I agree with you here I think i went too far...Almost all the fans think it this way.

For Prince, i want you to watch especially him in Boston game.We'll see how many times he will pass the ball to a guy 'nother than sheed and rip...But from this time i won't talk about this until the playoffs.

But Herrmann did not play. And we traded Dyess. So that makes AI our poorest defender in our current rotation. Of course, this does not make him all that bad. Its just that the rest of the guys in our rotation at the moment are pretty darn good.

Rip is the closest to a "poor" defender after AI, but even he brings a lot of real good things on defense - speed and quickness - and length. He is a versatile defender, able to guard a lot of point guards, most shooting guards, and some small forwards well.

Then there is Stuckey. A lot of potential to be an excellent defender, but he needs a whole lot of experience yet.

Kwame is a fine defender - if he is defending larger centers and power forwards. For what we need him for, he is fine.

In the very solid / excellent area, we have: Bynum, Afflalo, Prince, JMAX, Amir, Sheed (no particular order)

Just to be complete:

Herrmann: Too slow to play in the NBA as a small forward - not enough of a rebounder to play power forward - and even a bit slow usually for that. Easily the worst defender on the team.

Acker. Still can't stay in front of any NBA guard. 2nd worst defender on the team. However, 2nd worst on this team in no way makes him as bad as Herrmann, who is way, way down on the scale. 2nd to the worst on this team still puts him in the acceptable range. Although he can't stay in front of anyone, he does have quickness and length, along with good knack for defensive rotations. If someone could straighten his defensive footwork out, he would amount to something.

Sharpe. Incomplete. No NBA regular season games yets. Yet, he looks promising as a defender. Quick, strong, versatile, with lots of height. He can probably do ok on most shooting guards thru power forwards. I can't really say how he would do if attacked hard - since in the preseason the other teams simply were not choosing to challenge him much. (And so I did not get a chance to checkout his footwork.)

The guards were great rebounding last night also. Tay did not have difficulty bringing the ball up against LeBron. Tonight that will be worth watching as well.

Tay is always talking to someone and pointing after every play, both good and bad.


Especially when he was JMax on the wing.

Tay hit a shot to cut CLE lead to 61-59 and you could hear the toe tags swaying in the Palace. That is a home court dis-advantage.

Sometime in the 4th after Sheed hit a 3, a timeout was called and the Pistons bench was legitimately excited. That hasn't happened in a long, long time.

How much funnier would it have been if instead of cheering on his teammates in the 4th TGRH sat forlornly on the bench flipping through his scrap book looking at pictures of he and CB?

With a little background music you have the makings of a five star youtube clip:

Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? could we?

***********TWO PISTONS GAMES OF THE BAD BOY ERA ON NBA TV TODAY!!!!!!!!!! GAME 5 VS CELTICS IN 1988 (THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY) AND VS KNICKS AT TH JOE FROM 1985(THE ISIAH GAME...ALSO WATCH THE GREAT BERNARD KING). iT WAS 140 DEGREES IN THERE!********************************************


CELTS GAME AT 1:00PM EST

KNICKS GAME AT 9:00PM EST

ON NBA TV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There was one point last night when LBJ came into the lane and crashed into Max who was trying to take a charge. LBJ got fouled before the collision that sent Max flying. I'm not sure Lebron even knew he had run into anyone. That man is frighteningly strong.

He's basically like a really tall football player with bball skills. Looks like he'd be a good receiver. The fade route would be killer with his hops.

He's kinda like that tight end for San Diego.