Darko Is Done As A Piston His attitude has gotten old and I am sure Joe D. now is on the phone looking for ways he can unload this Turkey, (Oh my bad, Memo is a Turkey) LOL
Holy Crap! Is it really true??? Mo Evans played 9 minutes and didn't take a shot?!?!?! I think hell just froze over.
Thanks for the early recap Lee. It's truly appreciated by those who cannot see the game. **makes mental note to let Lee continue to get away with one outrageous comment every time he does a good recap** **makes second mental note that Lee usually uses up that free pass in each recap** :p
Darth You almost fulfilled your New Year's resolution a week early. But despite an early lead, by the end of the post, the score was: Digs at Lee 2 - Compliments for Lee 1
OT Minutes With all of the energy and effort extended tonight, the starters will definitely need a blow tomorrow night against the 7-18 Blazers who are 2-9 on the road. We beat them by 3 in their crib, with D. Miles going off. He will be MIA tomorrow. 56 mins by Ben on supposedly bad wheels may make him a liability tomorrow. Time for Flip to throw Dorko out there with the other starters and bring in Delfino and Dice after the 7 minutes.
Bench Play Davis is fine, but if Flip doesn't have confidence enough to throw Darko out there now with the starters rubber legs then he needs to be traded and we can cut our losses now.
Flip Needs To Activate The Pistons Secret Weapon Time for AJ to get in there. I am sure his legs are very fresh and right now he could probably leap over both Ben and Sheed without a problem.
Howabout Gasol? What a game by him. But the Pistons are just a five-headed monster. Sheed had a bad game... but he still found a way to keep himself in the game in the OT's and hit a huge 3-pointer when we really needed it. Rip was a little off (possibly due to the three jammed fingers on his shooting hand), but he still found a way to hit a big shot and some clutch free throws. So of course, Tay, Ben, and Chauncey have a great game, and we get another W. Off the bench, Dyess was the man. Delfino played very hard I thought. He quickly realized that he needed to do something besides shoot the J. So he had a few nice drives and played relatively good D. He was 2 for 2 on stopping Memphis fast breaks tonight as well. Arroyo, Davis, Evans all tried hard and gave somebody some rest. If you give Chauncey 3 shots to beat you, he'll probably make good on one of them.
What a player Gasol is. People can say that he's playing tougher this year, but I think he's always been underrated because of his nationality/skin color. That block where he instantly closed out on Delfino's jumper from 10 or 12 feet away was incredible, and on offense he's like a super-sized Prince. Ben just doesn't have the length to deal with him, but he managed to get some steals at the right time. Still a little hoarse from yelling at the TV. Didn't work -- the Pistons just kept getting burned on that stupid screen/roll at the top of the key. All you need to know: Detroit won the first quarter by 10 and the second overtime by 2. Otherwise we were giving ground. Terrible game by Sheed, the Grizz did a nice job jamming up all our screens for Rip, and Prince cooled off after a torrid first half. How we won with starters shooting 3-11 (Sheed), 3-8 (Ben), 6-18 (Rip) and 8-18 (Chauncey) can only be explained by championship experience. Memphis started to wilt and lose focus in the second overtime. They were celebrating so hard at just hitting game-tying shots, I kind of felt they wouldn't have the composure to get over the top. Pretty decent clutch free throw shooting by Ben, and as pointed out earlier, getting Eddie Jones out of the game made it a lot easier for Chauncey to sink the game winner on his third try (misses at the end of reg and 1st OT). Still, this game reminded me of the wins we were getting just before Dallas crushed us. Some bad habits and a very good Memphis club.
after the game i forgot how the pistons lost a very good lead. oh well a win is a win. now tommorow i think sheed will do good because he carried us throught that chicago game which was the second game of a back to back because he was dissapointed in his play against the knicks the day before. rasheed couldn't get into a flow, but he did hit that huge 3 if that didn't go in the grizzlies would of won that game.
in the 4th we were playing to protect the lead too early, instead of running the offense. there was no ball movement and just dribbling until 10 seconds left on the clock and then trying to get a shot off. no biggie, that hasn't happened often this year. sheed didn't play a lot of minutes tonight which bodes well for the blazers tomorrow
Big men who can shoot mid range jumpers do a mess of scoring on everybody. Fortunately, there aren't many who can also put it on the floor like Gasol. Man, that dunk over Ben and Sheed last night was insane!
Good report Lee. Too things bothered me though... Stoudamire is called Mighty Mouse not "tinymouse" ..and I believe the former Piston know as "The Janitor" is called Brian Cardinal not Ben Cardinal. lol! Otherwise job well done.
This is one game where I think Flip really didn't play to his strengths... he made a few mental errors.... He didn't foul Stoudamire to prevent the 3 (2nd guessed himself) He used Ben on Gasol instead of Sheed (worth the foul out risk) He didn't insist on posting Rip on Stoudamire and getting Sheed down low on a clear mismatch. I just thought we could have made this game a lot easier than it was and saved the legs for Portland. Now for a little Crow stew...Y'all know I've been tough on Delfino (lack of "D")... but he really moved his feet well in this game... that's what has been lacking (not the offense)... I really hope this continues so that our search for a backup SF ends... you can see the confidence growing and as long as he understands the importance of staying in front of your man the job is his.... Nice job C.D.... I might buy him a playstation for X-Mas. Now if we could get Lee to admit that not all of the Piston mistakes relate to Evans.
tinymouse I think DS looked more like tinymouse than Mightymouse trying to defend Chauncey on the last shot.
