The pistons have had solid D but mavs are just hot. And Tay still struggling isn’t helping. Lets hope the bench can make some noise in the 2nd.

That was the saddest I’ve seen the Pistons play all season in the 1st quarter.

I agree, put the bench in. Our starters didn’t look to well.

man i like spellcheck

hangover game. then tomorrow will be a hangover game from today. and then we’ll have a nice little losing streak. huzzah.

if this is a loss, at least it’s not against the Bobcats

Meanwhile, Nazr Mohammed is about to put up 20-10 to win over Boston.

Yeah, the Charlotte Bobcats. Over Boston.

Brandon Bass just became the new spokesman for B.A.B.E. (Babies Against Baby Eater).

Got Herrmann in there early, I been wanting to see more of him.

go herms

look at the bench gettin us back in the game

STUCKEY.

Our bench is hungry, our starters…not so much. Sometimes effort can overcome skill.

look at stuck go

Its a hungry man’s game.

herms… holy shit
D on Dirk and then a three?

tarzan with some nice D then a nice 3

Yeah, Charlotte just BLEW OUT Boston.

look at brezec cheerleading… I love it.

Herrmann averaged as many points as Billups and Rip when he was starting at Charlotte. I’d resign him in a heartbeat next season. A nearly 20 ppg guy with enough minutes would be welcome on any bench.

Hermann playing solid D and making plays!!! maybe falling behind quickly wasn’t so bad afterall…

Matt, please unmoderate Celtics’ fans posts on the site temporarily. I’m very curious to see if they’ve learned that the losing by 12 at home to the Bobcats is only one game worth as much (or as little) as their victory over us last week.

On a related note, I call my friend after every good game Nazr has on the Bobcats (as I just did not), exhorting him to thank me for telling him to pick Nazr up for his fantasy team when Nazr got traded.

Regarding our game, me likes what me sees from Hermann. He was playing Nowitzki tough and frustrating him. The foul on Hermann was a complete acting job by Dirk (a very good one, I credit him), and then Hermann baited him back into the offensive foul. Very much the Pistons mantra, I love it. Jon Barry called McDyess quicker than Maxiell (in terms of guarding Dirk on the perimeter). Ummm?

dirk isnt getting the calls on herms… strange.

And he’s doing a decent job of guarding dirk.

*just did now

so, you think stackhouse holds a grudge?

Down by 5 after the half , I’ll take it. Especially after being down 15.

I know we’re not big fans of the +/- stat here, but I think it’s pretty telling that Hermann is +9 and the only other Piston with a positive +/- tonight is Jarvis at +1. Much better 2nd quarter with the bench making up for the lackadaisical effort from the starters.

I think its kinda funny. Not 1 Piston is out for this game. But 2 celtics had to sit from injuries playing the Pistons. I would hate to see how injured they would be in a 7 game series.

Go stephen A. I hate the freakin waltons man.

down 5 after being down 15… a drive and flush by Stuckey… Herrmann with a 3 point bomb… Sheed with a 3 point bomb… this game got out of hand early with the fouls on Sheed. Wonder if Flip goes back to Herrmann in the 2nd half?

pistons kryptonite: undersized power forwards from lsu.

Hermann looked a little lost on the pick and roll (let Devin Harris have a layup), but playing great D on Dirk.

Besides one forced shot, Stuckey played really well.

“Yeah, Charlotte just BLEW OUT Boston.”

So according to James Posey’s and Paul Pierce’s logic, Charlotte is now the “best team in the league”. If that is the case, then being the “best team in the league” in the regular season has just became pointless! Wait, it always has been…man, those Celtics are silly.

Also, I guess I’m paying for everytime I called Jerry Stackhouse, Jerry “Brickhouse”.

In other news… has any one seen Prince lately? In that early play by Afflalo, he dished it back to Prince down low. 5 feet from the basket, Prince bobbled the ball and air balled the shot. It was like he wanted no part of scoring that basket.

I wonder of Charlotte was pumping their Jerseys and taunting the crowd after they won?

put the bench back in

Okay, enough Boston talk. Now it’s us Piston fans that are starting to sound insecure.

Boston beat Detroit and they have the best record. If they want to say they’re the best in the league. More power to them.

Flip’s timeout seems to have worked. So is this zone.

Well, for a little while anyway.

Herrmann is getting alot of burn.

