No dependable "go to guy" is starting to make this squad look bad far too often late in games.

Defense gets stops, and even rebounds (wow), and Pistons come down the floor running isolations with 2nd tier isolation players. Opposing team doesn't even have to double and consequently, they limit us to one and out every trip down the floor late in games.

Same song, same channel, one year later. I'm waiting for the young guys to get healthy and take the reins from the old guard, or a trade, or both.

IMO, this game was lost in the first quarter. That is when the Pistons lackadasical play allowed the low scoring Bulls to get off 29 points as no one could or would step up to stop Tyler Thomas. Once again, as was the case last season, a three day layoff hurts the Pistons

Sheed tried to singlehandley win this game on both ends, but he didn't get any real help from Tay or Dyess. Thomas got free for far to many dunks and put backs as the bulls won the battle of the paint 42-26. Most of our points in the paint came from Sheed in the 3rd qtr and Sheed also dropped in three treys in that qtr. ...He probably had his best game as a Piston with 36 points. (if he had had 40 we would have won

The Bulls outhustled the Pistons who had 7 TO's in the first quarter. The bench contributed 8 TO's to go with their inept play and picked a perfect time for a no-show on the first night of a back to back. The result was that the starters averaged 36 minutes. Maxiel probably should have played more, but even he could not keep up with Thomas. Big ben grabbed nine boards, but was a non factor down the stretch.

Chauncey hit 2 threes, but did not have his best game either.. The big question is what happen to Tay since Rip came back??? He was all world while Rip was on paternity leave and now that he is back, he disappears?? Maybe we should have rip or tay coming off the bench? One thing learned from this loss is you can't wait until the 4th qtr to turn it on.

Tougher game tomorrow night vs Clips as Kamen has been a monster in the middle. If Mobley is still hurt,(groin) we may get a break there.

Close game for the most part. For sure we could have used some free throws being made. Sheed had a couple attempts posting up Thomas in the end and did not come thru - but at least he was trying to go inside.
One goat tonight was Hayes, or actually, the coach who would try guarding Deng with Hayes. Very bad choice. Hayes scored a bit, but not nearly enough to offset what he was giving up to Deng.


Maxiell got into early foul trouble and played very little in the first half. Followed by not playing all that long in the 2nd half even though he was getting into the game a bit. I wonder what excuse Flip Saunders is going to use this time for not going with the hot player, choosing to play Dyess in crunch time. Yeah, and if Maxiell could not play his minutes, why is that not a good time to give Amir a few minutes? Mohammed instead? Mohammed did make one jumper. Wow, like that helped much.
Murray did score 6 points. And he turned the ball over a lot. Afflalo got his token 2 minutes at the end of the 3rd quarter, made an alert pass to trigger a fast break score. I think Flip Saunders does that just so he can honestly say he is playing Afflalo. A bit of a joke on Dumars, in my opinion.


For the most part, we used an 8 man rotation, with Hayes, Murray, and, wait - make that a 7 man rotation. Mohammed, Maxiell, Afflalo each played a bit. What a contrast as Chicago was playing Noah extensively and the young Mr. Thomas started. Man, does Chicago look young and energetic compared to us. We were killed on the boards. Dyess was worthless as an inside defender. Dyess made a few jumpers or he would truly have been bad for this game. Jumpers by the way that did give us points, but as usual had zero chance of drawing any fouls, or helping to establish an inside game. Back to Chicago. Joe Smith played big and productive minutes off the bench for them, as did Nocioni, Duhon, and Noah. Any guesses which team was fresher late in the 4th quarter?


How bad can a bench be? We learned the depths of how low Flip Saunders will go to put a pointless unit on the floor. At one point early 2nd quarter we had Flip Murray in the backcourt, who can't play D worth a darn, Hayes and Dyess, neither of whom can move laterally, as our forwards, and the slowfooted Mohammed at center. I guess Prince was the 5th guy in the unit. Mind you, Maxiell was sitting with foul trouble so Flip Saunders will think he has a ready excuse. But he does not. Basing a bench on slowness is pathetic. We need youth and enthusiasm from our bench. Where did Flip misplace it? Hey, Flip, look a bit harder at the end of the bench. Afflalo and Amir can play the game.

