I don’t have a clue what Dirk Nowitzki is saying in the video above, but consider it a little treat for any DBB readers in Germany. (There are DBB readers in Germany, right?) The Pistons are in Texas this weekend for games against the Mavs and Spurs — in fact, we’re almost through the first quarter of the Mavs game as I post this. Leave any thoughts from the game in the comments, and consider this your weekend open thread.
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Well being down 30 going in 4th isnt really nothing to brag or talk about.
BUT if Amir was playing it might be a different story! lol
Well, that certainly wasn’t a dress rehearsal for Detroit.
lol @ Diable
Well being down 30 going in 4th isnt really nothing to brag or talk about.
BUT if Amir was playing it might be a different story! lol
So yeah I got tired of watching Novitski rain fire and brimstone down on our backups and went to ESPN.Com to check other scores when I noticed that the Wizards are going to be AWFUL this year. First they schedual an exhibition against Zalgiris Kaunas. Now I’m no genius but that sounds like a guy’s name, so the Wizards are apparently going 5 (+ backups) on 1 with this slavic wonderkind so they should DESTROY him right? No way, Washington wins 115 to 96 and somehow allows this Zalgiris guy to match them point for point (28) in the third. Now I know the wizard’s defence is reputedly awful but come on man, 96 points to ONE GUY? That’s Wilt the Stilt numbers man, you can’t let some white slavic dude hang those kinda points on you and still respect yourselves as ball players.
That got me to thinking, who is this Zalgiris guy? Can he play the 5 for about 15 mins a game so we can trade Mohammed? Is there any chance he’d sign for the MLE or even Veteran minimum? Does San Antonio already have someone from their foriegn scouting department in his here?
Detroit should try to sign this guy before someone else does, we can’t afford some kinda Zalgiris Kaunas gap with the east tightening up like it is and the West only getting better.
Food for thought.
I saw that too, PG4L.
At least Flip’s got his “showcase” game so we can move him the hell out of here.
For those of you interested (Spartie [Spart-D] fans), Maurice Ager lit it up in the 4th quarter. He ended the game with 14 pts, 3 steals and 1 assist, 6/9 from the feild aint bad at all.
Freaky box-score tonight in the 122-94 shellacking.
Fun facts: most Detroit boards, Afflalo w/6, Stuckey 9-11 from the line, Billups, ‘Dyess, Tay, and Hayes shot a combined 6-29 from the field, shot chart had Mejia and Afflalo making some nice mid-range jumpers, Darvin Ham is trying to make it back to the NBA with the Mavs after a stint with the Phillipine Basketball Association Talk N Text Phone Pals. I know I think bowling when I hear PBA but, hey, that’s just me. Good luck Darvin.
Next up, San Antonio tonight! Expect more Ian Mahinmi than Tim Duncan.
Hey,
Subsuming this interview: Dirk is talking about his own very personal familiy life. One day he’s going to start a family because he loves kids.
very nice blog!
g, Paul
Sounds like another game that I’m glad I didn’t watch. Our starters seem to get frustrated pretty easily. When ever a team cranks down the defense on us we usually start popping off jumpshots farther and farther away.
Without withing the game I still imagine we need to get in the paint more often. None of our starters really seem to try to get to the basket much. Murray and Stuckey who both like to take it to the basket, scored the most points.
Murray has a decent shot but he hogs the ball to much to be an effective point guard. I think Murray would be better off on the court with someone else at point guard. Jumpshots are fine when they are falling, but when they stop going in we got to get a guy or two in the paint.
I’d like Sheed to hang out more under the basket more at both ends of the court. He did have the third highest points so I’m not going to complain about him.
What happened to the rest of the starting 5? Sheed was the only one to get a double digit score.
I don’t know who’s starting for the Spurs, but I’m prepared for another tough game.
It’s worth pointing out that the Pistons missed their first 11 shots from the field. I don’t know if that means much, though. What was frustrating is that Detroit had a huge edge in fouls and free throws (46 to 22) but still couldn’t catch up. Every time they got close, Dallas went on a mini-run.
One of the reasons the pistons missed their first 11 shots was no Rip. People keep saying trade Rip but they always seem to miss how important he is. He scores the most points for us, usually makes the most dangerous player on the other team work harder (the other teams sg) and he scores most of our early points. I don’t know our record without Rip over the last few years but I know its bad.
In the year the pistons went to the finals and lost to the spurs was when I really started watching the pistons and for a stretch they didn’t have rip. I thought they could get by without him since I didn’t realize what he did. And without him the pistons lost games that they would have won with him. Thats when I realized how important he really is to the Pistons
MG, I think our record without Rip last year was 5-2. I remember having the same train of thought as you at some point last season and being mildly disappointed when I checked the facts. Granted, the 7 games he missed, we seemed to play disproportionately bad teams. Whether it shows or not in W&Ls when he doesn’t play, I am behind you 100% when you say he is really important to the Stones. Personally, I would be absolutely devastated if he was traded. He’s my favorite current Stone and favorite player in the league, hands down. I’d trade any other current Piston (Joe D. excluded) for a hill of beans before I’d part with Rip. That clearly takes into consideration personal feelings ahead of prudence, but Rip is still an important component in this machine.
