i wish i was as smart every day as i was the day after game 3 v. chicago. i said at the time that the big comeback was the worst thing that could happen to this team – it would make them think that they didn’t have to play with fire and passion for 48 minutes, that they could just turn it on late and still pull it off. and that’s exactly what’s happened. how many lousy first halves do we need to play?

it’s like last season – the regular season was so easy, and so successful, that when we really needed to find the fire in our belly (vs. miami), there simply wasn’t enough there.

the first five minutes thursday night will be key. if we come out sharp, we’ll take it in six. if we’re down five, look out.

This has gotten progressively worse during the current playoff run.

2002: Allowed Toronto to take us to 5 games, then got blown out by a superior Boston team.
2003: Ignored Orlando for 4 games before waking up and winning the last three. Then handled Philly in 6 before getting blown away by a superior Nets team.
2004: Failed to sweep the Bucks, came out listless for two games against New Jersey, failed to win Game 4 against the Pacers which would have shortened the series. In retrospect, they only beat the Lakers because that team had whatever disease the Pistons have worse.
2005: Better than 2004. Failed to sweep Philly, and went down early in the series to Indiana, but the rest of the playoffs went pretty much as you might expect.
2006: The attitude finally hurts the Pistons when they spot Cleveland three games and then don’t have the energy to beat Miami.

And here we are again. 2002 and 2003 might not be fair to have them in there, this wasn’t an elite team back then. But I’m a little bitter about this. It really doesn’t make sense. When people describe the Pistons, you tend to get two main, but seemingly conflicting descriptions: experienced business-like professionals, and extremely loose, fun guys.

If that’s the case, you would expect this team to play much better from ahead than from behind. Professionals don’t take off games, or decide that they can win if they just play hard for 24 minutes. Loose teams shouldn’t need the fear of being down in a series or on the verge of losing a series they easily could have ended early.

It’s like the commenter Matt said above: this team cannot handle any sort of success. The Pistons have a dangerously short memory: “Oh, we beat this team last game, we will win the next game, we just have to play the exact same way.” “The regular season was easy, we can breeze through the playoffs too.”

Normally, I think booing a team accomplishes little. Anyone who regularly goes to Lions games and lets the team have it after the first mistake for the rest of the game is, in my opinion, wasting their entertainment dollar. But in this case, I think it’s appropriate. At Game 5, nothing would please me more than at the first sign of playing sloppy, listless basketball, the crowd unleashes a chorus of boos on the team. It seems that adversity, “getting off the mat,” and being in a hostile situation is the only thing this team responds to. If we want to have any shot at winning an NBA title, we must close this thing out in six, and to do that, we need to handily win Game 5. So I say: boo the Pistons.

Hmmm, booing the Pistons?

I can’t think of how many times I have wanted to boo them. Something in my fan genes, however, just can’t come to grips with booing my own team unless it’s something that no fan can support.

I will say this, though, if fans do decide to boo Detroit during Game 5, that will be the most emotion they’ve shown since at least Game 1 or 2 against the Bulls… maybe even the whole playoffs. I think Pistons fans have the same syndrome as the Pistons do.

I am a die-hard Pistons fan, but I have come to the conclusion that Detroit will probably lose this series.

Cleveland is doing exactly what they have to- they keep the game close and rely on LeBron taking control at the end of the game. It’s an ugly formula, but it works because they do just enough to win these games. Reminds me a lot of a certain 2003-04 world champion squad…

It seems like every year we watch this team back itself into a corner and then we agonizingly await the moment when they fight back.

I think that Thursday night is very important for more than just the outcome of this season. If the Cavs end up going to the Finals, this could very well be the closing chapter in Bad Boys 2.0.

Its 2-2 and headed to the Palace. Cheer up. Some of you sound like your dog just died. Were still taking this series.

just wanted to say I like this blog and just put it in my blog roll, congratulations for the nice work

the series is nice and I’m enjoying, it, I watched 3 games live (= for this means going to bed at 5.30 AM and being at work at 8.30)

it seems that LeBron is acquiring all the clutch that Billups is losing, uh? but I still think Pistons are clearly favorite, and think they will advance. I hope for a game 7

Gibson is 10 times better than Hughes, good for you guys that they realized it only in game 3

cheers

Ricky (Italy)

I wish we’d just bench Webber. The guy is pathetically slow. Big Z was was guarding him so loosely. We need a big who can draw Z from the lane a bit. Start McDyess, play Maxiell, and send Dale Davis in to foul the pep out of Gibson.

