"We didn't make shots" - and you thought you were done hearing that one

It wasn't that he cared about offense and ignored defense. It was more that he attributed a bad performance to the random luck of shooting poorly, when there was no effort to get the ball inside or get to the FT line.

Take the last game of the season, when we were eliminated. Sheed was 0-6 from 3-point land, had 4 points total, and 0 free throws. Was this an aberation? No. In the last game of the Orlando series, he was also 0-6 from 3-point land and had 0 free throws. In 7 out of 17 playoff games, he didn't even get to the line one time.

It was just a carryover from the regular season. He allowed Sheed to get off 10 3-pointers in a game 3 seperate times during the regular season while our best shooter, Chauncy, never did that once.

If Curry lets this team become exclusively an outside shooting team, then I will have similar reservations.

Get ready then. Cause we don't have "that guy" that's going to change things.

If I'm defending Detroit I do what playoff teams have been doing. I pack the lane and dare them to shoot jumpers. You don't fix that by charging into defenders, so Stuckey isn't going to help. You fix that by powering down on the block and forcing some action through the defenders nose. That...or making some open shots.

We definitely don't have the in your face post presence. Sheed is too finesse. Apparently we don't have open shot makers either, despite Joe D's constant assertions that he will get one summer after summer after summer.

Sheed wasn't shooting wide open J's because they packed the lane. He was getting them off because he's 6'11" with a quick release.

Sheed, Dyess, and Maxiell can bang in the paint and they all have post moves and the ability to draw fouls. Amir can crash the offensive glass. Stuckey can drive. Rip and Afflalo can slash. Prince's coming out party was a series of post moves as a rookie under incredible pressure. And Chauncey is one of the best at drawing fouls on the team when he's motivated to do so.

We have the players. Not sure how much emphasis Curry will put on this aspect of the game, but all of his quotes so far have been encouraging.

I agree with both of you guys. The core group of Pistons are a bunch of "old dogs".
...and as the saying goes; you can't teach an old dog NEW tricks.

IMO, the only chance that we have of seeing these guys buy into the idea of scoring high percentage buckets in the paint is for MC and his staff to install offensive sets that pretty much FORCE inside play.

L.B. ran an "inside-out" offense.
Flip ran an offense designed to get open jumpers.

Hopefully MC has some sets that are designed to make it easy to get easy baskets.

...If not, let's get back to hoping that our guys can just "make shots".

How many times have we heard that Sheed is one of the best post players in the NBA? I've almost been brainwashed into believing that at this point.

Dyess' footwork and pump fakes are great when he commits to getting the ball down low.

But I agree that the coach needs to force the action by calling "inside-out" plays. The outside shots should be a 2nd option and the shooters should be open.

I still like the occasional Sheed 3 pointer, especially when he's wide open. But he really shouldn't be shooting more than about 3 per game as a center (not because he's a bad shooter, but because we have no center when he's doing that). The 1st jump shooting option should be Rip, followed by Chauncey, followed by Tay.

Even when they shot jumpers under LB they were a lot closer to the hoop.

They shot from a lot farther out under Flip, yes, and had no plan B other than a massive twitch if that wasn't working.

Kudos ... you're right on target.

The Pistons don't have that serious, consistent "inside guy", but I do agree that they should get back to forcing it inside. Whether by post up or create mismatches to drive to the basket, it has to be done.

MC likes him shooting 3s as well. I remember reading the other day how he likes that Sheed draws opposing bigs away from the hoop with his range.

I find it hard to believe that the "massive twitch" wasn't enough to strike fear into the Piston troops to refrain from jacking up bad shots. I have a 50'' plasma and I used leap off of my couch in FEAR every time they cut to a close-up of Flip twitching.

To hell with the regular season: MC can't seem to sit our starters in the preseason!!!

I'm not bashing Curry or the fans who wholeheartedly support him, but some of the people here were too quick to drink his Kool-Aid, just because he's somebody other than Flip. I'm going to wait until he actually proves that he's a good coach.

Only Rip played excessive minutes, and Curry actually said before the game he's going to use his regular rotation for this game since we have a long break after. I didn't like the 37 min for Rip either, but this is hardly Flip-esque. Flip played every starter 40 minutes, and took the meaning of bench players literally.

And i don't like Curry b/c he's not Flip although that gave him a jump start. I like him b/c of what he's been saying, and what he's choose to focus on. He seems to have a clear handle on what was wrong with this team, and what can be done to fix those. Will they translate on the floor? It already has in effort, but the rest I don't know. We'll have to wait and see.

Come on now.

He sucked, but let's at least be honest about the numbers.

Pretty soon we'll be saying Flip kept bag of puppies in the locker room and he pulled one out and kicked it every time they lost a game.Then he would pull out a bag of kicked kittens from the year before and fight them against the just-kicked puppies for entertainment.

It's really not that much of an exaggeration. Rip's PO averages for 06,07,08 respectively - 38.3, 39.9, 38.6; Tay's - 41.4, 41.6, 39.5; CB - 39.2, 40.6, and then last year b/c he was injured 32 (I could go on, but i'm lazy)

If Curry plays all the starters these many minutes we're in trouble.

That was playoffs, not regular season.

I'm not even concerned about playoffs yet, since most every coach shortens their rotation during the post-season.

Regular season noone averaged more than 34 minutes.

We're still close to having Flip kick puppies.

He was a BAAAAAD man!

Not every coach, check out some other teams. Usually teams have their top 1 or 2 playing excessive minutes not all five starters; that way you're injecting energy into your lineup.

(I'm going to keep ignoring the puppy kicking b/c it freaks me out LOL)

So, what you might be saying in my vernacular, is that she is setting up a "straw dog"?

My main point is that if you have 5 Guys playing heavy minutes, and playing together, you never have anyone coming into the lineup to give them a major spark

Ginnobli is considered part of the Spurs big, and his PO minutes aren't close to TD or TP's. Just because you don't have a clear cut one/two/three, etc (which IMO we arguably do) still doesn't mean you should play the starters all heavy minutes. That's how you become stale and predicatble.

Disagreed. Ginobili is a huge exception because of Pop can AFFORD it . Most teams do not have luxury to start their starter from bench.
You have to consider that Duncan draws double teams and he still scores so it makes life rest of the players A LOT easier.

You just can't take one exception and label with this everyone.