The Pistons played one of their three best games of the season* against Chris Bosh and the Miami Heat on Wednesday night, but the same two young guys that helped keep Detroit in the game ultimately could not propel them to an upset victory in front of a surprisingly packed house at The Palace.

It started with Austin Daye, who in his six previous home games was 6-for-36 shooting. He hit seven shots in the second quarter alone, four being three-pointers, which was four times as many threes as he had hit in 13 games this season. He finished with a career high 28 points on 10-for-18 shooting (4-for-8 behind the arc) and also had six rebounds.

With every Daye comes Knight, Brandon Knight, who added 17 on 7-for-14 shooting in 41-plus minutes, including four or five big shots to pull the Pistons closer after Heat misses or turnovers. He also recorded two of his five assists on Daye's buzzer beater at the half and on Jerebko's three to put the Pistons up that many with a minute and a half left in the game.

Unfortunately, the downfall in the final minute and a half had as much to do with Daye and Knight as them keeping the Pistons in it. Knight started by missing two crucial free throws that would've put the Pistons up five. After LeBron knocked down two free throws following a Daye shooting foul, Daye missed a three about as bad as he missed them in the first 13 games; Knight grabbed the offensive rebound and then missed his patent floater. In the final seconds, with the Pistons having a chance to tie the game with a three, Daye walked and turned it over before he could get off what was playing out to be about as bad of a shot as you could imagine.

That shouldn't take away from their overall high quality games. With experience, these are games the young guys will hopefully close out, but for as exciting as the first 47 minutes were seeing them fight tooth and nail, the final minute was just as frustrating.

After the jump, I'll actually talk about Greg Monroe. I promise.

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Eddy Curry and the Miami Heat visit the Pistons tonight for a half-time T-Pain concert. There might also be some basketball before and after the show, although calling it "basketball" is kind of a stretch. Stay auto-tuned, Pistons fans, tonight's gonna be awesome!!

Game Tips at 7:30 P.M. EST

Miami Heat: 12 - 5 (5 - 3 road)

Detroit Pistons: 4 - 14 (3 - 6 home)

The Situation:

The Miami Heat are still not playing like a championship team. Nearly a season-and-a-half into the South Beach Talents experiment, the Heat are still facing the same old problems. Beyond Lebron, Dwyane and Chris, who is going to stand up for this team in the frontcourt? The Heat are getting good production out of Mario Chalmers and Norris Cole at the point, and Udonis Haslem is a solid backup behind Bosh. But the Heat are relying on Joel Anthony (who is receiving a lot more All Star votes than Greg Monroe!!) and Eddy Curry to hold down the pivot. On the wings, Shane Battier, Mike Miller and James Jones are just not producing, despite rotating to fill in for the missing Dwyane Wade. In total, it's a three man show in Miami, and beyond some decent options at the point, they've got a gaping hole at center and a bench that isn't getting the job done.

Oh, but they'll still steamroll the hell out of the Pistons tonight. Not sure if there is even a point in discussing that part. I'd much rather talk about the fun part here-- that Miami does not appear to have a championship recipe despite having some of the league's most talented players and Bosh. What's more, the only real way to build a sure-thing contender out of this crew is to trade one of the big three. Who knows, they might win a championship as is, but they've got some gaping holes that a great roster and a smart coach can exploit. Fortunately for the Heat, the Pistons possess none of those things tonight.

Keys to the Game:

How Moosey Got his Groove Back - seriously, for the start of the season, Greg looked like the hottest Monroe since Marilyn. Over the last five games, his offense has fallen through the floor. He turns the ball over more than he passes, he's not hitting jumpers or layups, and the only thing that appears to be working are the rebounds and free throws. I don't know what it's going to take, but Monroe needs to get ahold of the style he started this season with. If he can do that, he has the potential to own the frontcourt matchup tonight.

Dribble penetration - I usually hate this style of play, but since Detroit has plenty of it, it could come in handy tonight. Miami has Chris Bosh and no one else in their frontcourt, so driving for layups will bring whistles and force Miami to play the zero cards it has up front.

Be just as careful about dribble penetration - Detroit also has a terribly shallow frontcourt, so foul trouble for Moose could make this game even harder to watch than it already will be. LeBron lives at the foul line, or at least rents a condo there, so be extra careful tonight.

Question of the Game:

Greg Monroe is shooting 33% over the last five games. He started the season white hot. Is this an aberration that will soon be forgotten, or this level of usage too much for Moose? This is a rhetorical question. This is an aberration. I demand it to be so.

The Oklahoma City Thunder, one of the NBA's elite teams, will host the Detroit Pistons who are ... not one of the NBA's elite teams. It is a classic David vs. Goliath story, only I think the Thunder are both David and Goliath and the Pistons are more like one of David's irrelevant, unused stones. Is there any good news? For reason we'll discuss below, not really. However, the Pistons are coming off of a hard-fought win against the Portland Trailblazers while the Thunder previously lost to the NBA's worst team, the Washington Wizards, just five days ago.

