Yup, hard not to wonder what could have been if they had a defensive system in place (or of any kind) and they stuck with Kwame the whole time. He's another victim of Amir's potential.
Kwame is in the same boat as Amir - victims of a coach thinking that playing a pair of 34 year old players Sheed and Dyess as much as possible is a good idea. Lets also not forget about the 10 or so games wasted where Prince played PF.
Meaningless game. Still watched it. Why not. Even in this meaningless game, Curry does not try anything different at small forward. Instead, he played Herrmann just under 40 minutes, all at small forward. Herrmann scored double digits, on very bad shooting, and gave up around 20 points for lack of defensive rotation and transition D. As a team, we were constantly found lacking in defensive rotation. nd we lost by the way, not that it matters. Sheed did play the first nine minutes. Just so I can write the following: It does not work to pair up two centers. Not in this league. Almost no team plays two dominant scoring centers, so you don't need to play two centers to guard them. The little bit of time that Herrmann was not playing, and Sheed and Kwame were not paired up, we played small ball. Bynum and Stuckey as the guards and Afflalo at small forward. This does not work none too well. Defensively, we had problems the whole game. Problems stemming directly from the choices Curry made of who to put out on the floor. Nothing at all different from the last few games. Its been four games now since Curry coached to win a game. The playoffs are about to start. We all get to see if Curry actually will continue the madness, or will coach for wins. Of course, I can see Curry's version of coaching for a win. Since he can't figure out anything on rotations, he will just overplay his starters to the max. It will be an ugly series coming up vs. the Cavs. At least it will just be a quick four games. To be clear, all Piston losses. More details on the game. Afflalo started, played major minutes, shot ok. Bynum played a lot, started the 2nd half. He started out cold, but got it going late in the game. Sheed contributed a triple made in his only 9 minutes played. Kwame was pretty darn good, about 17 and 14. Or so. All off inside play. Free throws not too bad at all these days. Amir played quite a bit, blocked a bunch of shots. Made a jumper. Made a hook shot driving across the lane from the left. For no apparent reason though, he was taken out of the game for good around midway thru the 4th. Bynum, Afflalo, Herrmann, JMAX, and Kwame played the last half of the 4th, and OT. Amir made the play of the game, scratching Beasly in the eye, who was killing us up to that point. JMAX had 7 offensive boards, but just 3 defensive boards in lots of minutes. He hit some jumpers, did some damage around the lane. His defense was solid, but hey, with Herrmann in the game, you can only do so much. We have lots of good defenders to surround Herrmann, but in the end, if you only use 4 defenders, the other team will find a hole in your defensive scheme. Back to Herrmann. I am sure someone will counter that they only saw about 8 points scored directly on Herrmann. But hey, if you watch enough basketball, you begin to notice that the whole team plays transition D. The whole team does defensive rotation. Herrmann does not even begin to do his share. (although his 2nd half efforts were much more acceptable than his 1st half efforts which were non-existent.) Herrmann is put in his own one man zone at the baseline, and the other 4 players are left to cover everything else. Note, Herrmann is a small forward, supposedly. Small forwards do not just sit on the baseline on defense. Take a closer look at any NBA game and you will see what I am talking about, if you bother looking. Stuckey did so so. Nothing that spectacular. Some people might try to say that hot shooting by Miami won the game. But hey, where was our small forward, who normally would be playing some perimeter D to make their outside shooters life a bit more difficult. Thats right, sitting on the baseline in his own personal one man zone.
Kwame has the size to man his position. Amir does not. In all seriousness, starting Amir was probably one of the worst decisions made in the league this year.
But it's not reflected in that actual results. Whatever it is he was doing on the court, it was helping the team.
Pistons 2 for 13 on the three ball. You wonder sometimes if this team (Post-Billips) is in the NBA with that kind of output. Joe, please get a shooter. Afflalo showed some offensive presence so that was the highlight for me. Can Bynum play any defense against the high screen? How can a guy be such a good offensive rebounder (Maxiel) and have trouble on the defensive glass? Is it because he is a tweener? I really can't figure that out. His missed free throws at the end were costly. Maxiel's offensive game is to score inside and bang so he gets to the line a lot which makes his free throwing an issue. If you get to the line and miss, it is a missed possesion. (Did people catch the column in the Detroit News on Amir and Maxiel? It took McCloskey the whole season to question their output???). I have said all year that Hermann is not really a shooter. Let the real season begin...
That's why i am not gonna watch the Cav-Pistons games, to darn depressing. Only time i am thankfull for the timezones, i won't be able to watch the game live as i will be sleeping. And yes i could get up but no i won't, lol
That was some brutal free throwing by our big men in crunch time. It was semi interesting watching Bynum and Quinn duel it out. Why no Sharpe? That was the only reason I was excited to watch this otherwise meaningless game. I just don't get the development thing I guess. 2 year contract and we paid him to do nothing for 50% of that time? Kwame Brown has a player option next year. It is pretty realistic to think that he is going to opt to come back, right?
If Sharpe played any at all, people would start questioning Curry's sanity for playing Herrmann instead of Sharpe. Sharpe consistently is the first guy down the floor for transition D. Herrmann the last. That right there is enough for me to make the change.
I have a hard time calling Bynum's showing "excellent". Chris Quinn had 7 points when Will came in for Rodney @ the 7:22 mark in the 4th. By the time the game was over, Quinn had 26 points. Plus, he took 18 shots to score 16 points, fouled out in 28 minutes, and was the worst on our team @ -9. He was the only guy who could score in the overtime, but realistically, he was the only one shooting there for a while it seemed. Hopefully he gets back in his groove for the playoffs. And yea, I thought it was pretty weak to not give Sharpe at least a few minutes of real PT for a years worth of hard work.
I must have been watching a different game. Amir looked lost, well, looked like someone who hadn't played in ages. I didn't see any need whatsoever to bring him in over Kwame or Max, both of whom where getting after it. Amir was blocking well on help, but I didn't see anything else to recommend him. It was a weird game though. Just not clear to me why no one thought to try a different defender on Quinn at some point there in the 4th or OT. Bynum is clearly pretty easy to lose on screens and Quinn got anything he wanted. Why not at least try to stop him? Maybe that would have been too big a violation of the macho one-on-one is all we play defensive approach.
Really. Who knew this stuff was still going on? Unfortunately Miami and Chris Quinn did (and Detroit didn't).
You know my working hrs better. When the game started, I was dressing up to work. By time regular gametime end, I just reached the office. And by time OT ends, I managed to log into the forum but by then, was too frustrated to go into chat cause of the score. Will be in chat for the rest of the Pistons season.
I was out to companion the guy who writes my paycheck every month to see our client this morning during the Miami game time. The training camp ended and the real season is here to go. Go Pistons. BTW, is Amir dating several daughters of our fans here ? LOL.
Did you see who was guarding the pick and roll when he drained all those 3's? Our best P&R defender, who cheated every time by not showing hard enough.
What i don't get is why Curry doesn't seem to believe in adjustments? He just continues to watch the same thing happen over and over again. If someone is a defensive guy why not a switch him onto someone you're getting lit up by? Or adjust coverage? He might as well just go to sleep. I'm sure Arnie Kander could do a better job.
