[Detroit News]

Gerstner's Top 5: Position Fights
The Pistons appear to have things in hand for the Central Division and Eastern Conference regular-season titles. But the race for best record in the NBA is still on the line. Here are five playoff slot races to watch.

The travelin' man: Adventurous Delk is already proving to be a good fit
Delk is proving he's a quick study, scoring in double digits the past two games. He had 11 points in 15 minutes against the Bobcats. And, he had a season-high 16 points, in 22 minutes, against the Wizards.

Burning questions: Hoiberg not in plans this season
Are the Pistons going to sign Fred Hoiberg? No, and quite frankly, I don't think they ever intended to -- not this season. They brought him in as a favor to Flip Saunders, and they might try to sign him this summer.

Alley oop to Pistons center Kelvin Cato
"I collect baseball hats. Braves baseball hats. I've got over 200 of them, different colors, different styles, you name it."

Billups: Pistons fighting for home court throughout the playoffs
"I know with the 2-3-2 format in the Finals, it sort of takes away the home-court edge," Billups said. "But with that being said, I still want home-court advantage all the way through."

[Detroit Free Press]

Pistons Corner: Poor defense leading to bad offense
The Pistons haven't shot more than 50% from the field since Jan. 19. And after scoring at least 100 points 23 times through January, the Pistons have topped the century mark only once since, in last week's win over Chicago. So where did that offense go? You'll have to look to the other end of the floor for the answer.

[Detroit Bad Boys]

Spring is in the air?

… which means that baseball season is around the corner! From the creator of the invaluable lowpost.net comes striketwo.net, which was officially launched this past weekend. Baseball junkies get their fix — it's monitoring no less than 600 baseball blogs, aggregating and sorting posts into relevant conversations. Congratulations, Jason!

Readers: show us your pics!

After taking a few pics at the Pistons-Wizards game this weekend, I had two thoughts: 1) I'm not (yet) a very good photographer; and 2) I'm sure someone out there is taking more (and better) pictures at Pistons games than I am.
Then it hit me: why not set up a Detroit Bad Boys group [...]

[Detroit Bad Boys]

Delk heats up Piston bench

Tony Delk has never met a shot he didn't like…or take, for that matter. Those were my sentiments to Matt after watching Delk fire at will from the perimeter during Saturday's embarrassing loss to the 'Zards. My first inclination walking away from that game was to complain about Delk's chucker habits. My [...]

[Detroit News]

Wallace calling for better defense
"I don't really think Charlotte was a big test to our defense," he said. "Our defense has got to be better. We're making strides."

[Detroit Free Press]

Pistons Corner: NCAAs a time to talk trash
"That's when guys get to trash-talk," Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace said. "And it's pretty much stroll down Memory Lane. You know, when cats say, 'Oh, back when I was playing, when we went to the tournament and this and that.' It's just a stroll down Memory Lane more than anything."

Getting personal with ... Tony Delk
What hobbies do you have off the court? "Ping-pong, man. Ping-pong, every day. But I just have a pool table at home."

The Great Pistons Quiz
Think you know everything about Detroit's hoopsters? Well, give these 25 questions a go. There's no prize -- just pride. Keep track of your responses. The answers are linked below. And no cheating.

Don't worry about who's in, who's out of rotation
Saunders has spent the past two weeks trying to figure out where they belong, how their skills mesh and who should play with whom. One day, the odd man out in the rotation is Carlos Delfino. The next, it's Hunter. Then, Maurice Evans. "We have a lot of guys that are situational players," Saunders said. "Depending on what we need, they can go in and play that position."

Hot topics
Let's welcome the return of Tayshaun Prince's game. He scored 23 points and made 10 of 17 shots from the field in Sunday's victory over Charlotte. It was the first time he scored more than 14 since Feb. 8, when he had 22 against the Clippers. In the 13 games before Sunday, Prince shot 32.5% from the field.

[MLive.com/Booth Newspapers]

Mid-range jumpers help keep Hamilton off the line
Hamilton is currently 18th in the league in scoring with a 21.2 points-per-game average. However, he's averaging less than four free-throw attempts per game, the fewest he has averaged in a season since he was traded to Detroit in 2002. Only Phoenix's Shawn Marion, who averages 21.7 points per game, is getting to the free-throw line less than Hamilton among the NBA's top 20 scorers.

Trust is a major reason for Pistons' success
For all the intangibles that coaches and players talk about being important, rarely do they mention trust. When you look at the characteristics that distinguish the Pistons from most teams, their trust in one another sticks out like a Ben Wallace 3-pointer. Flip Saunders understands this, but it seems he's having some trouble applying that theory to his bench.

Best record doesn't mean as much as performance
Said forward Antonio McDyess: "You always want to be playing your best basketball, but you really want to be playing your best come playoff time. Everyone in this locker room knows that we can play better than we are now. We have played better than this earlier this season. We just have to get back to playing the way we know how, and hopefully, that'll happen right when the playoffs begin."

[NBA.com]

Late surge lifts Patriots to fourth straight win
With the score knotted at 68-68 heading into the final stanza, Fayetteville scored three unanswered baskets, including a jumper by Alex Acker and a pair of driving layups by point guard Mateen Cleaves .... Amir Johnson added 17, Cleaves had 16 and Acker netted 14.

[Fayetteville Observer]

Patriots battle their way to win
The Patriots made big plays on defense and used the hustle of reserve center Ryan Randle in the final minutes to hold off the Austin Toros for a 99-94 NBA Development League win at the Crown Coliseum. Austin missed its final six field-goal attempts, two of them blocks by Fayetteville’s Amir Johnson on former N.C. State star Julius Hodge, to drop its second game to the Patriots in three days.

