I expect the bench to play a lot more against a crapp toronto team today. Great shot by rip, but i was so ticked when they didn't call that double-dribble on mark blount. what i don't think anyone else has talked about here is thyat in my opinion we would have never made that shot if lb was here. larry would waste that whole timeout trying to tell the refs that they should of called the double-dribble, when it would be too late to change the call then the pistons would have little time if any to get a good play off and motivation from the coach. flip said (after the game) that he told his guys that they could steal the win.

Big steal though we turned the ball over, we missed a lot of shots, and we lost the board war yet we still hung in there to win it. you know what really pisses me off though is that when the pistons face a team in a close game down the stretch on the road when the other team has a superstar. for example last nights game I sae ben gat clobbered in the paint in the last 2 minutes and he didn't get the call, and paul pierce got a foul called on sheed when he shot a jumper that sheed only contested. If we didn't win I'd be really mad right now, good thing we did.

__________________
"That's the end, man." Rasheed Wallace

If it was last year it would have been a DNP- coaches decision and the minutes would have gone to DD. So its good. I'd like to see delfino earn more PT.

When I heard the last shot and the talk about it I thought there was a lot more to the play than Rip curling around 3 guys. He looked like he just outran his guy. were the C's playing to counter a Tip in/dunk play?

__________________

If you blinked, you missed it. The Pistons played it at the beginning of the fourth quarter, gave up a bunny real quick, and then abandoned it.

I know that is what I was looking for. I was surprised when Taysh inbounded because I thought that with .8 left, it would be a tip-in dunk to Tay, like Rip is so fond of doing. And Tay gets so high that it is hard to defend.

But what better play do we have than Rip scraping people off using two screens?

Anyway, a steal is a steal.

I thought we'd gat the ball to sheed he can shoot good shot quick if he needs to. we should of won that game anyways that was clearly a double-dribble on mark blount. so i say we stole their steal.

GREAT game last night!!! I loved the sick look on the faces of pierce and especially ricky davis after Rip sent them all home broke, dusted, and disgusted (LOL)!!! The Pistons clearly did not play their best game last night however still found a way to win. Sheed & Chauncey in particular did not play well at all but they still showed up for us when it counted most.

The refs certainly didn't do the Pistons any favors last night to say the least! First they allowed pierce to blatantly travel for that short jumper, he basically took his 2 steps with an extra (pro) hop as well. Then I also recall the nice fast break that rip pushed up at a blazing pace ending with Ben laying it in and getting blatantly hacked by pierce. The final straw was the clearly OBVIOUS double dribble by blount, I mean I've seen refs make that call in the 10 and under youth league games I coach for cryin out loud (mind you this is a league where they allow the young players to travel and double dribble a bit). No doubt about it allowing blount that extra/illegal double dribble was an unfair (home cookin) advantage for beantown. The equivalent of allowing one to attack an opponent off the dribble, stop, pump fake, and then just start dribbling again... WTF?!?!?
Anyway with all that cheating our boys still came out on top, if Flip drew that play up exactly like that he gets nothing but Kudos from me! Nice screen by Sheed and an absolutely BEAUTIFUL clutch stroke by Rip Hamilton... He doesn't get all the credit for stepping up big in crunch time like C-note but he indeed has bailed us out his fair share of times and no doubt came through again last night!!!!!! GO PISTONS!

Excellent observation Slippy, it did seem like they were all packed in the paint to prevent some type of alley oop or tip in... SUCKERS, LOL! However they should have known better in a way, Derek Fisher already proved you can get away with getting a shot off in like .4 seconds (just ask the 2004 spurs, lol). Therefore .8 seconds was plenty of time to get a decent jumper off.

This was a toughee, but it's games like this that we need to win. The great teams of The isiah years had amany buzzerbeaters and they all added up to W's!!!We need wins by any means neccesary!!We need home court this year more than ever. We dont lose deciding series wins at home. I loved this game cuz of the fight!Blowouts teach us nothin come clobberin time-come playoff time! My bruddah!

We can rag on the officials all we want, but at the end of the day we are a much better team than Boston and you CANNOT allow a game to be determined by the referees.

Any time you allow an inferior team to stay close, you run the risk of a bad bounce, bad break, or bad call losing the game for you.

I'm proud of our guys for coming from 7 down with four minutes left. They showed heart and character, although we already knew they had that. BUT, we shouldn't have been in that position to begin with.

I was very impressed with his play yesterday as well. He fills up the stat sheet: blocks, rebounds, steals, assists...why did they sign Dikau again?

^Because he's white.