankle injuries at the wrong time. Most us wondered mid-season if we could survive with the minutes our starters were logging, but we had faith. "This is the best team in basketball and we will prevail." The quest for the HCA may have been our downfall as starters logged heavy minutes even in blow outs and neither rookies nor second and third year players rarely got into the mix.

Internal fighting with coaches over the past four years has been overshadowed by the respect that Joe Dumars has in this league. The failure of his coaches to properly develop the number 2 pick from 2003 has been a cloud over the organization the past three years and will still be subject to second guessing for the next 2-3 years.

It also appears that management (coaches, GM, etc) missjudged the talent we had on the bench and how much stamina our fabulous five could endure. Yes they were invicible as it relates to major injuries for almost three years but to much faith and pressure was put on them to deliver the best record and the ultimate championship.

Arrogance trickled throughout organization and the fanbase and the rep around the league was that our guys would take games off and turn it on when they wanted to. We were beloved by all when we took the title from the arrogant Lakers in 2004 but now in some instances we have become them. We all know that league and most if the NBA fans wanted to see Shaq and Wade in the finals. You could see the glee on the ESPN and NBA TV reporters ever since the Heat took game 1.

We do not need a whosesale makeover like the Lakers did, but a tweaking here and there with one of the starters and a couple of new bench players not afraid to post up and slash will keep us in the mix as we cannot concede the next couple of seasons to the Heat before the up and coming Cavs begin their reign at the end of this decade.

One thing learned in the past year: You don't have to have the best record at the end of the season...you got to be playing the best ball at the end of the season!

In closing I want to give our guys props for the excitement they gave all us world-wide Pistons fans before they go off this summer and hope they don't come back with chip of arrogance on their shoulders next year and return to defensively themed basketball that got them to the finals the past two seasons.

Roscoe/Micro and staff thank for means to communicate.. Peace out

I'm speechless. I really thought they were going to come back.

Deep down, we all did.

__________________
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."

Excellent post. I'm in full agreement.

I am still in shock. If we had lost then I thought it would have at least been a nail bitter like game 7 last season.

All those teams got their azzzzz beat by a better functioning team. No shame. Just a lot of humiliation.

Great summary Dre. Plus creative use of colors.

The most ironic thing is after months of claiming HCA to be the sure fire championship elixer we allow GAME ONE to become our eventual undoing.

It
...... just
............... ain't
......................... right.

That's all I gotta say.