Meaningless win unfortunately. Without Lebron they're probably the worst team in the league. Not to mention they were playing their 4th game in 5 nights (after an OT game to make it worse).

Nice move from Flip yanking Amir and Afflalo from the rotation entirely in favor of Hunter, Nazr, and more Flip Murray. Typical. If Lebron plays the 2nd half, Amir gets a 2nd DNP in a row, and we're lucky if Afflalo gets his usual 20 seconds to end the 3rd quarter. Flip lucked out that the Cavs packed it in, so now it looks like he made an attempt to play them.

Not sure why Flip Murray should ever be on the floor with Chauncey unless Rip is in a suit. And I hope Flip learned his lesson about putting Jarvis on Lebron. Probably not though.

Max looked great. 9/10 in 15 minutes. Amir finally got a chance to play some offense, and he showed a solid post game.

heh, sorry for the scattered thoughts.

Actually he is swapping out Webber for Nazr and Delfino for Hayes.

No James, no chance

Who started then?


Gooden finds plenty of rivals on the court

Even when we have more depth, you don't play them unless it's garbage time. Does Flip knows what he's talking about?

Just to get back to a couple of positives from this game, most of which were apparent in the first half even before LeBron got hurt:

-- Tay and Rip both had extremely productive nights in the same game, which hasn't happened much yet this season.

-- The ball movement was great, with almost every basket in the first half coming off an assist, so the isos were kept to a minimum. And the few they went to were usually productive, like when Flip Jr. backed down Boobie and torched him twice within the span of one minute or so in the 2nd quarter.

I thought Lindsey was actually being pretty disruptive on defense. I like to see him in there with that high energy annoying D.

But, I'd like to see this for about 5 minutes maybe once or twice a game. If he's forcing turnovers, let it ride, but if the other team deals with it, get him out of there.

At this point, he is a very unique role player.

Yeah, against teams with weak ball-handling second units, he could be useful for a few minutes here and there. Just don't use him as any sort of primary backup PG.

i don't really have anything to complain about, other than Hayes can't guard Lebron and as soon as Hayes entered the game, they went after him and scored some buckets.

In the first half, and especially the 1st quarter, we had a solid gameplan. Rip showed why he he's a starter, and was used in a way that actually played to his strengths, and he didn't force anything. I like how Tayshaun is being more aggressive and selfish, looking for his own offense and doing very well with it. When he gets in the lane that jump hook is money. We got payback on Gibson - got rid of his offense by making him play defense, and completely obliterating him. He shouldn't be running the point for that team. We gave Lebron a couple hard fouls, and Nazr did his job, and even gave the quote of the night after. Lindsey played well and really bothered the Cavs with the trap. It looked like we were giving Cleveland a taste of their own medicine from last year's playoffs, and I liked that we were making them play our game, rather than reacting.

Flip Murray actually played under control offensively, and was clearly looking for Amir in the 4th quarter. Sounds like someone had a talk with him. Maxiell was great and continues his run of strong play against the Cavs, and without Varejao there was no one to take away rebounds from him. Amir has a knack for putting the ball in the basket even though his moves don't look like traditional post moves. He looks like Maxiell last year though, not boxing out for rebounds or positioning himself all that well, but he'll learn that as he goes along. You could see Nazr's experience getting rebounds over Amir, even though he's far less athletic and can't leap as high.

So again I have nothing to complain about. None of the starters played heavy minutes, and our bench got time and obliterated the Cav's bench.

My favorite part though, was the post-game. Eli Zaret got OWNED by Kelser and Blaha. First Eli tried to do some of his own editorial, talking about other arena's PA announcers saying he thought they were getting annoying and intrusive. Blaha tried to help him out but Kelser just laid the smack down, stating he didn't notice anything like that at all. Then Eli was clearly flustered and tried to recover talking about the Bucks, and asking what they thought of that Chinese Center Yi, at which point Blaha corrected him and stated he was a Power Forward. Great stuff.

You know what was intolerable? Listening to McCleod off the Cleveland feed through league pass.

He was going over board to show the Cleveland fans that he doesn't have any feelings for the Pistons.

Every borderline call, he would get up in arms over. Then he said something like "All year long, Detroit fans have been dwelling on the fact that Detroit continuously let Lebron get to the rim. Well toooooo bad."

What a ________.

For all the whinig and complaining that I do I just realized something. For us to get to the Finals we only have to prove that we can beat 3 teams: Boston, Clev and Orlando. Well we beat Orlando earlier and I don't think that they have enough to beat us yet, we just beat Clev (if we're only counting the 1st half) all thats left is Boston. Aside from all the crap we spew, one thing is certain, we can still beat the rest of the contenders in the east and we are going to get better. This team has not played it's best ball yet and that ios a good thing. Just wishh they'd work a lil harder and play with more consistency.

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Play hard, Play smart, Play together, share the ball, have fun....Play the right way!!!!!!

We have to beat Stern and his minions and the media. We didn't succeed the last two years even though we had home court advantage and going against Boston, if that who we wind up playing in the ECF will be even harder.

Boston back in the NBA Finals. That will definitely raise the TV ratings increase the advertising revenues etc etc. It doesn't matter if they win, like last year it didn't matter if Lebron won, just as long as he/they got there.

Is there anyone who can deny that a Boston against Team X Finals won't draw a lot more attention and higher TV rating then the Pistons against Team X.

This doesn't mean that we can't beat Boston if we play them in the ECF but is there anyone here who will gladly give them the home court advantage? Not this guy.