No lie. Someone had a thread about Rip maybe coming off the bench a while ago. Rip was my favorite player for the first few years of my Piston fandom, then I switched to Big Ben and now Sheed. Doesn't it seem like the game is more static with Rip back out there? I know we'd miss his scoring but couldn't he be like Gordon for the Bulls, or Jason Terry for the Mavs.He could come out and be that "instant offense" guy. I like Tay as a higher option for offense on our team now.

Mostly I just missed seeing Tay be an integral part of the offense. Sheed was great to watch tonight. Another thing that mystified me was our first half defense. How did the Bulls get all those paint points in the first half? They weren't just jumpshots, contrary to TNT's Kenny's opinion that the only thing Chicago can do is perimeter jumpshooting. The Bulls got a lot of second chance points hustle points and passing into the paint points. Maybe it's that Sheed and Tay were the only ones playing defense until the last quarter. I dunno. Maybe if the defensive effort was more consistent, we wouldn't be in the position of desperate desperado defense in the fourth. It's like they start playing LB defense in the last quarter of any game where they are up against the wall and the rest of the time it's FlipBall.

That said, the Pistons have been playing really well. The Bench sure had a bad night. Hopefully "adjustments" will be made by the next game. LOL.

We are not getting much from Dyss. That is a big problem as Sheed is left alone to do it all. Maxiel and maybe Amir need to be used. We win this game with Maxiel playing over Dyss.

If the rookies fail us, we trade for a big. We are big short it seems and this is a problem that will not go away.

The defense was horrible. Yes, some of it was regular season stuff but it was too easy. Chicago did what they wanted for most of the game. The McClosky article is a sham about us holding them to a basket in the last 4 minutes. The Bulls are a dead team. The hype of last year has worn off and that team is going nowhere in my opinion.

Our run will be over unless we get some youth in the lineup. We need to use Tay more also. His improvement or not will determine where we land.

Thanks for the great posts folks.

Disappointing game for me. The Pistons seem to have regressed from the first two games.

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I don't think it's a lack of a go to guy so much as it is a lack of ball movement. All we run any more are ISOs after ISOs. Flip Saunders makes me miss Larry Brown's offense.

Hayes confirmed my fears about his defense against quality NBA players. Afllalo should'e played more,and Amir sat AGAIN. We needed speed and athleticism. Our coach is stupid.

Also, we need to run the offense through Tay NOT Rip.

Hayes needs to play in spots because he is limited in defense and rebounding. I don't fault Flip for searching for those spots.

But by the second quarter, it was obvious that we needed some defensive adjustments. This coach just can't seem to make defensive adjustments. Yes, it is a regular season game but you still do little things to give yourself a chance to pull it out.

^
That's the most frustrating part b/c these are all winnable games save a few adjustments that Flip doesn't seem to be able to make.

Anyone think we post up a bit too much? I mean, Sheed, Tay, Chauncey, Rip, Hayes, Dice, Max, Nazr. Pretty much everyone was getting post-ups tonight. And that's good to a point, but most of these lead to contested turnaround 15-foot fadeaways. Rip in particular. His personal vendetta with Hinrich usually ends up with him forcing up these bad shots in iso situations.

It's fine when Sheed, Max, or Tayshaun are posting consistently, because that is their game, and they get high percentage shots. But at a certain point it just slows the offense down too much. You end up with absolutely ZERO movement, thus the defense is always in position, and the offensive rebounding opportunities are slim-to-none (See tonight)

We need a lot more drive and dish, and a lot less standing around watching guys shooting turnaround 15-footers.

The other thing that gets me is Dice allowing layups/dunks when he's got plenty of fouls to give, and plenty of bodies behind him to pick up the slack if he does get into foul trouble. He's conceeding layups to Ben Wallace, and ends up with only 2 fouls in nearly 40 minutes. Tyrus Thomas could have been knocked on his ass a time or two as well.