Denver Oct 14 6PM

Denver flies into town for this Sun evening pre-season matchup. And its actually going to be on tv. Ist game of the year yours truly is going to.

tv: FSN

i'll be there

Me too.

Chat is open if anyone is watching.

Good to see Max respond from being called out by Flip with a strong showing on the glass. Now he just needs to bring that consistently.

Comments stolen and edited from my post at the other site

The Pistons interior defense is still suspect. Sheed is coasting thru the preseason. (what else is new). I think he needs to semi-retire the three and start playing the post. he was 1-6 from outside the arc and CB is still feeding it to him out there. hey no fouls tday so an improvement there. Tay has emerged to the third scoring option and took over the ist quater while Sheed went throght the motions.

The rookies, Max and Flip Jr are still making mistakes, but I think it is all mental right now and as long as Flip plays them together as the close out unit, they should learn and improve. . I would not put them out there together as unit down the stretch unless there is 25 point lead and it is less than 4 minutes to go.....

Hayes is a keeper and will be streaky (16 pits in the 2nd qtr)..can hit the 3 and his Ft's. Looks kike the Dupree experiment is over as he stayed on the bench tonight. Time to waive him IMO. Hopefully Rip and Aj are 100% by the season opener and in the mean time, Flip gives a little PT to Sammy Meija and Chiek Samb in the next couple of games.

One last thing...Dice is being wasted as a starter, INHO. Need someone else in there starting and then switch him back to coming off the bench.

__________________
"Once you go Barack, you never go Bak" Mario Cantone 2008

Great fun watching the Pistons win. Really nice seats, midcourt, 1st row, right on the midcourt line. My very favorite seat in the Palace. (Upper bowl of course, birds eye view.) The lady next to me was almost cussing under her breath about Flip Murray being cut. Good crowd. The group I was with all had the same opinion about Murray. Cut him now. Bad shots, 2nd straight 1-6 shooting night, while continuously letting the other team score on him. Flip Murray did make a few passes, and he did drive in 3 times, once getting the basket, and twice getting fouled and making both free throws. But the rest of his game was a disaster. One thing at least the Pistons coaching staff avoided tonight is trying to have Murray set up plays.

Hunter played, looked good making some shots. Anyone who knows anything about my opinion about Hunter can skip the next sentence. Hunter is the worst all time shooter in the history of the NBA playoffs. A few shots made in preseason are meaningless.

Next, the good stuff. I won't talk about the starters at all, as hey, its just preseason and who really cares. I hope Rip is alright after apparently twisting an ankle.

I will talk about Dyess, a guy who fits in with our starters like oil and water. Sheed already shoots way too many outside shots, and Dyess just does nothing but add to the problem. Dyess pretty much played for the other team tonight, with his missed shots starting nice fast breaks for Denver.

JMAX, the guy who should be starting for us had a very decent rebounding night, but I must caution that Denver did not play much of a rotation in the front court. Camby did play, but not that much, and he was it as far as good rebounders for Denver. Still, JMAX certainly outrebounded the rest of our team pretty strongly. He also made some outside shots. And free throws. He did miss a couple late that could have made the win a bit easier, but those were the only two he missed out of 8. He finally did seal the deal with two cluth free throws at the end. We got some dunks from JMAX too.

Denver started a pretty sorry bunch in the first half, but our starters apparently were not too interested and did not get ahead much. Despite all of Murray's missed shots in the first half, we did expand the lead with him in. A lead that pretty much evaporated in the 3rd quarter with our starters in. But note Denver started a better group in the 2nd half.

Despite some stars being missing for Denver, Denver still had some serious fire power out there. This game was no cakewalk. A Saginaw guy, Roberson, was on fire, and a guy named Van Wafer can light up the scoreboard too. And Bobby Jones. Still, with little front court help, this was not a really good test of our team.

Not much in the way of highlights from Stuckey or Afflalo. Just the one fairly spectacular drive in by Stuckey. But Afflalo managed a triple, and several made free throws while Stuckey hit some key free throws down the stretch. Indeed, as a team, the Pistons hardly missed any free throws.

No Amir again. No Mejia. Both injured to some extent. No Samb. No Dupree. No Afflalo in the 1st half- for the 2nd straight game. Here is a good thing about Afflalo - Denver very seldom tried to score on him. Nor on Stuckey for that matter. Any guesses who they did light up all night - anytime they had the chance? I won't even bother saying it.

Now for Hayes. The guy was just awesome. Nice post up move going to the middle, and a whole lot of made jumpers off the catch and shoot or the cut and catch and shoot. He only tried one pull up, and missed it of course. Now if he can that down to zero tries. Hey, this was one awesome shooting display by Hayes. The guy don't need much space to get that shot off, with lots of confidence. And I could not find much fault with his D either. He played a lot of power forward tonight, with Afflalo playing small forward and Stuckey and Flip in the backcourt. In other words, he looked fine defensively, as a power forward, but again against a pretty weak frontcourt. (Like 39 year old Augmon.)GO PISTONS!!!!!

this was a fun game to be at, as the refs (mostly) swallowed their whistles and let the guys play. don't wanna talk too much about the starters, but chauncey looked great and tayshaun was superb.

flip was the 1st off the bench because of rip's early 2nd foul, and he proceeded to come in and play atrocious basketball. he took 5 ill-advised shots and missed, stopped feeding tay when tay had hit around 4-5 in a row, got burned by the guy he was defending, and had a couple turnovers. he played more controlled in the 2nd half and made some nice things happen, but yikes...he's going to play himself out of a roster spot with that inconsistency.

jmax was awesome, hitting his first 4 free throws and hitting 2 more in crunch time. there was a noticeable difference in his defensive rebounding tonight. he grabbed boards because he got in position and blocked out. i think he'll begin to realize that there's glory in defensive boards as well. he's got a long way to go on his post-up game though...he's better just facing the basket and popping a shot over a defender.

afflalo and stuckey continue to learn. stuckey had one great drive, but had another that was blocked. he also missed a drunk after driving the lane that would've put the crowd in a frenzy. he'll get there. afflalo made some nice plays, didn't force anything, and played great man-to-man defense. lindsey came in and made some nice shots, but also got blown by twice in a row when defending one of denver's quick guards.

hayes was awesome. he got the hot hand and has a quick release, and isn't afraid to shoot it. he played strong defense, fought for boards, posted up, made 3s, and made his free throws. he knew how to draw contact and looked great. he's an upgrade over delfino - tougher, better shot, more confident, taller, and he actually speaks english rather than never bothering to become proficient at it. ever see delfino score 24 in a game? me neither.

so another encouraging game. the starters looked sharp and the bench came up big. we did have trouble defending the drive-and-kick game denver was using in the 2nd half, but flip said he hadn't really established a zone with that 2nd unit yet, so i'll give him the benefit of the doubt there. one point that is not being emphasized enough is free throws. joe drafted 2 guards who are rock solid at the line, and jarvis hayes shoots bunnies at an 83% clip for his career. the pistons were 31/35 from the line and that ended up being very important.

another fun exchange was when jr smith got a dunk over maxey. there was a stoppage of play and smith was near the pistons bench, where sheed was giving him an earful. smith's attitude the entire game was that he thinks he's a superstar (admittedly he was quick to the lane). well after that, smith tried again and maxiell promptly rejected his shot. he tried yet again and maxiell took a charge. good job maxey.

I like Stuckey, but this drunk driving must stop. He is a role model.

haha woops.

did really no one else catch this game? i would think there'd be more discussion on how everyone played