This is just pathetic. Horrible lineup management by Flip tonight, IMHO. There is NO reason Chauncey and Tay deserved to be on the floor for the whole 3rd quarter with all those bricks they were laying. Ugh.

I know everyone likes to blame the Flips for everything. But, it’s hard to coach when three starters (Chauncey, Tay and Dyess) lay an egg.

Looks like bench the rest of the way.

I’m not blaming him for 3 starters playing terribly.

I’m blaming him for sticking with them when certain bench players were clearly having better nights – i.e. Herrmann’s defense Dirk compared to Dirk taking Dyess to school.

That’s Afflalo’s first dunk of the year, no?

Yeah, it would have been nice to see Hermann come in earlier.

Regardless, without those three producing we would lose regardless. And I think benching the starter the whole 4th is enough of a statement.

Youngins’ playing hard in garbage time.

Matt,

Yup – I believe Afflalo finally just proved he can dunk.

Darsh,

I agree with you on that… I was just finding it kind of illogical to keep Tay and Chauncey in there when they were shooting like 30% and not doing much. Might as well stick Stuckey and Afflalo in earlier and see if it’s any help. Just my line of thinking though.

Tayshaun has been shooting 40% over the last 20 games. He had been compensating by hitting from long range, but these kind of performances really sink us.

That game sucked.

Tayshaun has been playing pretty poorly the past few games. I’m not quite sure what his problem is, but he seems bereft of confidence right now. His shot selection has been questionable and his defense has been suspect. I hope he gets out of his rut soon.

finally PDXPistons Fan, Q-dog, and I got together here in Portland to watch a game. I was able to catch the Celtics game on Saturday with Q-dog, so, thus far there hasn’t been a lot of hollerin’ and clapping on our part. Hope its just a pistons funk thing, they do well over all but do have their bumps. I personally hope there isn’t any discord of depth actually going on with sheed and others-everyone seemed to be so entirely together and on the same page until Boston – but I guess maybe as long as blowout wins were coming there wasn’t anything to reflect out the internal tensions?

be well amigos

I can’t blame Flip for tonight. I wouldn’t want him to alienate any or all members of the starting 5 by just bailing on them. We all know how fragile Rasheed’s ego is, and any of them would be liable to take it the wrong way. To me, pulling them abruptly would’ve sent the wrong message tonight. In that case, I think I’m sort of echoing what Darshan was saying.

If we’re going to believe in this mantra that it’s just one out of 82(+) games, than the long-term goals should be in focus. I think our goals are three-pronged in order to compete for the Title: keep the starters healthy/fresh, keep them feeling secure about their standing by giving them minutes and respect, see what the bench has in a manner that doesn’t interfere with the starters’ egos or blatantly reduce our chances of winning a closely contested game (assuming the game isn’t part of a long, tightly-scheduled road trip). Flip covered those bases tonight if you ask me (including getting in Hermann[!!!] who I will now refer to as Stretch Armstrong due to his insane wingspan and palming skills). We love to jump on Flip because his production in the past has been spotty. I think he’s got us in the right direction now and he deserves an inch to breathe.

That being said, I still think he was late to pull the trigger on yanking most of them (save for Rip who produced all night). I don’t think it’s an egregious error. All I’d be doing is picking nits since it doesn’t truly run any interference with what I see as the goals. He got deep into the bench. So what if it wasn’t as soon as I (or anyone other fan) saw fit? He went deep into the bench during meaningful game time and that’s what I’m taking away from the game tonight.

You don’t beat a team like Dallas when Dirk goes gongshow like that and Jerry Stackhouse apparently thought he was on Conan O’Brien tonight because he was playing like he was “In the year 2000”. I think Flip kind of knew that, and that makes me glad he handled things the way he did.

*any other fan

DETROOOOOITTTTTT BASKETBALL!!!

Could I get some comment here please, especially what do you think of Walter HERRMANN performance

http://mundoalbiceleste.blogspot.com/2008/01/nba-news-bench-power.html

lawyerboy,
    while i see your point, part of me thinks this team has been coasting on respect for a couple years now. if tay, sheed, dyess, or any of the starters can’t handle the pressure of a bench player outperforming them then as far as i’m concerned they can’t handle the pressure of the playoffs. not only that, but i’m not going to waste minutes stroking a players ego when they’re playing poorly or stupidly at the expense of a hungry younger player. besides, i love tay, but if herrmann or jarvis can prove that they can guard a big assignment without turning into an offensive liability then welcome to the bench tay, enjoy your new role.