open letter is up.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no more reason for me to “get up” for this series.

oops, I’m sorry…

“rise up” for this series.

jesus christ. guys, lucas is right, the series is 2-2 and were heading back to palace, thats great news. also, remember what just happened to them when they were 3-0 in chicago series, they relax, lost a couple of games, and boom, they decided to win, thats how they won, or at least according to barkley “clev has no shot, pistons are playing on their own damn pace”….ok enough of that. my last comment talked about if chauncey or/and rip dominate the game, they will win at least 10pts……pardon me, but i was thinking about adding “considering they’d play the way they played in game 3” obviously they didn’t and thats why they didn’t have the cushion just in case they screw up down the stretch. im now convince that they did not play down the stretch pretty well. although im still confuse, why they lost when chauncey, rip, dyes, prince played pretty well, matt (thanks for making me stop thinking about it now) mention that they didn’t do well on the boards, and thats something that they’re gonna have to do other than scoring….another thing is (doug collins keep mentioning) detroit should start playing fast break, or at least a little, if they get a stop, they shouldn’t wait for clev to get fully adjusted to their defense….matt, completely agree, the first five minutes will tell whether detroit will win game 5 or not (now, ill put it: considering they’ll play 48minutes including down the stretch, regardless how many they are up).

I’m so glad you (and Henry Abbott) mentioned LeBron tipping in that shot for Detroit, because I not only couldn’t believe it happened, I couldn’t believe no one said anything about it. Can you imagine if that had been the difference in the game?

As a Piston’s fan living in England, I don’t get to see that many games. I have however managed to see games 4 and 5 from the Chicago series and games 3 and 4 from this series – what a treat. How did this team make the conference finals?

Guys I love the Pistons just as much as the next man. However I refuse to get down on our boys just yet. I will save that for if they lose to The Cavs. We act like we have always had a team that just killed every team in the playoffs the last 4 to 5 years. This is what they do. We don’t have the type of team that will just sweep every team they play. yes it may be playing with fire a little but we have been here before ang our guys will come to play the next 2 to 3 games. Save all of the bad talking for when or if we lose. Here are a few key points to keep everyone a little level headed.

1. Gibson will not have another 21 pts game. we will make adjustments to stop him.

2. Drew Gooden will not play that good in Detroit. He is only good for one good game.

3. We still have homecourt!

4. James has played almost every min. of every game. If this things goes 7 look to see his performance dropoff a little. Plus these guys a starting to play on one day rest.

5. Mr Big Shot and Rip will come to play.

6. Sheed is mad as hell!!! And we all know what that means…

So guys please keep your heads up the best team always wins in the best of 7 series.

I heard that the Pistons got a Baskin Robbins ice cream sponsorship … Rocky Road.

There is a very simple problem with the pistons offense and it is easy to identify and fix. We are holding the ball on one side, not moving without the ball, and playing way too much one-on-one.

If they just start sharing the ball they will be fine. As LB would say… they are playing like strangers.

No offense Matt/Ian, but this has got to be the weakest blog of any NBA team.

Nine posts? And two of them from someone pimping his own blog?

the bad boys shouldn’t allow to score both two parties: gibson,z,goodens, pap, etc. AND James. If either party is struglling, then that will be the end….how about changing a defender for james? similar to what they did to wade. mix of prince, hunter, hamilton. i think james has enough knowledge of tay’s d to exploit it….they should try mixing it up with: prince, hunter, hamilton, maxiell.

Imagine if L.A. Mike actually WANTED to be offensive.

Hey guys…

first time, long time.

To the people saying “relax, it’s 2-2 headed back to the Palace”… I think you are right: The Pistons still have a legitimate shot to close out the series in 6.

That being said… does it matter? Because San Antonio will SWEEP the Pistons if they keep playing like this.

This series is not just about surviving a horrible Cleveland team… it’s about proving that you have a chance to win the title.

The last time I saw the Pistons play great basketball was Chicago series, game two.

Since then, they’ve played crappy ball and I see nothing that indicates any sort of change is coming.

So yes… they could squeeze out a couple victories against Cleveland. But that’s not enough. They need to come out and dominate… they need to start playing some real basketball because the Spurs are rolling right now.

Peace

M*

I love to hear Piston FAN talk about how horrible Cleveland is, and how they are more worried about the matchup with the Spurs. Yeah! i love it, hopefully your sentiments are also felt by the players as well. That way when Cleveland swoops in tomorrow and steals game 5 from you guys at the Palace, maybe then you will get your heads out your a** and see that Cleveland is not as bad as you may think.