A reason to like Stephen A. Smith

I'm like most people; I can handle Stephen A. Smith in microscopic doses. But he (or, let's be honest, his production team) has won me over this week. Not only is Rasheed Scheduled to appear on Smith's "Quite Frankly" tomorrow (March 16), but Natalie at Need4Sheed has been invited to attend the taping [...]

Vegas, baby (again)

Two things I've recently posted that came back to bite me in the arse:
Remember, only one team has beaten the Pistons more than once this season?the Memo-led mighty Jazz of Utah. That the Wizards/Zards/Bullets pulled out a double-OT win over the Pistons the last time the two teams met, should spell their doom on Saturday.
[Result: [...]

Test your Pistons knowledge

Be sure to check out The Great Pistons Quiz in today's Free Press. Don't let the first couple of questions ("match the nickname to the player" type stuff) fool you — it gets pretty tough. Both Ian and I scored 37 out of 47 — can anyone beat that? Post your score in the comments. [...]

Daily Dime on Darko and Arroyo

There's an interesting article on the impact Darko Milicic and Carlos Arroyo have made in Orlando over at ESPN's Daily Dime. (link via Motoring)

[Need4Sheed.com]

Mad Love for Rasheed - See you in NYC!
"Current NBA star and stand-out power forward Rasheed Wallace, is scheduled to appear LIVE in the studio of ESPN's - Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith on Thursday, March 16 at 3:00 pm."

[Toronto Globe & Mail]

Pistons 105, Raps 98
The Detroit Pistons were the cat and the Toronto Raptors were the ball of string in what was a 105-98 Toronto loss to the National Basketball Association's best team in front of a sell-out crowd of 19,800. In a game that teetered on the edge of a blowout but kept being reeled in thanks to some tenacity on the part of the Raptors and some nonchalance on the part of the Pistons, Detroit finally shut the door late in the fourth quarter as they forced two turnovers on one end, while scoring two layups on the other.

[DetroitPistons.com]

Postgame Quotes
Mike James: "That is what a championship team is all about. When the hole was wide-open and all of a sudden two or three players are coming to help, you are not just beating one line of defense, you are beating two or three lines of defense. That’s the difference and one thing that we have to learn. How to play at the defensive end is one thing we have to take from this team (Detroit). When we were on offense, we were getting good looks and driving to the basket. It looked like the Red Sea parting, and then at the last minute, it looked like when the Egyptians were in the Red Sea.”

[Roanoke.com]

Dazzle takes close one over Fayetteville
Taking advantage of a questionable blocking call on Fayetteville's Mateen Cleaves, Bynum sank two free throws with 5.4 seconds left to give the Dazzle a stirring 115-114 victory over the Patriots at the Roanoke Civic Center. [Alex Acker: 29 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists; Amir Johnson, 25 points, 6 rebounds, 3 blocks, 10-14 FGs]

[Hoopsanalyst.com]

Predicting the MVP
Billups is clearly the best player on what is currently the best team in the league. He’s demonstrably the best player at his position in the league. In a year when the MVP field appears so wide open, a player who meets those two standards has usually taken the award. Things could change in the final month, but right now Chauncey Billups has the best case of any player for MVP.

[Detroit News]

McDyess comes up big
Antonio McDyess kept sneaking peeks over toward the scorer's table. It had been so long since he'd been on the floor in the final minutes of a game, he almost didn't know how to act. "Never been done," he said of his nearly 12 minutes of work in the fourth quarter. "It was definitely unexpected. I was tired, to tell the truth. I kept looking at the sideline waiting on Sheed to come back in. He never did."

[Detroit Free Press]

Pistons' rotation twirls Raptors
"We wanted to try establishing our bench more," Saunders said. "So basically we're playing three guys a little bit more minutes. I think what happens you get a chance to get in a comfort zone."

NCAA talk brackets the locker room
"I just pick them game-by-game, not that bracket thing," forward Rasheed Wallace said. "It's more profitable that way."

[MLive.com/Booth Newspapers]

Reserves see a lot of time as Pistons beat the sagging Raptors
"Your eyes definitely light up a little bit when you see games like this on the schedule," Evans said. "But that team, they're not as bad as their record."

[Detroit Bad Boys]

Pistons win in Canada, eh?

Given Detroit's struggles to find a reliable backup point guard this year, it's almost painful to see the type of player that Mike James has become with the Raptors. He kept pace with MVP candidate Chauncey Billups all night on Wednesday, finishing with 24 points and 11 assists with one steal; Billups, meanwhile, finished with [...]

__________________
Momma was queen of the mambo, Poppa was king of the congo, deep down in the jungle, I start banging my first bongo
Every monkey like to be, in my place instead of me, cause I'm the king of bongo baby, I'm the king of bongo bong
-Manu Chao

Central crown in sight

At 36-29 and 32-30 respectively, Cleveland and Indiana still technically have a mathematical chance to catch the Pistons in the...

Central crown in sight

At 36-29 and 32-30 respectively, Cleveland and Indiana still technically have a mathematical chance to catch the Pistons in the...

Delfino or Evans?

Interesting take on our forum today from someone calling themselves "vthomp". Have no idea what his status is as relates...


Acker and Johnson having D-league success

In case you've been wondering about the rookie duo of Amir Johnson and Alex Acker down at Fayetteville, you'll be happy to know that they've been tearing things up.
Both players are now starting for the Patriots. In 25.9 minutes, Johnson is averaging 17.9 points per game (on .632 shooting!) with 7.2 boards, 2.0 blocks [...]