vs Atlanta Hawks Monday Feb 25 2013 - 7:30 PM EST Palace of Auburn Hills, Detroit, MI TV: FS Detroit RADIO: 97.1FM GO PISTONS!
OK...so no Drummond, no Bynum, and likely no Knight. Lots and lots of Stuckey, Slava, Middleton, Singler, & English. I'm really going to have to think about whether or not I want to turn this on when I get home from work.
Ill be watching just to see slava , middleton and English to keep the eye test going....Middleton has surprised me by playing better defense than I previously thought he had. hopefully his confidence comes around and he starts taking the jumper without hesitation.
I watched most of it, except the third when I had to fix dinner throw some Chimichangas in the oven before the wife came home from work. A ten point half time deficit, had ballooned to 26 by the time I came back to watch in my man cave office... The first thing I thought was...Drummond, Knight and even Bynum are our MVP's as this team has not been able to run with any playoff bound teams like the Pacers or Hawks without those three. The scrubs did manage to make it kind of respectable by bringing it down to a 11 point loss, but when you let a team shoot 33 bombs from the outside and let them connect on 14 of them its' hard to keep up with them. We definitely need some players that can play D and shoot the three....
No, he and English need more time especially on this team where Our point guards are looking to score themselves..Until Jose showed up. Middleton is a smooth shooter and seems pretty good at getting his own off the dribble, maybe by next year he will be worth 20 minutes a game or better. His defence is a very welcome sight though. English really seems to be forcing it and it is hurting him out there, he is not guaranteed and that is probably why he is forcing bad shots instead of letting it come through the flow.
Well, hey, the coach put in a few plays, got a few buckets to start the game. But it did not translate into Stuckey working out as a shooting guard. As a point guard, he did pretty well though. Considering he has not run the team in weeks, he did pretty well tonight. Stuckey is a threat to get to the hoop. Surround him with shooters out there and you got something. We looked good here and there as a team with Stuckey running the show, surrounded by shooters - CV, English, and Middleton. A couple just rang out for Middleton, or he would have put together an impressive assortment of shots. Just give him time and an iota of confidence. English did fine too in this game. But he too is just getting around to gaining any confidence out there. Bynum out. Twenty points for Stuckey. Bynum probably back next game, Stuckey goes back to being worthless, coach's decision. JJ put together quite the 4th quarter, 15 points to end up with 21. Sure, he can't play defense at power forward. But neither can CV. If JJ can nail a 3 on occasion, I'll take his hustle any day over CV's low to no motor. Calderon flat out had a bad shooting game. That did not help. I hate to give credit to the other team, but Atlanta has guys who can shoot the ball, and their coach happens to play them. Slava did little of note. Nothing bad either. Coach is still not pairing up Slava and Monroe any. I still say for now they should start together. Just for once this season give us two actual bigs under the basket to start games. And we still need a couple more bigs signed on 10 days. Rotation next game: Start Calderon, English, Middleton, Slava, Monroe. 2nd unit: Stuckey, Singler, JJ, (10 day contract guy) (10 day contract guy) Or go to an 8 man rotation. JJ is the only sub for the bigs, Stuckey spells Calderon, while Singler subs for both English and Middleton. Knight is the emergency point and JMAX is an emergency big for foul trouble.
It took me until the 2nd half to stop thinking that they were playing the Pacers. I like Middleton's scoring off the dribble also. It's so un-Pistons like. English had a rough night, but I'd rather watch he and Middleton stink it up then watch Stuckey play well. I've never rooted for a guy to injure himself before like I'm rooting for #3.
We just gave up 114 points to the Hawks. We shot nearly 50% from the floor, got a lot of FT's, and got smoked. We blocked 1 shot. Lead changes in the game... 1. Still, it's always interesting watching the guys that have been sitting on the bench for so long. English and Middleton need to shoot the ball more. This is their chance. Jerebko is playing like he's out for revenge and these other guys should be playing like it's for their careers, because it very well could be. Khris threw a nice looking alley oop to Slava on the P&R, but he couldn't convert. It made me think that we need to run that play more with SF's to spice things up.