Game Tips at 8: P.M. EST

Detroit Pistons: 4 - 13 (1 - 7 road)

Oklahoma City Thunder: 13 - 3 (6 - 1 home)

The Situation:

The two teams are like polar opposites. The Thunder, after moving to Oklahoma City from Seattle following the 2007-08 season have had a coherent plan to slowly build a championship contender with superstar Kevin Durant as the lynch pin. The Pistons, after seven straight seasons of at least reaching the Eastern Conference Finals in 2007-08, had absolutely no plan on how to retool and slowly chipped away at a championship contender. Now the Thunder are one of the five best teams in the NBA and the Pistons one of the five worst.

The Thunder have a great, efficient, versatile offense, and the Pistons have a horrible, discombobulated offense. The Thunder have a athletic, hard-nosed, hustling defenders and the Pistons can't communicate with each other and don't seem to know what their doing or where they should be most of the time. The Thunder have a passionate, committed fanbase and the Pistons are last in league attendance. The Thunder have one the game's premier GMs in Sam Presti while the Pistons have Joe Dumars. And I, an unabashed Dumars apologist, for the first time am wondering if Joe is going to be around to see this rebuilding process through.

Keys to the Game:

Run, Run, Run - OKC is one of the best, most efficient teams on the fast break, so conventional wisdom would say that the ideal plan would be to slow the game down and don't play into your opponents strength. Don't believe it. The Thunder use their quickness, length and smarts to force low-percentage jump shots and Detroit has shown all too happy to oblige in taking those kinds of shots against much worse opponents. With Ben Gordon questionable with a shoulder injury, the Pistons need to allow Brandon Knight and Rodney Stuckey to push the ball. The Pistons offense is not greater than the defense of Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka and Thabo Sefolosha, so the Pistons need to force some transition opportunities and not let the Thunder get set on D.

In his excellent recap, Packey highlighted the biggest key to Detroit's win over Portland -- scoring outside of traditional offensive sets. While only shooting 7-for-20 on spot-up shots, the Pistons were 13-for-19 in transition plays, off of basket cuts, and after offensive rebounds. More of this, please.

Work the half-court offense through Monroe - The Thunder perimeter players are bound to give Detroit wings fits. If the Pistons have to run their half-court offense, they need to set up Greg Monroe in the high post and let him go to work. Monroe can be effective against starters Kendrick Perkins and Nick Collison if he is able to face up and have more options at his disposal. Often when he attempts to back down his defender, Monroe leaves the ball vulnerable to the steal, and the Pistons can't afford to give the Thunder any easy transition hoops. And the best way to combat the Thunder's speed and length on defense is to suck the defense into the paint and kick the ball out to an open teammate or find teammates on cuts to the basket.

Let Walker Russell lead the bench unit - I'm as excited about the chance for Brandon Knight to learn and grow as anyone, but one thing he has shown is that he needs to have the Pistons most effective players around him in order to succeed. When Jason Maxiell, Damien Wilkins and Jonas Jerebko come into the game with Knight manning the point, the offense self destructs almost instantly. Knight isn't at a point where he can run the offense and put sub-par offensive players in the best position for them to be effective. He is still mistake prone and when things start breaking down he tries to do too much by himself.

Russell is not a great NBA player but against Portland he showed that he can run an offense and play largely mistake free. Knight is averaging more than 36 minutes per game since Jan. 6. BK should sit more, especially when the second unit is on the floor.

Rodney Stuckey, 3-point sniper - Rodney Stuckey has largely struggled this season, at least until Saturday's breakout 28-point, five rebound, four assist performance against Portland that included going 4-for-5 from downtown. Was the 3-point shooting in that game an aberration or a sign of growth in Stuckey's game? For the season, Stuckey is shooting 42 percent on 3s, and even before the Portland game was at a respectable 34 percent on the season. Before this year, Stuckey's three-point percentages looked like this: 18.8, 29.5, 22.8, 28.9. In other words, horrible. He's far eclipsed his career numbers and is on pace to triple the amount of 3-pointers made in any season of his career.

Stuckey has always been a terrifically strong, quick guard without a reliable jumper. If he can stretch his range out to 3-point territory, he will find it much easier to find open lanes to the basket and will probably even see a sizable bump in his efficiency at the rim. For a player that has flashed a number of great kills, Stuck has always been a low-efficiency player. If he can hit 3s and improve his conversion rate at the rim he could be an extremely valuable commodity.

Question of the Game:

Will the Pistons be down by more than 14 points at halftime?

Here, this is a video I was introduced to by my friend Brady and it really could should be a stand alone recap:

I believe everything in the above-embedded video.

And this was an exciting win not just because wins are fun, but also because the Pistons ended several losing streaks on Saturday night -- a five game losing streak at home, a four game losing streak overall, and a seven game losing streak to the Portland Trail Blazers that dated back to February 2008.

Rodney Stuckey was the major reason for this, as he was not Suckey, and scored 28 points on 8-for-15 shooting (8-for-9 from the line). Brandon Knight added 14 points and Greg Monroe had 10 points and eight rebounds.

