Sunday January 22nd, 6:00pm Palace of Auburn Hills, built 1998, league leading capacity 22,076 FSN DET -- NBALP -- WDFN-AM 1130 Comments on the game? ~~
All we need to to do is D up real well on T'Mac and we should be 33-5. T'Mac may stil be nursing his back injury, so he should be takin a lot of jumpers instead of penetrating. With Prince and giving Delfino a chance to D up on him, he should be below 40% shooting in the game. Would love to see Flip give the Serbian Gangsta another chance to go at Mutombo. Hope this time Darko will block a few more shots from Mutombo himself.
I noticed that Tay doesn't look very enthusiastic in his mug shot up there. I hope he's not turning in to Darko.
Its all about takin' care of business GG! Goin' to work, punchin' the clock is serious stuff. Houston is leading in teeth bearing smiles 5-2 according to those mug shots. But when it matters on the court, its 32-5 to 13-25.
I have never tried to get to GameChat before. Is this it? This is what came up when I clicked GameChat into the Search box.
so did Prince have a bad game or was Evens playing that well? looked like Prince was in foul trouble in the first half, but what about the second... looked like Evens played till almost the last minute. I guess some of the Coach bashing will start to fall away, the bench is getting more burn in crunch time.... Or now do we complain the game is too close.... GRIN
game report We'll subtitle this one the team that would not go away. Houston, playing shorthanded, kept getting into foul trouble, but they just kept playing, hitting shots, and making this a most entertaining game. Ryan Bowen left the game early with an irregular heartbeat. Lets hope he is ok. Our bench was a definite factor in this win. Delfino hit that 3. He played a bit on McGrady, did not do great, and picked up some fouls. But it all helped. Lots of guys took turns guarding TMAC here and there. Arroyo was in the game at the only time of the game we managed to get a bit of a lead, 7 points. (He came in with the game tied or us up by 1.) Dyess did nothing much. Hit one shot. But he as usual played enough minutes to keep our two starting bigs rested. Mo Evans had a fine game. He was as effective as anyone guarding TMAC, did some good board work, hit a triple, and got to the line for some points. Darn it though, he missed some free throws or I'd upgrade that from fine game to great game. Hey, its not that he did a great job on TMAC, but he did an ok job on him, which is more than most. He was given a simple duty, stay with TMAC as best he could and bother that shot. He did it well enough. Billups must have missed a hundred shots in this one. Thats what it seemed like at least. He had a triple early and lots of points from the line. But man he missed a lot of shots. Sheed did some damage in the post. Rip, CB, Sheed, and Tay all had early triples but then the shots quit falling. We scored somewhere around 30 points a the line, the biggest factor in winning this one. Ben got yet another dunk off a pass from Rip off a pick and roll. Been happening once a game for quite a stretch now. Ben also hit a jumper early when they left him open, and made some of his free throws at least. At times we were owning the boards, but Houston also managed to clean the defensive glass for stretches when it seemed they were way to short to compete with us. Scrappy play, a lot of it by TMAC. Can't call this a good game by Prince, as he did not do a lot of scoring, and he had terrible luck guarding TMAC. Flip sat him until just a minute and a half to go in the game. Prince responded with a timely defensive play on TMAC. The game was inches away from being a Houston victory. Head hit a triple to get them to within 1. Rip missed one of two. Head then was just short on another triple try. And then it was just an inch from being overtime, as Howard just missed a tap back. And by the way, Flip put in Evans to defend the last play. Back to Prince, the most heavily plus player on the best team in the NBA. Prince does a ton of things well. Prince is doing so well this year statistically, according to these stats we would just be an average team without him this year. Hard to believe, go find the stats yourself. No, trading Prince for anyone else is not a good idea. TMAC was being TMAC. He was on. Hard to stop. Anyone think Melo would have done better defending TMAC tonight? Thats 7 straight. We are now 33-5. Friday, I will be at the Memphis game, where hopefully we will outdo the Tigers team of '84 and their 35-5 start. We could go 36-5 that night. We got a back to back Tuesday and Wednesday, at Minny and home against Milwaukee before the Memphis game. Everyone cheer real hard the next few games. And then we will talk about resting up a bit for the playoffs. GO PISTONS!!!!! PS Howard did good tonight, hitting a bunch of outside shots to help TMAC with the scoring load.
When McGrady's shot is falling, he is the closest thing the league has to unstoppable. I liked that they were switching defenders late in the game to give him different looks -- Sheed one time, Evans the next. Object lesson: * Detroit made a rookie take the last shot instead of McGrady, which is why the Pistons win games. * Rafer Alston gave up six foul shots to Chauncey by fouling him twice on three-point attempts, which is why other teams lose games. He lets Billups make one of two, the Rockets win.
Lee, I think your summary is on the mark. A win is a win, but to me it wasn't a very inspired peformance by the Pistons. Chauncey's shot selection (I believe it was Chauncey) in one of the last possessions for the Pistons (when a two-point bucket would have put the Pistons up by six) was questionable. If I recall correctly, he attempted a shot from 3-point land that missed badly. But then again, I didn't think it made sense for Houston to attempt a three on their last possession either.
some more comments later but phew, still undefeated when i go to games this year!! knock on wood :D it was weird having a close one for once, but fun to actually have your heart racing at the palace instead of the usual blowout
I love the fact that we have a wing player off the bench that is stepping up game after game. We have now had double digit points from at least one of them in each of the last 5 games. Mo Evans was fantastic today. He was aggressive in the paint, hit a three, and was easily our best T-Mac defender on night. Delfino's foul trouble was the story of his game, but I hope he stays aggressive on D. You're never going to get the calls against a guy like T-Mac. He will learn how much contact the refs allow with time. It's also great to see Tayshaun getting some serious rest. Only 25 minutes again tonight. Gets our bench players some more experience, and Tayshaun more rest, so he'll be good to go for the playoffs.
Absolutely Evans had a good game tonight However, don't get carried away just yet. Wait until he has a good game against an above .500 team.
Re: Absolutely Evans had a good game tonight Before tonight, the Rockets were 10-6 with T-mac on the road. They are 0-16 without T-Mac, so they were really 13-9 overall with T-Mac playing. I'd consider them at least a .500 team. Besides, I don't care if the team we're playing is 0-40. We didn't have ANYONE at the 2/3 last year who could take the pressure off the starters against even the worst of teams. You love to discredit everything Evans does against lesser teams, but let's be honest... as much as I am a Delfino fan, he has done even less against good teams. And he has really only had 1 game where he had a big impact on the outcome. Evans has had numerous. Today he even played in crunch time against a top 5 player in the game.
Re: Absolutely Evans had a good game tonight Hey, its not limited to Evans. I mentioned that Arroyo's best game recently was against Atlanta. Delfino has absolutely helped us in some big games. SA, Cleveland, and Miami to name a few recently. And Arroyo has done well all season long, good teams or bad. Dyess is there game after game spelling our bigs. What matters is the playoffs. Until Evans shows he can have a good game against a playoff caliber team, I will not get to thrilled about his performances. All this is nothing to argue about really. Its just something to discuss, and track. We have games against Milwaukee, Minny, and then Memphis this week, all playoff bound teams. Lets see who does what in those games.
I consider us fortunate to have won that game. Houston definetly played well enough to win. Only thing that saved us was T-Mac's 2-8 in the 4th. Kind of looked like he tweaked his back which seemed to have limited his mobility just enough to start missing. I cannot understand why Sheed was not posting up that game. With what Houston had inside Sheed could have had a monster game. Same theme in many games as to why Sheed is not utilized more. Wasn't Sheed rolling over Howard in the previous Houston game?