I really like English. Middleton is also bigger than I thought he was. He did a decent enough job, although he also made a bunch of rookie mistakes. As others have said, he just needs some PT to get over it. He can become a serviceable bench player. Going back to Kimmy, he looks comfortable on the offensive end, and he also plays some very good one-on-one defense. However, one glaring problem was that he would leave his man too much when the ball was passed. Interesting end to the game where Larry went with zone for almost the entire 4th quarter. I cannot stand to watch Stuckey any more. Incredibly tough circus shots as he's falling down due to collisions has become his signature move. He absolutely has zero interest in passing the ball. There was one possession in the 4th where Slava was wide open in the paint, flailing his arms asking for the ball for what would've been a very easy dunk. Stuckey was about 5 feet away from him with the ball, didn't even see him (or Middleton who was also wide open at the 3 pt line) and instead he banged into a wall of the 3 Atlanta defenders and threw up a wild shot that didn't even hit the rim. Yeah, he can score, but at what cost? ZERO court vision, no interest (because I think he has the ability) in getting the ball to teammates who are in a better position to score. His only value is a spark-plug off the bench guy where you're having trouble scoring. You just give the ball to Stuckey, let him do his thing and get to the FT line.
Not that I have anything against white people, but we may have witnessed the whitest stint in the NBA this year with: Calderon Stuckey Singler Jerebko Kratsov They appeared for 40 seconds in the 3rd quarter and were -5 (not too shabby). You know you have a white lineup out there when you hear the announcers giving credit to Singler when Jerebko rebounds the ball. Also, I want to give a shout out to Lawrence Frank for the worse ever implementation of "Hack-a-_____". The hilarious sequence occurred during pseudo garbage time when we were down 13 with 3:10 to go. - Intentional foul: Stuckey - Intentional foul: Stuckey - Intentional foul: Calderon - Intentional foul: Calderon All that to get DeShawn Stevenson to the FT line, a career .698 FT shooter who was 7-15 so far on the season (i.e. low percentage with a tiny sample size). - Stevenson stares down the bench and laughs at us before swishing the first FT - Stevenson swishes the 2nd FT and then does more starting, taunting, laughing, etc We rush down court and turn it over to.... Stevenson Apparently due to the quality of his swishes, we then elect to NOT foul him on the return trip down the floor (which is pathetic that we used 4 consecutive fouls to get him to the line and then we abandon it immediately). So, instead of having him bury us with 2 more FTs, they just pass it to Horford, who drains his 1st 3-pointer of the year. Down 18 and GT officially begins. I'm being dead serious when I contend that this has to be the most pathetic use of the strategy in professional basketball history. The elements that make it so are: 1) the ludicrous number of fouls that we had to execute just to get them to the line in the first place 2) the shaky strategy to put a 70% career FT shooter on the line 3) the insistence on using a gimmicky strategy when the game was obviously over anyway (the Hawks were toying with us) and when we are miles out of contention for anything 4) the quality of the makes from the hacked player 5) the immediate defensive brilliance of the player that punished us for the bad strategy and proved why he's on the floor 6) the immediate abandonment of the bad strategy and surrendering by the coach 7) the subsequent dagger 3-pointer from a player that only shot the ball for the heck of it because none of the preceding mattered in the least Starting a game by repeatedly fouling Ray Allen might be worse, but that has never happened.
I think Wolves started Rubio - Ridnour - Kirilenko - Love - Pekovic and had Shved come off the bench as a 6th man for a while. Add minutes for Barea, Budinger and Stiemsa. That's a pretty white.
First of all I'm not sure we should be counting guys like Barea and Calderon as white guys. Second, I go back and forth on the Euro white guys. In some ways they're the quintessential white guy and it is hard to picture the All-Whitewash Team without them. In others they seem to have a significant leg up in fashion/coolness over their American counterparts. Even a Klansman couldn't argue with Love, Ridnour, Buddinger and Stiesma though.