More in a minute...

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The Pistons are 1/4 of the way through the abbreviated 2011-12 NBA season. If the team continues to perform at this rate, fans will see 12 wins by the season's end. Even if Detroit were to play a full 82 games, the team would only win 15 of them. That would be the worst season in franchise history, worse even than the teal era of the mid 1990s. So if you're watching this team and feel like the teal years were more fun to watch than this, you're right. As of today, this is the worst the Pistons have ever been.

Game Tips at 7:30 P.M. EST

Portland Trail Blazers: 9 - 6 (3 - 5 road)

Detroit Pistons: 3 - 13 (2 - 6 home)

The Situation:

LaMarcus Aldridge put up 32 points, 23 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 steals last night. He's having the best season of his career, and chances are he'll get snubbed from the All Star game once again. Buffoonery. Aldridge is one of many reasons why the Blazers are a solid team that perpetually flies under the radar, only to give one hell of a fight to the elite Western Conference teams it faces in the playoffs. They're missing that one piece that pushes them over the top, because a stud center could make this team a clear cut championship contender.

Sadly, that stud center is on their roster, he just hasn't played a single game since 2009-10. Greg Oden continues to recover from the micro-fracture surgery he received in November of 2010. It's really sad what injuries have done to this team, but it's remarkable that they remain competitive anyway. If they had a healthy starting lineup of Oden, Aldridge, Gerald Wallace, Brandon Roy and any damned point guard in the league, they'd need to make some extra room in their trophy case. But healthy players is something this team just doesn't have-- and I feel pretty bad for both the players and the fans.

Even despite the loss of Brandon Roy and the unfortunate status of Greg Oden, this is a surprisingly stacked team. Beyond Aldridge, they have Gerald Wallace, Marcus Camby, Wesley Matthews, Jamal Crawford and Raymond Felton. At every position, they appear to have above-average talent regardless of those they have lost to injury. That's a pretty remarkable situation, especially when you look at Detroit's collection of overpaid, under-performing jagoffs. When you consider what Portland has accomplished with what it doesn't have, they really deserve to be commended.

Keys to the Game:

Fine someone to defend Aldridge - Okay, I'm not sure that's possible. Detroit has always had a problem guarding Aldridge and tonight won't be any different. But if the Pistons can find someone to at least slow him down or prevent open looks, that would help the team's cause tonight. Try anything. Rotate different players on him and try to find something that works. Jerebko, Maxiell, Wallace, Daye, Monroe, whatever.

Speed it up, look for transition opportunities - I remember when Detroit and Portland were the two slowest-paced teams in the league. Now, Portland is the 5th fastest, while Detroit is still in the basement despite an almost complete turnover of talent. Greg Monroe loves firing outlet passes and Brandon Knight is a speedy little bastard. Keep Tayshaun off the court for a little while and try a fast-paced transition game. It might pay off.

Moose no foul - Greg Monroe has had a few underwhelming games of late due to foul trouble. This certainly wasn't a problem for him last year, so hopefully these games have been an aberration. Take care, Greg, and look to find the deliberate, mindful nature that suits you so well. If you get overly aggressive on defense, you will hear whistles.

Feed the Moose - On the offensive end, be as aggressive as you like. But unless you're in the low post, I'd prefer to see passes instead of 16' jumpers.

Question of the Game:

If the Pistons only win 12 games this season, will Joe Dumars be around for the draft in June?

It was Super 70s night at The Palace, and our Juno Pistons lost by 17 in front of about 70 people. They scored 81. The loss was Detroit's 10th in their last 11 games (or we could really just say 13th in their 16 games this season), fifth straight at home, and fourth in a row overall. Really Super.

The Pistons trailed 49-30 at the half, but scored half of 70 in an inspired third quarter wherein Lawrence Frank picked up his first technical of the season and Brandon Knight scored 12 of his 22 points. The deficit was down to as little as seven with just under nine minutes left in the game, but one last 17-3 Grizzlies run put Memphis back up 21 and the Pistons layin' a gasser.

Detroit didn't shoot all that bad as a team (44-percent) and actually outrebounded the Griz 38-27 (13-3 on the offensive glass), but 25 turnovers helped Memphis shoot 57-percent, collect assists on 23 of their 39 baskets, and score 19 fast break points. I didn't see the final stat, but when the Pistons were at 19 turnovers, the Grizzlies had translated those into 26 points (the Pistons had just six points off turnovers at that point).

Brandon Knight was the leading scorer for the Pistons with the aforementioned 22 on 6-for-18 shooting. Greg Monroe had a quiet double-double with 10 points and 13 rebounds. While the Pistons shot 44-percent, Knight, Monroe, and Tayshaun Prince were the three volume shooters and they combined to be just 15-for-43 (35-percent); the rest of the Pistons were 14-for-23 (61-percent).

Rudy Gay led all scorers with 24 points on 10-for-17 shooting. Far out. Get down with me after the jump.

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