Tough loss. Starters have been playing more mins than last season. Nothing has changed except for the addition of Hayes so far.

Couldn't agree more. Defenses have adjusted to Rip coming off curls but nobody can stop Tayshaun, who creates and scores from anywhere on the floor. Its time to give Prince his moment to shine (memo to Billups). Of course its only 4 games so far, but Detroit doesn't look as strong or focused as Boston. Has anyone seen the Celtics play lately? They are uptempo and fun to watch...a Detroit-Boston playoff rivalry would be sweet.

Agree with you here *, those guys have been playing together for less than 5 weeks and they are already gelling and we have starters who have played together for 5 years and still look out of sync as they could even not put away a subpar team in crunch time. Three winless teams tried to get their first victory tonight..how come the Bulls were the only team to breakthrough??

Also we did have that the Celtic-Piston rivalry from 86-88, before it turned into a Bulls-Piston rivalry.

Forwards with hoops always seem to have great game versus the Pistons- it's like our frontcourt simply isn't able to handle explosive young PF's

Are we back to win at all costs scenario? Yes, the bench stunk it up, but the only way they get better if they play through the problems. I thought that Flip was ready to sacrifice wins to play the reserves? Afflalo with only a couple of minutes, Amir didn't make it on the court at all. I am not upset at a loss as much as what's transpired with minutes and bench not getting enough playing time to develop any cohesiveness.

Great post FP22, the Pistons are consistently inconsistent....what I mean is they spent most of the first half taking jumpers & finishing with only 8 points in the paint by halftime. They continued the jumper assault in the third by expanding out beyond the three point line where they canned 4 of the their 3 pointers. In the 4th quarter as you indicated everybody wanted to post up and by the time they got to crunch time, it appeared that nobody wanted or could get off a short jumper. No imagination on the offense that I could see down the stretch. One acrobatic shot by the Rip is all we got the last 3 minutes as we could not overcome the futility of the Bulls.

I don't think I have cooled down yet.

This loss is probably the toughest regular season loss that I can remember.

This game never should have been lost for a lot of reasons. Its one thing to lose the game which is bad enough, but for these idiots in the general sports media to plaster the headlines with the Chicago win is just too much especially when we should have won this game for a lot of reasons

As everyone knows I have been a lot easier on Flip than the majority on this board, for a number of reasons. But no more after tonight.

Saunders blew this game. He cost us this game. There is no two ways about it.

We kept going to Hamilton because Gordon supposedly is a lousy defender. Well he may in fact be, but we spent the whole friggen night shooting way too many jump shots.

We have played one good game out of four. We have been lucky to have three wins right now.

Murray and Nazr have to go.

But in the end what will make or break Saunders will be AJ.

AJ has waited now into his third year to get on the court during meaningful minutes and Saunders refuses to play him. 95%. Guys play when they are a lot less than 95%.

Then to get beat by a guy named Thomas. That is just too much. Thomas killed us in the first half with his athleticism. Yes Saunders made some adjustments in the second half but they still wiped our faces in the mud of offensive rebounding. It was a frigging disaster and all the time our best rebounder who is healthy sits on the bench.

After tonight I am convinced it will be Saunders and AJ either staying or going.

AJ can save Saunders job if Saunders doesn't delay much longer and starts playing him. But if Saunders messes AJ's head up by not playing him and AJ wants out, I have a feeling that it will be Saunders who will get the boot. Dumars is not going to let this abuse by Saunders continue.

My guess is that AJ will get some minutes tomorrow because the Clippers game is televised back to L.A. But I don't expect him to get more than 5 at the most.

On the road trip other than in the L.A. game I don't expect he will get more than 15 minutes total in the other 4 road games on the trip. Against the Lakers Flip will play him because the game is in L.A. I think AJ will get some decent burn in that game. After that it will probably revert back to how it has been for the last 2 years plus, unless Dumars gives Saunders an ultimatum regarding playing AJ.

This post does not make me feel any better.

This may not have been Rip's best game, bit his D was awesome. He totally shut down Tay. I don't think the L has cuaght up to him coming off of screens. I think they don't run him off of them anymore.

Speaking of Tay (aka The Leader 1a), he made up for his offensive sleepwalk with 5 monster boards. Leader # 1, CB the powerful PG, hauled in 3.

All the starters played more than 35 minutes. Losses wouldn't bother me if I thought this group would be fresh going into the playoffs. In the big picture a November 8th win over CHI is pretty insignifigant. I guess I just need to wait for the rookie who has never played his slated position to solve the minutes problem.

The problem for us tonight was that this was a playoff style game. The Bulls were playing really hard. They were rebounding like their lives depended on it, and they were very active defensively.

They had a lot more movement on offense and it created offensive rebounding opportunities. We were exploiting so called mismatches, but weren't getting anything easy at all.

And Joe Smith really put some hurt on us for a stretch there when we needed them to miss.


Good wake up call to Flip that we have long-term problems to address.


I would have liked to see Maxiell finish the game instead of Dyess. JMax was doing some damage toward the end.

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"Defense fuels your offense. No mystery about that." AA

As I indicated in the chat room during the game, Amir=Darko until we actually see him play in the first half and play for more than 8 mins. I know he may still have a bum ankle, but so did Rip and he's playing (out of control) as if he was never hurt.

Flip sr is digging his grave fast. I know a GM is not going to say anything in the middle of a game, but I hope Joe was sitting next to Flip on Roundball 1 ? giving him a piece of his mind tonight.

If Thomas can start as a second year man and be all over the floor flaunting his athleticism , then we should be able to counter with at least 10-15 mins of both AJ and J-Max. Agree buddha...this should have been an easy win for the Pistons who couldn't even take advantage of winded Bulls team who themselves couldn't score a bucket for over 4 minutes in crunch time....