The fould disparity cannot just be chalked up to the Stones shooting jump shots or any other excuse because if any one has played basketball on any level--only 2 shooting fouls the entire game is ridiculous. (im not including the 2 trips to the line down the stretch where the refs had to call something eventually because Ginobili was just hacking guys hard in the face.

Speaking of Ginobilis hacks--didnt anyone else catch the verbal scuffle between Hamilton/Sheed vs Ginobili/Horry at the end? It wasn't huge, but the refs were keeping the players at bay a little and talking to them at the end. Maybe the win was making me delusional, but I like the fire.

Not much to complain about tonight... and there no sense overstating the obvious about the quality of the win tonight.
This will be a big boost for their confidence... the media critics well has runeth dry.

There's obviously a substantial drop off in our starters & the bench...
BBall, what are you complaining about Evans vs Delfino for... seriously.... was either a significant factor tonight or during the year for that matter... there's not a big difference in performance from either... just different skills (or lack of)

What this showed me is that we are not sunk without Arroyo... probably better defensively without him.

Oh yeah, Sheed critics (BBall & Jacktagg)... the ball told the truth in a big game.

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With politicians the future lies ahead

Weird game. Sheed set the tone early and played well throughout. If he can do that against the Spurs, seems like he can elevate his game against other teams. C-Note did not look good at all, but you can't expect him to be great every game. Evans is a better rebounder than Delfino, which is why I think he played a lot more. I thought Delfino looked good on D when he was in there, though. Detroit won this game with its rebounding. This offensive scheme still concerns me. This team is playing so far away from the rim on offense now. Ben has been deemed completely useless in this offense, and I hate that. Finley gets the Stinker of the Night award. He stunk bad.

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"I don't believe there's any problem in this country, no matter how tough it is, that Americans, when they roll up their sleeves, can't completely ignore. - George Carlin

Anyone who wants to worry or complain right now... (talk to the hand)

I mean... come on. It doesn't get much better than this.

We've got the best team fellas. No ifs, ands, or buts!!!!!!

I don't think it's even arguable at this point (well, it almost isn't, anyhow).


GO PISTONS!

We won this one by playing in spurts. Good first qtr, good last two minutes of the second qtr and good end of the 3rd qtr and finally good last 5 minutes of the game. The Spurs did not look that good, we let them stay in the game by having two long droughts.

Who would have thought that we could win by making only 4 FT's Checking the final score, we actually could have won this one without even scoring in the 4th qtr.....We had 69 after the end of three and the Spurs finish with 68 . (held them to 70 on x-mas day). Just need to average no more than 75 points a game to beat these guys in the finals.

How come we can out board the second best team by so many and struggle with other teams in the rebound area?

Random drunk thoughts by the sausage king
We need to go to Tay a whole game just once
There is no way Manu or Bowen can keep up with him
Did anyone else notice that travel by Duncan when he passed to Manu and he got fouled????
Its games like this that make me mad at Sheed he was a god out there when he wanted to be
Rip is the man except when he gets fouled and there is a no call his staying down pouting pissed me offfffff they scored a 3 while he was whining
Dyess needs to be more of an enforcer than a finesse player think Fortson but with game
Flip needs to learn that a bench can and should be used especially when you have a lead bigger than ohh let’s say 12
Ben needs to call for the ball at least 2 times a game and just pull a Shaq and knock someone on their butt
The pistons can flat out ball when they want to

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" Either you play with a sense of urgency, or you will be leaving. It's that simple." Joe Dumars
Ok Joe it's time to prove it!!!!!!

The Spurs are on par with the Pistons defensively... it's not hard to see why went into some droughts... they (Spurs) play help defense as well as any other team... it's obvious that they were keying on Chauncey tonight... he compensated by not forcing too many shots and dishing out 14 assists.

This was Rips best game against Bowen... I think the extra screens that Flips offense generates is creating more space.

Is it time to give Flip some due credit yet?

Early recap hot off the press:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/recap;_y...gid=2006011224

Good points about C-Note. I guess he didn't play as bad as I thought.

First of all, lots of great comments on the board tonight. Good job everyone.

We start out with Sheed going inside for 6 points early. They decide to double. So next we see Sheed nailing triples. And Sheed doing a great job guarding Duncan. Quite a player we have in Rasheed Wallace. Oh, and he continues to nail more triples thruout the game. His jump from last year to this year on 3's is real simple. Last year, he was given a guilt trip every time he shot one.

Rip nailed a 3 too. Still at 47% from the 3 line. Very impressive. CB nailed some shots. Tay scored 6 straight at one point, two inside, and one outside midrange jumper. And of course Rip had his midrange jumper going. We are running a lot of picks for him. Without studying the film too much, I'd say Bowen could fight thru the picks we set in the Finals series, but he can't fight thru twice as many like he is seeing now from the Pistons.

