Wow, whoever said Tay was going to come out smoking a couple threads ago is a mutheryouknowhatin prophet. Wow.

The 8 rebounds impress me more than the points from tay. But I am disappointed that he cut his hair. My dream of calling him Froshaun has been taken away

Looks like Spellcheck failed. 2 quick fouls, a huge blocked shot and then the bench… welcome to the NBA.

Hayes isn’t looking too good… er, well…

I think Hayes has been decent. 1-2 from 3 which is what we brought him for. Still has 5 points but I’d like to see better midrange stuff.

You know what I love more than nearly anything in the world? When Reggie Miller is forced to say nice things about Tayshaun Prince when opening up the 2nd half. I bet it hurts him deep down in his soul, really bad. “He’s so versatile…” I can hear Miller dying inside. Makes for great TV.

First “Ball don’t lie!” of the season!

Yep, this is going to be Prince’s best year yet. I think he will crack the number 2 spot behind Rip in PPG, close behind Rip too. Afflalo looked pretty nervous to start, I’ll still give him some time to get his game going.

I’m not watching the game but in the box score its showing Amir Johnson dressed.

I said Tayshaun would get in his first All-Star game this year, but i wouldnt consider myself a prophet. lol

Ahh, I must of missed the “Ball don’t lie”. Sheed is classic.

Prince record high at 34 points, 12 rebounds.

Thirty-four Points
Twelve Rebounds
Zero Stupid Nicknames
No trade demands and no girly F’ing tights

Kobe who?

“Get this man a signature shoe!”

That was skittles of fun baby.

I liked Hayes… Seemed he was playing very hard, always fighting for the ball, taking charges… Very Pistons-type player

Now the trade Tay-for-Kobe won’t happen… cuz even if it was offered, Kobe would nix the deal: “I want to play WITH Tay, not against him! No deal!” Damn that was fun to watch.

Very good start to the season. T. Prince is the freaking man. He was all over the place tonight. Well at least in the second….which is all that I saw of the game. I can’t think of the last game that I saw where Shaq was actually playing but was invisible. And Jarvis Hayes is a tremendous upgrade over Carlos Delfino. Mike Payne I agree. That was very funny.

And by “that” I mean your comment.

I take back my comment about Hayes; he settled in right after I wrote it. NBA.com’s boxscore has plus/minus stats, and he and Flip led the team with +14.

Hayes’ shot wasn’t necessarily falling most of the time, but he seemed to me to play his butt off on the defense end. I like what he showed, and a lot of people have said he suffers from streaky shooting. If that’s the case, he’ll have worse games from the field, but obviously he’ll also have much better ones. Decent performance, and I like the different looks Flip used with him, by not just using Hayes for backing up Tay at SF, but also playing them alongside each other.

With Afflalo not looking too good and Hayes logging a lot of minutes, I’m surprised Tay played 43. I know that he was unstoppable on those curling cuts into the lane (he had to have at least like 4 easy hoops off those), but that’s still a little excessive on the minutes, I feel. I hope when Rip returns and eventually when Stuckey heals up, that Tayshaun gets to take a seat and Jarvis can hold down the fort at SF.

The boys shot pretty badly tonight (38.8% to the Heat’s 44%), but you almost forgot (though it was a pretty ugly game), because they did everything else so well. They committed very few fouls, they didn’t give up many turnovers while creating quite a few (11 steals, damn), and they ate Miami up on the offensive glass (12 to 5). They shot 77% from the FT line, and Nazr made a turnaround J. It reminded me of Larry Brown era Pistons who could just stifle other teams’ offensive production (even though it shouldn’t be too hard against a Wade-less Miami), and grind out points in the halfcourt on offense. I hope the Pistons hold on to this identity throughout the season.

I’m excited.

I think he might have gave Prince that many minutes just to let him beat his personal record.

Bullet-head looked really good out there. He LOOKS like an athlete, the way he’s all up on people on D, and he has long limbs or something. He looks like he’ll be a dangerous athletic guy once he gets going and the minutes/rotation become consistent.

Too bad Maxiell didn’t get that monster slam in Zo’s face. I like how the commentator’s tried to talk Zo up, saying how he got a piece. A game with Zo on the floor isn’t a game until he gets posterized whilst exerting maximum effort to try to block the dunk.

