i'll try to throw some things out there that others haven't touched on:

there were a TON of raptors fans in the crowd. i'm guessing this is similar to last year when toronto offered ticket deals for Pistons to sit behind their basket. same thing here - my friend and i pulled in to see a LOT of charter buses, and most of the raptors' crowd was behind the basket near their bench. the loud cheer after toronto's first bucket was surprising, and it definitely got their players fired up in the 1st quarter.

this was the 1st real sellout i've seen this year, and they actually announced it over the PA this time. there was also a fun skit on the jumbotron of the raptors' mascot. he came to detroit and stole a lollipop from a little girl, pushed a lady out of the way for a cab, something else i forgot, and then wrote bad stuff about Hooper on his parking space. then Hooper backed into him with his car and all was well. pretty funny skit actually.

there were 2 raps fans sitting near us, and being extremely judgmental about all canadians based on these two, they like to look like euros and be annoying they were very supportive of their team and cheering louder than most pistons fans for the first few quarters. actually, the palace is one of the best places to go if you're a fan of the visiting team - most pistons fans are too apathetic and disinterested in heckling...unless it's the playoffs (or palacevision when you've got 10,000-20,000 young people in the stands).

as for the game, bosh was getting pissed that sheed was doing so well, and tried to force his game on the offensive end to no avail. sheed wore him out and this was the best game i've seen him play all year.

tj ford is super quick, but still prone to turnovers. he can get in the lane but often has no idea what to do after that. bargnani got our bigs to bite on his pump-fake at the 3-point line about 4 times in a row. kid has some skills and he should turn into a pretty decent player.

the main thing that toronto gives us trouble with reminded me of our Finals series against the spurs. toronto has several players capable of hitting the three, and use their guards to penetrate very deep in the lane and then throw a very long kickout pass for the open 3. san antonio loved doing this to us since we collapsed whenever a player got that deep in the lane. toronto is uniquely setup to take advantage of this - although i imagine that the Pistons are not the only team to get burned by this.

not sure what the replays showed, but it looked like calderon totally flopped on rip. from the stands it didn't even look like rip's elbow touched him. but we got some bad calls early, and favorable calls late.

there were an extraordinary amount of good looking women in their 30s and 40s here, which was a bonus.

about 700 fans got to shoot a free throw on the court after the game, and usually it's ugly, but there were a lot of nice swishes from the crowd.

you probably didn't need to know some of that, but yeah. this was a great game, was actually fun to attend, and it was a good crowd. can't wait until the playoffs...

oh, and jose calderon = the geek fraternity president from van wilder...

Good match unbeliveble Sheed but....
Why Flip uses the park bench thus little? Dice ..Carlos Hunter and Maxiell hour they are much reliable

NO ONE has a better recap than when Warthog is at the game giving us the info from in-side. Id pay 1/ of your season tickets if I knew u would d o a column after every game. i still think for three qtrs are fans are among the worst in the league. McDyess made a great defensive play on Bosh and Bargghetti, and as far as TV goes , I heard nothing.
Im trying to get a nickname for your columns and all i can come up with...its funny and its with all respect...is THE HOGWASH!
i know it sounds negative, but its a great title for those who "get it."

Also, great call by Coach dolphin going with the Stretch Team late in the 4th. No team can match up with Delf, Rip, Cb and Hunter with Sheed as the 5 , defensively. Got to give it to him...

__________________
http://casstechhigh.ning.com/profile/gregoryhollenquest =

haha thanks man. i'll definitely try to do them for the important games and playoffs. i was impressed at flip's rotations in the 4th too, instead of just sticking with the 'starting 5', he brought in max for some defense, and then brought in delfino later. i like that lineup a lot too, getting the excellent defense from hunter, rip, delfino, and sheed, while getting the offense of chauncey, rip, and sheed.

oh and another thing i forgot to mention - rip is bad at giving entry passes on the block. twice the raptors knocked his attempts away when he tried to get the ball to sheed. chauncey had no problems with this. it appears our other guards (and many around the league) struggle with passing down on the block, even though it sounds easy.

I'm wondering which refs are good for us and which are bad. It would be interesting to see the splits.

I used to think refs that let the teams play would be better for us, but I'm not sure if that is true anymore. We shoot good free throws, and are typically not strong in the paint.

The playbook pulled a rug over my eyes and probably others. I used the "Webber playbook" notion in a way to show that the Pre-Webber offense was not much of an offense at all. Right, Lee and Micro, Webber comes in and suddenly the ball moves and we look like the team most of us thought we had. That sounds like a good playbook to me.

In this game we got away from Webber some but Sheed can go off like he did because we have Webber drawing a lot of attention. As good as Sheed is and can be, leaving Webber will hurt a team faster than playing off Sheed. Can the NBA adjust to this new tandem? That will be an ongoing question. What is remarkable is that we don't need Chauncey's points every night with Webber there.

Phil Jackson thinks that the key to the Pistons will be if they can keep up the defensive intensity. We do seem to have trouble with quick, 3 ball shooting teams. Anyone with ideas why? 92 points by Toronto is a bit much (we need to hold teams to under 90 in the regular season to win in bunches). But you can't play up every game. We would have lost this game a month or so ago.

Maxiel's play has been a disappointment to me lately. He looks raw like a rookie. I am waiting for Joe to make a move for that second unit.

And they are all going to the All Star Game except the No. 2 pick.

If Toronto has Darko on their team, we would have Bosh on our team. And we still gonna kick their %%%%%.

And maybe owned the best record in the league...

Only 4 games this year > 5 rebounds and a total of 10 assists on the season. That's 1 assist for every 50 minutes of court time. You would think that if you're a threat in the post, you would get easy assists just by kicking it out once in a while.

He tore it up in the pre-season. I don't know if it is a confidence problem or what. That goon squad breakout game really pumped me up, and then not much since.