We just barely got out of the Orlando series, with three of our wins eaked out in the last seconds of games. Sorry, I have very little respect for Orlando's team. In Philly, we were down 1-2 at one point. Some hot team. We should be doing a lot better.

Bad assumption. Hammy's are tricky. Last year, I missed my whole tennis season from a Ham injury. But I ran the Crim, running up to 26 miles a week to train for it. And still never could go back to playing tennis.

Running does not take much acceleration. Playing basketball does. If someone makes a move on you, you have to counter with 100% acceleration. Just a guess, but I'd say that 100% acceleration takes about 5 times the power running at a good clip does. (Not sprinting, but running hard like in a good strong half mile run.) Maybe its not quite 5 times, but its on that order. Running does not mean your hammy is healed.

If Kander is saying Billups can't hurt his hammy any further by playing at this point, that says to me that his hammy was not injured nearly as badly as mine was. But since they say he could barely walk two days after the injury, it makes me wonder. I guess we will see soon enough. If Billups ain't healed, Stuckey can do the job. Going with a three guard rotation of Stuckey, Afflalo, and Rip should do just fine. For you Hunter fans out there, sure, it would probably not hurt if he got an occasional turn like to end a quarter. (But I would not recommend it.)

I don't think that Detroit will maintain full intensity. They never do for more than a game or so, if that. A hungrier team will surely knock them out if/when this is the case.

Lee is right. We won't get away with this crap against a really good team (Boston) that is also hungry...It was fun while it lasted...kind of.

Are you really trying to say if Amir and AA played we would have won more convincingly?

And yet I'm still all by myself in the voting category....those sound like "highly doubtful" words to me. What are you riding the fence for?


Vote, Lee, vote!

You didn't mention the fact that our starting PG was out for 2 of those 3 wins, but I do think it's relevant.

We advanced past the 1st round in 6 games and the 2nd round in 5 games. A playoff win is a playoff win - who cares how close it is? That thinking is for the regular season.

I actually think this team is playing more focused than at any point in the previous two years - ever since halftime of game 4 of round 1. I know they have the talent to win it all, it's the effort I've seen in the last 8 games that makes me confident.

I voted somewhat confident.

I am still very leery about Flip's rotation. AA and Amir need to play, when AJ is in the game, he brings energy and a defensive presence that seems to energize the rest of the team. As a result, we tend to get easy baskets, we don't simply settle for outside shots and on the offensive end, AJ is always there fighting to get the rebound.

Granted, we have both McDyess and JMax, but I have a feeling Flip will ride these two right out of the playoffs.

My greatest wish is that Joe D mandates that Flip play AJ more, for him to be on the bench in street clothes is a travesty.

My confidence will be higher if Flip somehow get over himself and give these two youngsters some floor time.

This poll has been a lot more positive than I thought. Its set to close on Tuesday which would be our 1st game assuming the Cavs/C's go 7.

The result of the last two games has raised some hope in my mind for a positive outcome to the Pistons' post season. Though neither of the games could be considered 'pretty' if following Stern's NBA marketing standard, I have thoroughly enjoyed them while fondly reminiscing the guttiness of past Pistons playoff success. I'm a sap for hard fought wins.

I'm feeling good enough about the Pistons as a team right now that I'm taking down my 'Dazed & Confused' signature. Disclaimer: I reserve the right to put it back up if Flip does something really stupid in the ECF or the Finals.

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Yes. Like the last game, where Herrmann and Hayes were a combined minus 15 in the game. Either Afflalo or Amir could have played those minutes, and I highly doubt we would have stunk quite so bad as we did. You can disagree if you want, but that is my opinion.

For the series, we continually did poorly with any combination of two bigs in the game. Like Sheed and Dyess. Or Dyess and Theo. Or Sheed and Theo. None of these combinations worked well, as it meant one of our bigs had to chase Lewis around, which never worked. We did start Maxiell in some of the games, to eliminate this some. But we could have eliminated a lot more of these times by adding Amir to the rotation and letting him guard Turk or Lewis while Tay or Afflalo guarded the other small forward. (Orlando plays 2 small forwards.)

As far as CB being out, yes, it hurt us a bit, but only because Flip let it hurt us a bit. Stuckey was not the problem. The problem is that a lot of Billups minutes were taken by Hunter, which is a huge dropoff. I am not saying Hunter did all that bad in the series, but I believe we could have done better with a three guard rotation of Stuckey, Rip, and Afflalo supplemented by some playing time from Dixon. (When he could come in and guard Nelson - and we never did use this as far as I can remember. I believe the brief times we did play Dixon we had him on bigger guards.)

In sum, we could have mathced up a lot better than we did, particularly on defense. And I believe, with or without Billups, we could have slaughtered Orlando four straight. Let me say it this way, yes, at times we did match up, and other times we did not. For the greatest part (about 85% true if all times considered) we did great when matching up and poorly when not. And never, not for a second, was Flip forced not to match up. He just simply chose not to match up. In my mind, he chose this just because he hates playing rooks and young players.