It’s a bit soon to throw Tay under the bus, unless you think benching a great defender with a career 14 ppg average is wise…

If we’re going to call Herrmann “Stretch Armstrong,” at least let’s call him “Strretch Arrmstrronng.”

Games like that are just going to happen. The Pistons came out flat and then realized that Dallas wasn’t going to miss a jumpshot all night. Other than some pick’n’rolls and Brandon Bass, I think they played decent defense. Dallas just rained in their jumpshots and there was nothing to stop that. Our only chance at winning that game was to match buckets in a shootout and our offense just plain stunk.

i guess i was harsh when i said “welcome to the bench,” i don’t mean not to start him, i’m just saying that in the game, if a player is a liability, you take him out.

if all the success tay has had isn’t going to shore up his confidence, i don’t think keeping him on the floor when he’s not doing well is going to do it. take him out and put in herrmann or jarvis or gasp amir. tay is a great defender and scorer, i’ll never dispute that, but sometimes his game just isn’t there. i don’t fault him that, he’s human. but that is when a coach recognizes it and puts someone else in his place.

we want to develope the bench and motivate the starters. we also want to have the most effective players on the court at all times. through their unique position these starters have picked up some bad habits and been indulged in bad behavior. this is a damn good bench, and can be used to break the starters of those bad habits while still maintaing a very high level of play. if their egos can’t handle it, they don’t belong on this team.

and again, i’m not attacking tay, this goes for all the starters. flip has been criticized as a weak leader, well this bench is his leverage.

It would be nice to see a “bounce back” game against San Antonio tonight. Even the best teams lose and lose badly sometimes, and Dallas was shooting the lights out — it wasn’t all bad defense. It was nice to see Herrmann play decently in more-than-average minutes. Plus, I doubt this game means much. Detroit will probably be the #2 seed in the East — maybe #1 if Boston hits a really tough patch. But no lower.

Still, it would be nice to see some more wins against the top-tier teams of the NBA. The problem is, playing in the East, Detroit doesn’t get that many games against top-tier teams. There’s Boston and, um, well, Orlando has a good record, but do we believe they are elite? The Cavs are the defending eastern champs, but do they look that good this year? And the struggles of Miami and Chicago are obvious. So who’s left around .500 or better in the East? The Nets, Raptors and Hawks. No disrespect, but they’ll have to do more to be considered elite.

That’s all obvious, but the point is that Detroit rarely gets a game that could be described as a true “test.” So when they finally get some games against elite teams, it’s a little disappointing to see them lose two in a row. Beating the Spurs would make me feel better.

This would have been a tough game regardless basically because Dirk was making every fad away shot he could conjure. At times he was really ungaurdable.

On the other hands, kudos to Herrmann’s passing abilities – I feel like he was a very good distributer while he was on the floor setting up other players for shots, and I believe his 4 assists is a sign of that.

OT (kinda): And you think we’re annoyed at the Boston players? Imagine how they feel about the Bobcats. From Dime Magazine: With about 45 seconds left and Charlotte up by eight, Richardson went to work on Pierce, sticking a baseline step-back J in The Truth’s mug to ice the win. J-Rich (34 pts) left his hand up and skipped back down the court, then blew kisses to the Boston crowd as the C’s called timeout while Jared Dudley was over on the bench making the "It’s over" sign …

To add on to what LawyerBoy was saying, you can criticize for not playing Hermann a little more but you also have to give him credit with having the idea to put him on Dirk in the first place.

I would like to see Herrmann come in before hayes. Hayes is a shooter – he does not create or even pass all that much.

Nice problem to have – last few years, no sub for tayshun, now we have two

I still would like to see us get a real banger who lives in the lane and only shoots in the paint

Damn! Watched the game last night but didn’t have an internet connection where I was staying. Doesn’t look like people thought that game was as hard to watch as I did.

Besides Rip, not one starter showed up. I know Jon Barry was expressing the same sentiment, but that’s all I could think.

The bench seemed to do a better job last night then the starters. Yeah, Dallas played a great game, but it’s not like Detroit made it hard on them. Dallas was making hree pointers look like lay-ups last night.

I was frustrated with Flip for not putting Amir in sooner to get him more minutes when it was clear they weren’t going to win that game. I’d say that point was at the middle or bottom half of the third. It pissed me off that he only got a little over three minutes.

