Joe is a master of personalities. He did know that Rick had taken us as far as he could. He knew two years of Larry were enough - regardless of all the press/espn talking about Larry working his way out of a job. And he knew that Flip was the right coach at this time.

So much of this depended on Joe keeping the core group together, and there again Joe has been masterful. He probably ends up keeping the same starting lineup together for at least five or six years which will not be repeated in this league for a very long time. Not only is that a testiment to Joe, but also to Piston fans who have patiently supported this team as Joe built another Piston dynasty piece by piece.

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I totally agree. Joe is who built the Pistons, period. It is an incredible job that is still unfolding. Larry was a man for the moment, but I do wonder if he were here this year, that there might not have been a lot of tension. As Lee said, Rip, Chauncey and others have matured. They would want more freedom. Of course, I will take Larry and a championship. But the future under Flip really looks good. And Joe, he is the man.

Excellent post Lee, you hit many of the issues on the money.

As Rip said we suffered from Championship hangover... I don't think the team was dedicated to conditioning during the summer (Ben & Darko couldn't)... this year they had a new hunger to reestablish their dominance... to a man, they all recognize how important early season games are for home court.

Its really too bad last year that sleep walking through the reg-season had to happen. But it did and the team learned from it.

This year its highly unlikely to win 3 7-game series in a row projected ( Indy, Miami, SAN) without homecourt in all 3. If the Pistons are to repeat then we have to have homecourt over at least Miami.

Thats the biggest difference. The realization of how important home court is. Last year it was "We are built for the playoffs" hence the losses to the basement dwelling teams.

What Flip has brought is offense to a defensive team. Pistons always had the talent. If you look at our starters there is no way they should be condidered a team that cannot score. We have guys that can score.

I hope it keeps up. I hope the defense stays the same as this new offense is added.

Starters just need to get off their butts are give it 100% each game. Flip will help the bench. Arroyo, Delfino and Darko can play a lot more relaxed and should do a lot better.

Without getting into a Flip vs. LB mode, which I consider unproductive, there is a difference that bears mentioning. Larry Brown believes in “playing the right way” all of the time, and I don’t find fault with that, but there are multiple “right ways” in the universe of basketball.

In Larry’s system, this means limiting the offense in search of the best available shot. A possible problem with this theory is that the best shot is in the eye of the beholder, but if LB doesn’t agree, it’s a bad shot. Again, nothing wrong with that, but it does lead to offensive confusion, and somewhat limits your ability to recover from large deficits.

However, that’s not the biggest problem with that system(relatively speaking, after all it produced an NBA Championship), it’s that humans are amazingly adaptable. If you play oppressive defense for 4 quarters, teams tend to adapt to the pressure, and at some point, very good teams(Indy, Miami) learn to play within the pressure, requiring you to crank it up higher. This leads me to Flip’s difference.

In Flip’s system, the focus is on playing aggressive offense, taking the first open shot that a competent shooter gets, and playing the good defense. For 90% of the teams in the NBA, this formula will be killer in the regular season, because that same human trait of adaptivness works directly against teams.

As seen in the Phoenix game, the Suns were thriving on the standard defensive pressure, but when crunch time hit, the abrupt change in defensive pressure was impossible to adapt to, and the Suns collapsed. When discussing these two systems, it’s important to recognize that there is no right or wrong, only what works best for the personnel, and right now, Flip’s system seems to be a perfect(6-0) match.

The bottom line is that humans adapt, so to keep them out of any comfort zone and provide a definite shock to their system, I think Flip’s system provides the biggest contrast. And it’s this contrast/change of pace, that makes this team so tough to beat down the stretch. The really scary thing is that neither the offense or the defense is at it’s midseason peak.

As a sidenote to Sam's post here is a breakdown form hoopsanalyst of how teams have done after LB has left...
http://hoopsanalyst.com/0506qt4.htm

A.B., After Brown: The early post-Larry Brown Era has been pretty good in Detroit. The Pistons don't really look like they've missed a beat. What should we have expected? Well, we know Brown is a great coach who improves teams wherever he goes but do these teams generally keep these gains after Brown's departure? Let's take a look and see what the Pistons can learn from this (we'll exclude Brown's ABA teams from this as the league was too volatile to attribute changes in record on any one factor):


(A) Denver Nuggets (left in mid-1978-79): After a nice run in Denver, Brown left town in the middle of the 1978-79 season with a 28-25 record. Donnie Walsh replaced him and actually rallied the team to a 19-10 finish and a playoff birth. The team, however, floundered in the high 30-win area the next two years. But this seemed to be more a result of substance abuse issues catching up with David Thompson rather than having anthing to do with Brown's departure. Incidentally, three years later (1981-82) the Nuggets found Alex English and the team had a nice run in the 1980s that roughly equaled what they did with Brown in the NBA.

(B) New Jersey Nets (left in late 1982-83): Brown was fired right before the 1982-83 playoffs but the Nets still ended up with a solid 49-33 (then a franchise record). The team struggled in the playoffs but then bounced back in to win 45 games in 1983-84 and upset the Sixers in the playoffs. The Nets remained a decent team for the next two years but slowly were declining. The win totals went from 49 to 45 to 42 to 39 before collapsing to 24 wins in 1986-87. Losing Brown didn't help the Nets but the bigger reason for the collapse seemed to be Micheal Ray Richardson's struggles with drug abuse (he was ultimately banned from the NBA in 1985-86).

(C) San Antonio Spurs (left in mid-1991-92): Brown was fired after a dispute with owner Peter Holt in mid-1991-92. At that time the Spurs were struggling at 21-17. They rallied afterwards with Bob Bass to finish 26-18 (47-35 overall). After Brown left, the Spurs steadily improved over the next four years and Brown's departure seemed to have no effect.

(D) Los Angeles Clippers (left after 1992-93): The Clippers are one team that felt Brown's departure the most. They went from a competitive team to also-rans very quickly. In fact, that Clipps haven't one a playoff game since 1993, which was Browns final series with the team. While Brown's loss clearly had an effect, we should also note that the Clipps were probably heading to problems in 1993-94 as most of the key players were entering free agency and had been embittered by Donald Sterling's refusal to pay market value (see Manning, Danny) or were just plain pissed off (see Harper, Ron). So, 1993-94 would probably have been painful even with Brown.

(E) Indiana Pacers (left after 1996-97): As great a job as Brown did in Indiana, his final year with the Pacers was not pretty. The team slumped to 39-43 and missed the playoffs in that final year. Brown was replaced with Larry Bird and the team responded with a then-franchise record 58 wins in 1997-98 (and nearly upset the Bulls in the playoffs). With the core of the team intact, Bird had a nice three year run which was arguably more successful than Brown's own run in Indiana.
(F) Philadelphia 76ers (left after 2002-03): In Brown's final year in Philly, the team went 48-34 and went to the second round of the playoffs. When Brown left, the Sixers fell apart and went 33-49 in 2003-04. Part of this was due to the loss of Brown and his defensive schemes but there were other problems in 2003-04 such as Allen Iverson missing 34 games with injury and having a new coaching staff that was in over its head. Still, Philly does seem like the place where Brown's departure was felt most.

interesting posts guys.
I wonder if it becomes a case of larry being too easily scouted and countered.

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Max, several laker's fans came to me and told me that they did not understand why the Pistons did not have a better offense. If you look at the players, I totally agree--we should not be offensively challenged. Sam, I think it does boil down to perception of sorts. What exactly is a good shot? A shot under duress near the basket may not be as good as a clean look further away. It depends....What I hope is true is that we will continue to score more even when other teams bring tough D. I think we can score more than in the past and this may open up some great possibilities for this team