Loved Sheed running the offense with the young guns! Stuckey is like a rodent that can squeeze through any hole!

How about 10 guys all playing between 20 and 27 minutes? That's quite a box score. Weird that the bench was so bad in the 4th quarter (outscored 25-10), but they sure dominated that 2nd period!

yea as much as people want to get on the starters for not bringing it, i am sorta disapointed that the bench didn't play as well in the 2nd half as they did in the first....

BUT..... Very happy overall with the game... just curious if all the folks that can find fault with anything a starter does or one of the old bench folks will use the same fine comb with the bench players in the 2nd half or will they find every excuse to justify it....


But I wonder when was the last team had 10 players get atleast 20 mins in a game.

The bench most have thought it was garbage tiime in the 4th qtr with the big lead and slunk back to their old habits.... They did look good in the second though to put the game away.

Seven straight wins now and a potential looking at the schedule to win six more to extend the streak to 13 and possibly over take the C's...

They also weren't playing with Sheed in the 4th, but yea it looked like they slacked. Disjointed, and not really running anything. The PORT bench hustled, and the bench looked confused for a minute there.

As for overtaking the Celt's, not if they keep winning games like they did tonight. 2nd heartbreaker for MIN, should've won both games.

That was a great win.

"Stuckey to Amir!" is something I hope we hear often and for a long long time

It was announced before the game that this was going to happen. After the game, it was strongly hinted that this was just the start. Got to love it. The starters rested. The bench developed. And oh, we completely blew away a team that beat us earlier in the season.


Knowing how the game was going to go before it started, I was about as excited as a guy can get about a sports event right from the tipoff. I enjoyed the heck out of watching this game.


The game started out slow, with Billup getting us all our early points. Portland was getting too many offensive boards while our guys could not get a rebound at all. Typical for our starters. But then Sheed got a 2nd foul, and a very high energy player came in are righted the ship. Jason Maxiell quietly started winning this one, just like he has for several of the recent games. Hard to notice. Its not his scoring. Not even his own rebounding a lot of the time. Its the energy he brings. Its the major attention the other team has to pay to him to keep him away from the O boards. Its his highly active defense.


Afflalo joined him soon enough. An excellent defensive player, he just accelerated the slaughter of Portland. Afflalo, in that decisive 2nd quarter, and late first quarter, played solid D, helped a lot with the ball handling chores, and made about 3 cuts to the basket for scores. A darn good game by him, another player who has been heavily responsible for our wins of late.


And then Dyess got his 2nd foul, and in comes Amir. When we let him play, what do we get? Yes, thats right, winning basketball. Yet another bench player who of late has been helping us win games. Amir was all over on D, hitting the offensive boards, and playing some pretty good individual defense when not guarding Aldredge. Now, Aldredge is pretty good, but don't think that just because he scored on Amir a few times means Amir can't gaurd him. It takes experience to guard a guy like Aldredge. Amir started his education tonight. He has a long way to go but meanwhile we will take those active feet on defense. Amir's highlight by the way had to be his slam back on a missed free throw.


Hayes did well. Scored plenty and did not get burnt on defense much that I noticed anyway. Herrmann got in during garbage time. The guy hustles, but is quite slow on defense. Having him and Hayes in was not good. (Then we added Brezec for the last couple of minutes and got real slow out there.) But hey, we had a huge lead and the game never got that close. Anyway, watching Hayes and Herrmann side by side, my impression is that no way Herrmann beats out Hayes for playing time. Herrman is just slow. Hayes ain't that quick, but he is still considerbly quicker than Herrmann.


Stuck got a career high 13. He hit some jumpers, got to the line driving inside, and got to the basket a few times. Quite impressive, and his defense and rebounding skills leave little to be desired. This is a guard that plays big.


Our bench had their bench outscored 24-0 at one point in the 2nd quarter.


Got to give a shout out to Sheed, the guy who played with our subs most of that 2nd quarter as we plowed Portland about 40 feet under. Sheed for a while just guarded Aldrege, and that was all we really needed him for. He did hit a triple or two also in that quarter before it was done.


The only question in the 2nd half was could our starters hold a lead. They did not have to, as Flip brought in Maxiell with all his energy real early in the quarter. Rip hit some shots.


Billups got 17 in that first quarter, and thats it. He did not play in the 2nd nor 4th quarters. With Billups also gettng 3 assists early, he accounted for all but 2 of our first 24 points. Blake started for Portland and just could not begin to check CB. (Roy was out due to family issues he had to deal with, and Jack had to guard Rip.)


Dyess had a flurry of offensive boards after Maxiell came into the game and drew some attention. Tay hit a shot or two and played his usual fine D.


OK, like I said last week, before Amir got cut down to virtually no minutes for a couple of games, if we stay on the course set tonight, we will win a championship. I think Joe Dumars made it abundantly clear how he wants things to go the rest of the season, and just maybe Flip will stop rebelling from this point and start repeating what we just saw. Mind you, again, I am about as excited right now about the Pistons as I can possibly get, cause I just can't fathom how Flip could possibly muck up any more after everyone just saw how darn good our young players are. Still, to anyone with some doubt yet, I do understand. Only by this type of behaviour from Flip actually continuing going forward can all doubt be removed.


GO PISTONS!!!!!

Stuckey

minutes 24
assists 4
turnovers 0

Got to love it. Anytime you can get 24 minutes from a rookie point guard without a turnover that is pretty amazing.

As he gets more experience his assists per game will go up.

If he a couple of 20 + scoring games this year it wouldn't surprise me.

AJ was + 23 at half time. 25 minutes. That has to the most he has played in a game since the last game of the year against Boston, except for maybe the last game in the LVS last summer. I am sure he was tired at the end. The same for Stuckey. He hadn't played 24 minutes in a game since the exhibition season.

All these minutes are good all the way around.

From nba.com/Pistons

PISTONS: Pistons 91, Portland 82

That last quote from Stuckey elicits a HELL YES from me