All in all, Dallas looked like they were on a totally different level than us last night. I really hope the Pistons bring their A game to San Antonio tonight. Whatever that was last night, I hope I don’t have to watch it again anytime soon.

And Tayshaun needs to break out of this slump he’s in. Hard cover or not, we need his offense to start clicking again.

“Doesn’t look like people thought that game was as hard to watch as I did.” – WLM

I’ll refer you to my first comment.

“That game sucked.” – Rob G

I stand corrected. Agree completely.

wlm,
  part of me thinks it’s good that tay is having offensive struggles now. one of our problems, imo, is that we’re so good we rarely get to see the chinks in our armor. now, one of our most persistent and damaging problems is rearing it’s head and it’s a great opportunity to deal with it, and just crossing our fingers and hoping his shot starts falling is not good enough.

Haha, Rob G you didn’t say it was “hard to watch”, you said it “sucked”, TOTALLY different. I kid, I kid. In truth, there’s really nothing I think we should be worrying about. We dropped two straight in LA and Sacramento this year (3 of 4 if you look at the Portland game). We will slump. It has to happen.

When we’re good though, we are downright NASTY, probably the most dominant in the league as has been surmised on this board. That’s what matters. In a seven game series against ANY team, it should be lights out, baby goes to sleep (or gets eaten by Maxiell). We may have THOUGHT that the past few years about the team (I know I did), but the only evidence to back it up was generally arrogance and past glory. This team is deep, accomplished, and more well-rested (possibly more focused) than any of the other squads the past couple years. The competition is tougher this year no doubt, but I think this year we’re finally tougher than the competition again.

Also, did anyone else find little Bentley Green adorable if ill-rhymed at times? I can’t help it, that kid is damn cute nad he’s rapping and it’s about hoops! Honestly, how can you not love that?

*and

Jeez, with all these errors I’m starting to look like the starting five did last night.

Kyle, I’m not just crossing my finger for his shots to fall. Lst night, with the exception of a corner three, Tay wasn’t getting good shots. I don’t know how many times last night one guy would dribble a little and shoot a jumper. Tay had a couple of those. Our offense is effective when the ball is moving around and we’re going inside. We didn’t try to go inside last night like we needed to. It was all jumpers.

Tay is one of those guys that can work inside. It just seems like he’s settling a bit.

It’s not like we haven’t seen this before. I hope you’re right about this being an opporunity to fix this. This problem has “reared its head” before.

I’m thinking it may be too early for a “players only” meeting, but going into play a San Antonio team who just lost to Golden State will take all the Pistons can give.

Lawyerboy,
    for the most part i agree with you, except for this:

“but the only evidence to back it up was generally arrogance and past glory.”

i think it was backed up with amazing regular season play that included dominant performaces against top tier teams. that’s why i won’t get too excited about our success so far. we can run roughshod over the regular season, we usually do, but if we don’t deal with the same four or five things that seem to kill us every year, it won’t matter.

does the fact that we lost two in a row bother me? not at all. but the way they did it bothers me. how many times will i have to watch a team gleefully leave tay open to brick 8 or more shots? how many more times will i have to see our offense turn to confused crap because they’ve started trapping chauncey? how many times will they get run ragged trying to guard the pick and roll? maybe only 3 or 4 teams in the league can really make us pay on those counts, but our road to another ’ship is bound to be strewn with them.

we got beat by ridiculously inferior squad in last year’s ecf’s. they beat us because they knew our weaknesses and exploited them. the fresh legged starter theory is an excellent starting point, but we can’t just hope it solves all our other problems. i hope we’re working damn hard at plugging those holes, because you know other teams are working damn hard to exploit them.

i’m not even worried about tonight because it is a guaranteed L. we will be lucky to finish this 4 games in 5 days road trip at 2-2.

Kyle, we have addressed the problem of the “ridiculously inferior squad”. Jarvis Hayes, Arron Afflalo especially and hell, now Hermann directly address a guy like LeBron in terms of “no lane for you”. So, even though Cleveland isn’t going to be there in the ECF this year, we’ll be just fine if we play them in the playoffs. We have a way tighter defensive unit. The Stones last year averaged 96 ppg on offense and on defense held teams to 91.9. 99.2-89.7 is what’ve they done so far this year. That’s just dominant. Clearly we’re plugging holes, it’s just sometimes you have to take a couple steps back to go forward.

Overall, this team is way better in terms of talent and energy.