Matt Gibson - I sometimes talk about trading Rip not because I don’t like him, he’s one of my favorites too and has been for a long time (I’m a lifelong UConn fan). I just think that the way the NBA trades work and the way the Pistons roster looks he has great value so he’s ALWAYS going to come up in any trade scenario.
The generic trade All-Star with good contract + a few players for All-NBA player with bad contract happens all the time. Rip fits the generic All-Star with good contract. My comment the other day looked into whether Rip wasn’t underappreciated and close to being All-NBA himself.
Stuckey with twisted ankle now? We’re cursed.
Two thoughts on the Wolverines game I just watched (and thus avoided watching SA face beat us in pre-season basketball, starting to worry btw)….
1) Michigan is REALLY REALLY REALLY lucky that Illinois is so freaking bad. The offence kept hanging themselves out to dry without hart, all fits and starts but no continuity. Illinois would have won if they didn’t find a way to comitt a critical turnover at almost every moment we needed one. This is still the same team that lost to App St and Oregon, don’t let the 6 wins in a row and 4-0 Big 10 record fool ya, that’s the 2nd big 10 game this year they had NO buisness winning and won anyways.
2) Our punters name is Zoltan. Which sounds like a giant transforming robot to me. So my idea to improve michigan’s offence is to start this Zoltan kid at left tackle and just have him transform into something really big at the snap. I’ve looked into this, NO place in the rulebook does it say your left tackle can’t transform into a giant tractor trailer. IT DOES say he has to line up a certain way, but by telling him to transform AFTER the snap, we get past this. Even if a speed rusher does somehow managed to get under him in the 2 seconds it takes to transform he’ll probably be crushed by the rear end of the truck. A dead pass rusher makes no sacks baby. Someone call Lloyd about this immediately.
Matt C- Wait what? Where did you read this. I’ve only read the pistons.com sum up of the game but it mentioned nothing and from the box score it doesn’t seem like he does.
I was listening to it on the NBA pass audio thing. It seemed like it was maybe a little more than halfway through 4th quarter (I had a few beers, I’m not sure exactly when) the announcers said Stuckey twisted his ankle and drew a foul. He shot his 2 fouls shots after twisting it and then sat out the rest of the game.
I don’t think it was to bad though, they made it sound like he walked on it enough to take his foul shots.
Lions WON!
PG4L - Illinois is a young team, totally expected for that game to go exactly as it did. And Illinois is not bad, that’s just silly. That team is loaded with both talent AND inexperience, and that’s the result it produces. My Hoosiers basically turned in the exact same performance against PSU yesterday for the same reasons. Illinois had less business winning than UofM, and keep in mind that a loss to Oregon (even in the Big House) is hardly of any consequence, it’s just the App. St. loss that looks bad.
And the Lions did win. Incredible. Maybe their schedule isn’t too hard after all.
LB, call it whatever you want Illinois was AWFUL yesterday, I watched the game.
The loss vs Team Nike matters as much as ANY loss in a season one had national championship hopes… your arguement is like saying “it doesn’t matter that the house fell over it was already busy burning down”.
We aren’t disagreeing on anything relevant except you feel the need to educate me about Michigan football when frankly I would bet money I’m more knowledgable on this subject than you are.
If Illinois hangs on to the ball, Michigan loses that game period. Explain it whatever smart assed way makes you feel better but please spare me the “You just don’t understand” bullsh*t.
Seriously what the hell does that even mean “Illinois is inexperienced” anyways, that’s the WHOLE POINT…
Michigan played horribly and if not for a kid MUFFING a damn return would have lost to a sad sack team like Illinois, WHO BECAUSE OF TALENT AND EXPERIENCE DIFFERENCES HAD ABSOLUTELY NO BUISNESS EVEN BEING IN THAT GAME….
And FWIW you don’t get “experience” holding onto kicks. You either do or you “Experience” some fumbles and then “Experience” being moved to another position.
THAT’S MY point.
Here, even their damn coach said it:
“We had opportunities to win the game,” Illinois coach Ron Zook said. “We let it slip away from us.”
How about Drew Sharp from the Freep:
“Not as long as the Illini willingly self-destructed in an embarrassing display of stupid penalties and careless turnovers. A scared Illinois lost this one more than Michigan won it, but the Wolverines happily accepted the 27-17 gift from their guests.”
Sorry for the triple post but that nonsense just ticked me off….