Let me give hockey fan…err Piston fan a little common sense education:

-Cleveland has a winning record against West division teams-including taking 2 games from the Spurs.

-Cleveland took you to game 7 last year, and would have won the series if it were not for a long rebound in game 6

-The series is a mirror image of what happened last year. The difference is you no longer have your defensive intiminator BEN “freakin” Wallace in the middle. Your team is a year older and Weber (the grill) is basically a liability on the floor with the faster younger players of the Cavs.

-The Cavs since last year have the same squad with the addition of Sasha Pavlovich, Boobie Gibson, and to a much smaller extent Larry Hughes. What have you added to your nucleus other than Webber that makes you better this year?

-The NBA season is long, and records give a pretty good indication of the overall strength and greatness of a team. Pistons won a measely 3 extra games than the Cavs. So are you that much greater than the Cavs talent wise, and the Cavs such a bad team?

- Where is T. Prince? Where is Sheed? Where is the consistency of Billups…Mr. Big Shot?

-Looks like to me that, it is not so much that your players are not playing up to snuff, but just maybe, just maybe if you watch the games more closely you will see that Cleveland plays pretty good defense. Your guys look a little slow and worn out ala Rip not running all over the place.How many open looks are your guys actually getting and then in turn missing?

I think after tomorrow nite you will all be in for a pleasant and very rude awakening.

Eric: the biggest difference is that Detroit has a healthy Rasheed Wallace. The ankle injury he suffered in Game 4 last year was severe, so severe that he was still recovering from it early this season. Otherwise, you’re spot on: Cleveland has improved more so than Detroit.

I will agree with you to some extent on that point. However, I think if you look at Sheeds stats from last year when he was injured and compare them to this years playoff stats I think you will see they are identiical.

Will Sheed step it up in the next couple games? Who knows, but I do not think based on this years performance compared to last year when he was hurt are all that different.

One thing I notice this year as opposed to last is that Sheed has not opened his mouth and guaranteed anything. I think he learned his lesson about taking the Cavs lightly.

I like Carey Anderson’s “Sheed is mad as hell!!! And we all know what that means…”

Eric. I totally agree with you as far as the difference between last year and this year. However, Sheed’s presence in the game is a big difference, we shouldn’t just looked at the stats though it is important. He sent a message to clev in the beginning of this series that frontcourt can be shut down for the clev (7 block shot in one game)

Eric:

Maybe you are right, maybe Cleveland really is an amazing basketball team.

I guess we’ll never know until you guys:

A) Finish off Detroit in this series.

and

B) Take San Antonio to seven games. (actually, just lasting 5 games will surprise everyone).

You mentioned quite a few regular season accomplishments. All fine and good, but you forgot to mention that Cleveland had the EASIEST path to the conference finals ever imaginable.

Now that you are here… you’re just tied. So let’s not crown the Cleveland Caveliers the Champions of the world just yet…

j

“send Dale Davis in to foul the pep out of Gibson.” Nice call PatHunt!!

I’m in a strange limbo-land as a Pistons fan. I REALLY think that the Cavs are not that great, but the Pistons are screwing the pooch here! Last night during the game I let myself wonder what I’ll do with all the free time if the Pistons don’t make the finals?

Letting the “Reverse Soul Patch” Gooden hit those mid-range jumpers killed us. I flippin’ hate that dude’s attempt at facial hair sculpting as much as the weird patch on the back of his yolk!

Not putting Gibson on his ass with hard fouls seems to smack of non-Detroit ball playing.

When we needed energy on the floor, Max and Delfino were on the bench. Flip better get with the program, and soon!

Covering Z shouldn’t be that hard, I am wondering why we don’t utilize more interior defense switches and include Nazr and DD in that scheme.

It was nice to see that Sideshow Bob’s flopping has gotten old, proof being the no calls last night. I do suppose Gibson is making up for it though.

I’m still hoping for two more Piston wins to close this out, but if they keep this type of play up, my golf game will be in good form a lot sooner than expected.

Don’t worry Detroit fans we will pull this out. Sheed did not talk to the media meaning he is mad as hell!!! If we lose well then we can talk about rebuilding and that stuff. Until then relax and enjoy. They pushed us to 7 games last year and most people said that the Cavs will win a least 2 games. Please leave Flip alone. He is not to blame here. And leave Webber alone as well.If He plays good so be it if not well that why that why we have Dice! See you guys Thursday saying I told you so!!!