My big red flag and the thing that scares me most about the playoffs is that this team seems to abandon their motion/passing offense whenever they get challenged by a good defensive team (Boston, San Antonio, Cleveland last year, Dallas sometimes, Chicago whenever they play us).

i agree that we’re dominant, but as i said, we were in the past and it didn’t matter. i don’t think lebron james alone was the reason we lost that series and i don’t think merely addressing him will help us beat other teams. addressing shaq put a couple more bigs on our bench but it didn’t help us against the heat in ’06.

my point wasn’t that a ridiculously inferior squad beat us because of lebron, they beat us because they, like all the nba know our weaknesses. teams know exactly what we’re going to do and know what to do to make that hard for us. most teams aren’t good enough to do it, but enough are.

QD,
  exactly, those teams are going to continue to pressure chauncey. they’re going to continue to make tay work on defense and then let him take shots on offense. they’re going to run the pick and roll over and over again to get open shots.

lebron was one problem in one series, these are the reasons we’ve been losing for years (not that we lose a lot, of course, but when we do). i hope we’re improving in these areas, but it seems everytime we lose these are the reasons why. we’ve got the superior team and an absolute embarrassment of riches in terms of our bench, i totally believe that. it would be a shame to lose in the playoffs because of a set of problems we’ve known about and had years to prepare for.

Well, my team’s not doing any jersey-popping today. :-D The Bobcats gave ‘em a healthy reality check. The Celtics and the Pistons have their separate challenges this year, but there is no doubt about one thing. Both of them purely have great big targets on their backs this season. I’m sure our sneaky Western Conference foes are enjoying watching all of this play out.

So here’s what I say. No more losses to the Western Conference during this regular season. Make them worry. I invite all Eastern Conference teams into the rally. May the best Eastern team win the EC playoffs and go on to whip whatever is left of the WC as though they were a bunch of little schoolgirls. [thumbs up]

Kyle,
 I’m arguing that we weren’t so dominant in the past, as fans, we just thought we were. We ran our starters into the ground because the moment they went to the bench we felt vulnerable and went down the tubes. That’s over now. The result? Wider winning margins and better team ppg averages at both ends of the floor. We may think we were dominant but the gap went from averaging 4 points more than our opponents last year, to 9.5 this year. Since we are accomplishing that goal with the help of our reserves instead of IN SPITE of our reserves, as was the case in the past, I think the position can be reasonably argued that we’ve plugged holes.

Fans clamored for a guy who just shoots jumpers; we went out and got Hayes. Fans clamored for an end to Flip Murray’s reign of backup terror; we drafted Rodney Stuckey. Fans raged over LeBron’s 25 straight points in game 5; we drafted Arron Afflalo, traded for Walter Hermann, signed Jarvis Hayes (who I am pleasantly surprised by and really like as a defender), and we’ve given Lindsey’s playing days an almost season-long respite in order to preserve his defense for the playoffs. Webber’s gone and in his place is the quietly essential Antonio McDyess. Maxiell is the real deal this season. It’s all good news from where I sit, even when we get to the ECF.

i hope you’re right. i really do. i don’t want to be a downer, but with all the new players i still don’t see the starters (who will be playing the bulk of the minutes no matter what, i fear) improving guarding the pick and roll, making up for tay’s off nights or finding a way keep chauncey effective when he’s being pressured.

i think the only way to do that is to turn the team into a true meritocracy, you produce, you play, you don’t, you don’t. until flip is ready to start the second half with herrmann on dirk and tay on the bench we’ll just watch the same old faces with the same old problems.

i find it hard to rationalize that a 64 win team wasn’t dominant. Nor that a team with fewer wins is more dominant because the games they do win, they win by more.

i’d also point out that it’s debatable whether we lost the ECF’s to the cavs because of being tired, but it’s observable fact that they repeatedly exploited the pick and roll, took advantage of a hapless tayshaun and pressured chauncey into numerous mistakes. i think from now on, after every loss we should grade the team on how well they did against those issues. if they continue to be the reasons we lose we have a serious problem.

Bob Day: Amen to that. If it’s not us going to the finals and winning it all, I hope it’s you. Someone from the East has to show them how it’s done out West.

“RASHEED WALLACE IS FUNKY!”
-Charles Barkley

that made me run to my laptop

give hermann MORE MINUTES!!!!

deetroit basketball.. go pistons!!! nba 2008 champs