Maxiell had a few babies this evening…I counted three…the dunk, then the offensive rebound where he grabbed it and as he ripped it away from the heat defender the guy went flying towards half court…and then I think he had one more baby-eating block or dunk…still missed a couple but he looked nasty and aggressive.

he’ll have better games. I was surprised at how long it took Flip to toss in some subs and even more surprised that Nazr was the first guy off the bench. I wanted to see Maxiell come in for McDyess but hopefully Amir will be coming off the bench soon enough.

Solid game overall. What I liked the most was that they started the game well and they closed the game out well. They won the first and fourth quarters while staying even on the middle two quarters.

For a team that has created an M.O. of starting off slow and failing to close games out, that was probably my favorite highlight of the game.

This is precisely the result of letting Prince run the offense. Saunders seems to have it figured out. Notice how letting Prince run the offense from time to time did not mitigate against Billups’ effectiveness.

Overall: Great team defense.

Tay: Dominant.

Chauncey: Still in a shooting slump.

Sheed: Excellent defense.

Afflalo: Impressed me. Moved well without the ball on offense. Played good team defense with a few breakdowns (giving Jason Williams too much room on a three-pointer, not closing out well on another three-point shooter). Right now he’s our 3rd string SG, but I won’t be surprised if he moves ahead of Flip by the end of the year.

Nazr/McDyess/Maxiell: Solid games on defense.

Hayes: A significant upgrade over Delfino. Our bench is better than last year’s at every position.

Flip: Good things happened when he attacked the basket.

Well, gang, it’s good to be back. It’s been one heck of a long break, but I’m glad to see the Pistons as good as ever. I missed the game tonight but got the recap on my phone. I’m smiling.

best game ever, Tay was the best thing about this game.

With all the disappointment about Stuckey and Amir not playing, I almost forgot about the Baby Eater #54. He’s completely lost that rookie ‘lost’ look and I think he’s ready to dominate. I just flat-out love this team.

The Pistons looked great on defense against an inferior opponent, the double teams on Shaq in the first half were a brillinat coaching move on Saunders part, Tay playing at the 1 was shockinlgy effective and eveidence of Saundes effectiveness as a coach. I hope to see more of that this season! Was Miami’s defense “that good” or did our shooting just suck, maybe both? Questions for tonight though, can the same defensive setup work against Orlando? and Can someone besides Tay make a basket?

Detroit looked anything but old.

Shaq on the other hand… I think Shaq is in the official used-to-be-awesome category. Last year he had a 2 week run where he carried the team… then fizzled. This year I doubt he could do a 2 week run. He’ll have a game here or there, I’m sure, but he certainly looked old out there.

Detroit looked very… um… weird. I liked what I saw. Offensively it was very chaotic… in a good way. Guys streaking to the hole, setting picks, very up-tempo. Maybe this is what Flip’s offense is supposed to look like. Nevermind the 38% shooting, it was good to see energy out there.

I’ll be very interested in watching them develop this year. All I can say is those people out there saying Detroit is old and this is their last stand… I got news for ya, this is just another beginning. This will probably be our worst year for the next 4-5 years.

Does anyone think that Chauncey looked a bit off yesterday. Kind of most of last year, eh? He has really got to stop relying on forcing contact and worry about doing his thing. The refs call that bump 1 in 3 times. He takes those bunnies and just makes them, he gets a three point opportunity or he gets an easy two.

I hope this isn’t a sign of what to expect from “mr. big shot” for the next four years.

One thing I think that will help us greatly is having so much youth off the bench. It will help keep the vets hungry I think. I just hope Flip gives them some play and not be a moron. I would rather take a step back and take 2 or 3 forward for the future.

The off-season definitely seemed 10 years long, but thank God its over. Great to see the Boys again. I though Hayes & Maximus looked comfortable, even though they didn’t shoot particularly well. Its amazing that we can go 11 deep with quality NBA talent (Stuckey, Afflalo, Flip, Nazr, Maximus, Hayes, Amir)…wait that’s 12 not even including Lindsey. If we can jell and stay fresh, we are going to kick some ass. I wouldn’t mind seeing some sets where Chauncey is in the game but not running the point and allow him to focus on scoring at targeted times. Hope Tay continues to play agressive. I won’t accept anything less that 17 ppg from him this year, even with reduced minutes. Bless-You-Boys!