Ben did not do much. Some rebounds. Usual great defense. He fumbled a pass from Delfino near the basket. Us Delfino fans were expecting an assist right there.

Delfino played in the first half only, along side Tay. Worked out ok. After a slow start for about the first two minutes, this unit exploded for a 20 point lead all the sudden. There were a couple of good plays where Delfino helped us create scoring, one an assist to Dyess after drawing his defender away. Delfino hit a short jumper, and missed one near the 3 line. (Can't recall if it was a 3.) Just before they took Delfino out, he got to the basket but missed. He may have been fouled there. Something looked funny. Have to check the tape. Why he went out at that time I do not know. We had lost 6 points of the lead, but it was nothing Delfino was doing. Oh, and defensively, Delfino did just fine.

Dyess got us about what, 8 points, or was it just 6. Nothing spectacular. Helped out guarding Duncan some and did ok. Rested Sheed and Ben quite a bit.

Now for Evans. He had 3 stints out there. He had a couple of offensive rebounds, putting one back in. He missed a wide open short jumper off an offensive rebound situation. (The kind Rip always hits but everyone else seems to struggle with.) It has now been about 7 games since Evans hit a 3 for us. Lately, he is not even getting to take any, or in some cases has passed up ops to do so. In his first stint, he played with the starters, and Dyess. We built up a lead right there. But it was on individual play, not team play. A made triple by CB. Tay taking it all the way to the rack with a cross-over. Evans played the last few of the 1st quarter. Defensively, anyone who he guarded could beat him. Fortunately though, SA missed some shots, so you can't say he hurt us defensively in this stint; though later, we see Nick the Quick burning him for two straight SA scores. One, an outside jumper with Evans guarding him, and the 2nd time a pass from Nick to Duncan after Nick lost Evans and Sheed had to leave Duncan to stop Nick. Ginobili lost Evans a couple of times, but missed the first shot from it. The 2nd time he simply realized that Evans could not possibly stay with him and took his sweet time.

So Evans and the team did well in that first few minutes. Next stint was later in the 2nd quarter. The lead had gone down to 14 and Evans came in for Delfino. In these few minutes, we see SA never getting stopped, and the lead shrink to 11.

The 3rd stint by Evans was his longest and by far the most interesting. He came in with a few minutes to go in the 3rd quarter. Again, our offense went into one on one mode. But again, we did ok. For a moment. But to start the 4th quarter, we started off 1-10 before Evans was taken out of the game. We found ourselves struggling to win a game we had in hand. Was this Evans fault per say? No. What was going on, is that since we had a big lead, and the game in hand, coach decided to work on Evans and his ball handling skills. Evans was allowed to handle the ball up top several times. Well, you know the result. Stalled offense. A few times during this stretch, we see other Pistons or the coach explaining things to Evans. School was in session. The good news here is that we had SA beat so badly that Flip decided he had time to do some teaching. Only problem I got with that is I think he has the wrong student. Well, last year, I thought no way Brown would ever make a serviceable point guard out of Hunter, but he did. So of course I could be wrong about Evans. Meanwhile, I want to convey to the people not getting to watch the games just what is going on here.

Great win. Holding them to under 70 this time after just giving them exactly 70 last time was sweet as can be. But don't fall asleep and thing we are sending in our ring sizes to the league quite yet. One, SA missed every three they took tonight but one while the game was still in doubt. Ginobili played, but did not start and is not 100%. If SA gets a free throw coach, and we replay this game later, heck, it would have been tied just about thruout. SA was that bad at the line. And they could not get a rebound to save their lives. Tay, Sheed, and Ben all got double digit rebounding numbers. Tay by the way had a nice double double with 11 bounds and 13 points. I think he nailed about 3 outside shots.(Side bar: People have complained in past games about Tay shooting to much. Thats called practice. In game practice. Tay never got enough of that in years past. First Carlisle would not let him play, then Brown hated on outside shooting. I expect several more truly horrible shooting games for Tay yet this year. Failure is part of getting good at something.)

CB had at least 5 turns. He played the entire 2nd half. One time, our offense was stalling there and he hit a shot. It was a big shot. Killed their momentum at the moment. Rip gave us all the scoring we got for the 1st half of the 4th quarter. His shot to start the quarter was the only one we hit, and his shot with about 6 minutes to go stopped our scoring drought. (of course, Evans going out of the game helped. Any more schooling and this game would have been tied.) GO PISTONS!!!!!

One comment to add. We had Rip, Delfino, and Tay in the game. Tay acted as the point, but Delfino acted as a shooting guard and did some ball handling there. The thing I want to point out is how tall that setup is, with Rip being the shortest guy on the floor.