This was on me guys, I left the room to make dinner during the comeback. If we find ourselves down again I'll be sure to start whipping up something tasty...
I'm the guy..... Just so it's clear. It's me. I left the chat at halftime and bam. I'll be sure to skip the next few chats.
Im looking at the box score and there is no way we should have lost by twnty to this team, much less a HOME loss to this team. Our guards shot 11 for 32 and we still BLEW them out. A 'good' coach would keep Dyess on the bench. We dont need his first quarter scoring as much as his 'second' qtr scoring. Plus, he'd be frsh in the 4th. We need 5 more minutes for Ratliff, Amir and Dixon. If Flip dont se this now, whayall think he gonna do in the latter rounds? About as satisfying a win as coming home to a salad for dinner!
I don't have a problem with guys playing 40+ minutes. All teams are doing it at this stage of the year. Look at the box scores. There are lots of long TV timeouts. There are no back-to-back games. If Tay is 11-for-12 shooting and playing great defense on AI, he can play the entire 48 minutes, in my opinion.
Got the home court advantage back, we have to hope that they come out with the same intensity and effort that they showed in the 3rd qtr. Maybe they should come out with the mindset that they are behind instead of playing like they have already won the series. I am only 75% sure they will win the series, but it will go up 95% if they win Tuesday. Yeah the bench has not been there in this series, but playing ours starters 43 mins for the next two games might hamper us in the next round..but of course we need to get there so it's a catch-22 situation. . As long as the bench is not a defensive liability and don't turn over the ball, AA, AJ and even Dixon should get 2-3 mins as decoys and time savers. Maybe we should continue to start Max and bring Dice off the bench.
It is good when a good jump shooting team at the NBA level takes open jump shots. Finally! How did we start the game. Billips driving again and again for nothing. Just like game three. I was yelling to our guys: "Will you shoot the ball." No, more drives for nothing while passing up open looks. Then Rip trying to drive later and getting stripped. Sheed down low where he was ineffective in game 3. Our two best players in game 3, Rip and Tay, not getting early touches. So Rip then gets his game thrown off by pressing. 10 point deficit at the half. Whose fault the coach or the players?? Flip did say the right thing at the half. Take the shot!! Relax. And so we took the open looks (yes, jumpers) and Philly looked like who they really are. And we looked like who we might be. And this series may well be over for the good guys. In the past, we have not driven the ball enough, yes. But to drive into the teeth of their defense with players (Rip and Chaucey) whose penetration game is not their strong-suit, is folly. The looks were always there. We just finally took them. AND THEN, Billips could see some REAL openings to drive into... A special thank you to Tayshaun Prince, the best player in this series so far, for keeping us in the game until we finally came to our senses.
I have no idea what happened. I'm doing a paper, and really really had to restrain myself from checking the score. I finally broke and looked. The minutes scare me; like really really scare me. I thought AA/Amir were going to play this game ? I'm not really sure whether i'm happy about this or not, but i'm going to watch the 2nd half and enjoy the comeback for tonight. I do still love ths starting 4, and if they are going to broken up soon, i'm going to enjoy watching them play well together. This series would just be so much easier and less stressfull if we played the right bench players. Flip still sucks. It pains me that someone on TV talked about his "coaching" being that they probably watch 2 Pistons games a year. If this is the 1st round, WTF is the 2nd going to be like?!
Nice recap Lee. I wondered if Dice would look 10x better coming off the bench. As for the bench, i guess we've adopted the can't get embarrassed in the 1st round strategy, will play player all game if we have to. Not very conducive to long-term success, but maybe the next game being a home game will open the rotation up. (i doubt this, but i have to hope for something) We're going to need all the bench help we can get if we make it to ORL esp in terms of guarding Lewis which Amir would probably be suited for.
