2 questions....

It is truly astounding to me that after the last three postseasons people are still drinking the Tayshaun Kool-Aid.

Hell, the last two series.

29 of the last 30.

The 'will be' is quite the stretch. Duncan is money inside of 15 feet and until about two years ago was money out to 18. Darko makes a quarter of his jumpshots from any range.

Who do the Pistons have off the bench who are equivalent to Robert Horry and Manu Ginobli, or even Michael Finley?

Fuster,

The Spurs bench is overrated. Those guys are also old. They work because the Spurs move the ball and their big three can get just enough offense. But notice the Cavs did stop them up in game three overall.

We don't move the ball. If we did, we would score more and I like our overall atheticism versus theirs. Liked it more with Ben.

But I agree (and one of my points) is that we haven't added anyone off the bench of impact since Dyss. We tried with Arroyo. It didn't work. Not adding a piece here or there has defintely hurt our run.

I think that Joe could not forsee that when a team is at the top, you have to continually add parts as the competition catches up fast. The Lakers went down in flames because they moved too late.

I think Joe expected Flip to play those guys 20-25 because they didn't have a chance the year before. Maybe he has gotten the message and will give the young guns some burn.

The Spurs were the most experienced team and the oldest team out there, (Finley, Horry skewing the numbers), but the youngest player Tony Parker still had five years experience of playing in big games and he now has 3 rings himself. His speed and penetration along with the defensive presence of Duncan and the scatterbrain play of Genobli was enough to win this no matter who they were playing.

Yeah the Pistons were the only team to give the Spurs a fight in their 4 championship runs going the distance in 2005 and probably letting the ring get away, but based on our play with the Bulls and Cavs in May, we probably would have run out of gas in game six and the Spurs would have untimately won anyway. It definitely would not have been as ugly as this sweep though. The Cavs just make games ugly....

Excellent post st8, however in going a little further....Who is the best at coaching Flip Saunders or Greg Popovich..lol

You can't really believe that?

Darko was traded because he threatened to go back to Europe if he wasn't traded. He hated the Pistons and there is no way he would have played another year in the Piston uniform. He forced the trade. It had nothing to do with money, that was the politically correct line that the media fed the public at the time.

I do believe that- Darko would have been gone anyways and JoeD tried to get at least something in return (but he should at least have waited 'til summer)- so he packaged Arroyo, who has a big contract with dissatisfied Darko. I don't know if that was the media version and if Darko wanted the deal that badly (I mean, you always hear about players demanding trades), it's even more sad.
I remember that he played good enough to be part of the regular rotation and FlipS suddenly took him out of the rotation for no appearant reason- maybe something happened behind the scenes fans don't know about.

i believe ben wallace happened. he wanted darko gone because he was a threat to his big payday. darko leading the league in blocks in the preseason, throwing dimes, hitting jumpers, hitting free throws and playing great post defense would have made ben's bargaining power drop with the pistons.

Fear the FRO!