Nice first post, Asterix, welcome to the board.

Jarvis does look good, but I wouldn't expect much post scoring from him. He scored down low tonight when he was matched up with the miniscule Tyronn Lue. It was good to see, and Hayes did the right thing when the chances were there--take advantage of the smaller defender by posting him up--but I don't think he'll get opportunities like that very often.

Talk about a coaching blunder, 6'8" vs 5'11", just give us 2pts why dont'cha. But it was good to see Hayes, who is primarily a jump shooter, very eager to take a little one into the post and punish him.

My daughter is now 25-0. She still has not attended a Piston loss in the regular season. (The only loss she has been to was in the 2004 finals, but we won the series.)

Good to see lots of writeups already posted. I always read what everyone posted before doing my report. No look at the boxscore though -this is from my memory, which is fading after a long trip home. Man, what happened to Sunday 6pm starts?

The Pistons came out with lots of energy, often running, and often scoring on a fast break. That was mostly Tay and Rip running together. I heard the stat on the way home, 20 fast break points, a lot for a Piston team.

Our starters had a 20-10 lead, and the soon after that, the bench came in. What a disaster. Flip could stay in front of nobody, and with guys like "I absolutely will not move" Mohammed behind him it was pure disaster. Hayes was in there too and we really needed someone quicker. Prince was running the point, and JMAX was in there. But as good as Prince and JMAX are on D, thats only two players. Not enough. Not hardly.

Saunders made an adjustment in the 2nd half. No Mohammed, who was in the game why? There is no Shaq on Atlanta last I checked. And he rested Rip early, bringing him on with the 2nd unit to start the 4th quarter. Our bench, with Murray, Rip, Hayes, Dyess, and JMAX did just fine in the 2nd half. They started with a deficit and pretty much tied it up at one point.
For the game, Murray was part of some success in the 2nd half, but he was a turnover machine, either by bad shots, or just fumbling the ball away. At least though he was mostly fumbling the ball while being aggressive toward the basket. At least he was just not wasting time dribbling. Still, can't say he had much of any kind of game tonight. Six points.

Dyess did not score in the first half. Nor shoot the ball as I recall anyway. But he gave up quite a few points inside by not getting over fast enough. He made a couple of buckets in the 2nd half, gave up some more points inside. He did get a lot of rebounds though. And for the game, instead of shooting he was generally trying to work around the basket, or making a pass inside. His presence around the basket was positive, and he should do that more.

Hayes hit no outside shots tonight, but came up big in the 2nd half posting up around the basket. This included a huge bucket posting up Lue in crunch time and another basket a moment or two later. He also had a fast break score. Hayes ended up playing nearly all the 4th quarter. He went out for just a moment if favor of Tay with about 4 minutes to go in the game, but Rip fouled out right then and back in he came. So here we were with Tay in the backcourt with Billups, Hayes at small forward, Dyess and Sheed for the bigs. It worked well enough for a one point win.

With the score tied, Billups drives in and gets a call. I guarantee you, that call has not went Billups way too often when we needed it. But it did tonight. Atlanta had no time outs, so Billups made one, and maybe (I assume) missed the 2nd, starting the clock with I think 1.7 seconds left and the ball right under our basket. No way they could get the ball down the floor for a decent shot. I think they ended up shooting a late and way off target midcourt shot.
For the game, Billups did hit some outside shots, but he sure kept up the theme of going inside early and often just like the first two games. Got to love it. About 22 points?
Rip? What can you say. Just automatic tonight on his midrangers, and man can he run the open court. 21 points. (Got this from the post game show driving home.)

Tay was not as aggressive this game. But hey, with Rip lighting it up, what can you expect. Plus its his 3rd game in 4 nights, all fairly heavy minutes. Still, he scored in transition, made some shots from the outside, and helped guard their star. (Joe Johnson. But Rip did most of that.)

Afflalo played briefly, about 3 minutes. He took and missed one very contested shot on a catch and shoot spotting up. Not much else to say, except, no I can't believe he could have done any worse than Murray if he had gotten those minutes.

JMAX was the star of this game really. 15 points, 4 blocks, 8 rebounds, and at least 7 times where he helped get us a 2nd shot by fighting for the board (This includes his several offensive rebounds, a couple of taps to teammates, and being right there under the basket helping a teammate by boxing out for him) I don't know the count, but we had to have slaughtered them on 2nd chance points, and that was mostly JMAX. JMAX did not hit an outside shot. He shot just 1-2 at the line. Everything he did pretty much was post up moves. Pretty awesome stuff.

Sheed posted up enough for my liking. I don't think he hit a three out of a few tries. Some good D, but just not nearly as spectacular as JMAX.

Amir did not play. Yes, he should have. Thats a DNP for Amir for no reason at all. I do not like it.

Samb is the guy that did not dress. Dupree did not play. Hunter did not play.
GO PISTONS!!!!! 3-0

Good writeup, Lee. I thought it would be good strategy for Billups to miss the second free throw intentionally. In an interview after the game, though, Chauncey said he was trying to make it.

We would have lost this game the last two years. Clearly, this team is going to be deep.

Sheed has to be the most underated defensive player in the league.

Yeah, it looked pretty darn close to going in. I was sitting directly behind the basket, in the upper bowl (4th row). So I was looking thru the glass. The reason I thought it might be intentional is that it barely crawled out, giving Atlanta the longest possible distance to the other end. But if that was an intentional miss, Billups would have to be one darn accurate free throw tosser. Oh, he is. Well, maybe he was trying, but maybe he did not really care if it went in.

I wasn't able to see the game, but was just checking out the box score and a few things jumped out at me:

Dice only had 2 FG attempts in 28 minutes. Ouch. Way to be assertive there big guy.

Nice stat line from Nazr. It's pretty bad when Super DNP has a better stat line than you. Granted, Dupree didn't play in the game, but he didn't go 0-1 with a tech, turnover and foul in 4 minutes either.

Nice to see the "undersized" J-Max was able to get 4 blocks and 8 boards. I'll take hustle and heart over height any day of the week. (See Darko "Tin Man" Milicic)

It's nice to have our sharp shooter back. I'll take 10 of 15 with 5 dimes and 4 boards from Rip any night.

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I was wondering about Amir as well. Perfect game to put him in. I hope it's a case of his still recovering from the injury.

Also, all Piston games that were broadcast on LEAGUE Pass via Fox Sports Net are rebroadcast at 2AM EST (which is 11PM for us out west.) on the Fox Sports Detroit channel (636 FSD on Direct Tv.) The game replay just started for those who missed it earlier and can find their FSN.. normally this channel would be blocked out for us non FSN out of market folks.

I slowly start to doubt FlipM is going to find a way to keep the starters minutes (except Dyess' minutes) low this season.