On a less annoying note, I didn’t get to see the game but the stats looked AWFUL (and defiantely in favor of TB) how the heck did Detroit win that game? (Seriously, I didn’t get to see any of it because of work just read the box-score and ESPN’s awful early recap)
Either way congrats to the Lions for finally beating a good team. I know Tampa is alot like they are (as in not great on paper but finding ways to win anyways) but still that kinda team is traditionally EXACTLY what the Lion’s can’t handle.
PG4L, when you’re a team that plays doormat every year for over a decade and all of a sudden has some serious attention put on you, it’s not always easy to avoid getting flustered in a big game/pressure situation. Both Indiana and Illinois shot themselves in the foot with stupid turnovers including a muffed punt, and that shouldn’t come as a shock. It comes from trying to do too much because you’re not playing it like you play every other game and every other play. Call it inexperience, call it lack of perspective, poor coaching, it doesn’t matter. Michigan is a program. Illinois is not. That’s why Michigan won that game even with Hart on the sidelines and all of their screw ups in the game. Their mentality carried them through. They won, because a game like that will always be won by a program like Michigan when Illinois is clearly not mentally ready to take the next step.
I’m not going to get into a pissing contest about Michigan football knowledge, but when has your program (and until I starting going to IU 6 years ago, they were my program too) ever been a joke? They haven’t, because they’re Michigan. It’s not so easy to shake that mentality of being a joke and react appropriately to big games. THAT is something that no matter what amount of UofM knowledge you possess, you’ll never have to be exposed to as a fan of the program. You should be thankful for that. It was a Saturday night home game on national TV for Illinois. You think they’ve had a lot of those featuring a stadium filled with fans carrying certain expectations? No, they haven’t. You said Illinois IS bad. They’re not at all. They PLAYED badly, and it’s not a shock. Playing badly and being bad are two different things. The Bucks are bad. In the ECF, the Pistons played badly.
As for the national championship hopes that you seem to have had, I hope you tossed them after the result in game 1, because they were done after that. And in that vein, as I said, once they lost to App. St., the loss to Oregon becomes kinda meaningless other than general frustration.
For someone who called for a “rational debate” in the other thread, you’ve sunk to calling my argument “nonsense” (which it isn’t), saying I explained it in a “smart assed” way and even accused me of making a claim that “You don’t understand” (which I also never said). That’s pretty biting, especially when it’s finished by a vulgarity. PG4L, you’re a mainstay here, and you always come with it on the opinion front, but it seems to me like you have no idea how what you’re saying actually comes off. It seems to me to be either that case, or you want to make rules apply to things when you feel like it, and then ignore them when it’s no longer convenient. You could seriously benefit from checking yourself on that front, and bring the same level of fantastic consistency to your arguments about behavior, word choice and the like, as you already bring to your arguments about issues of sport.
Here’s a partial translation:
INTERVIEWER: There are those in the American media who say you are a very good player but too soft to be considered great - how do you answer them?
DIRK: It makes me sad, but since I am very soft, I cannot complain too much.
INTERVIEWER: How soft is “very soft”?
DIRK: Extremely soft. Like butter or a pillow.
Then they talk discuss whether or not David Hasselhoff is the greatest musical mind of this or any generation.
At least, that’s what the Germans would have us believe…
Anyway, this might be the topic for Matt W to tackle - since Allan Houston is not going to play for the Knicks, is he going to return to Detroit as a coach?
Losing 39-7 is NEVER meaningless to a Wolverine, I’m sorry your time at Indiana made you forget that. You still haven’t said anything WHATSOEVER that counters my statement “Michigan is so lucky that Illinois is so freaking bad” despite attempting to give that impression.
As for the rest of it….. whatever, you were being a smart assed know it all and babling a WHOLE LOT without saying anything.. and that’s about all I have to say on this subject.
Done wit dis guy… again.
I couldn’t care less about the NCAA this year. Every year, they keep touting academics, like that is supposed to mean something for a bunch of semi-pros who want to act like students for 1-2 years before they hit a seven or eight figure paycheck.
Then I noticed Michigan lost to Appalachian State. Good for App State. Chalk more humiliation to Lloyd Carr and his coaching staff.
People get irrational in Lloyd’s defense. If this was the Illinois Fighting Illini, then defending Lloyd’s record might matter.
This is the Michigan Wolverines, however. They’re one of the greatest overall college organizations, in terms of all-time record. The school’s program is royalty. To expect a perfect season every year is the only expectation. If they lose, it has to be at the hands of Ohio State or the opponent in the bowl.
I could care less how many more Top 10 teams get upsets this year. That’s just another argument, one for playoffs, a December Demolition similar to March Madness.
I think my careless attitude toward the organization began to crack between a steady diet of Lloyd’s excuses plus the multi-fecta of Bo’s death, then the Ohio State victory at the horseshoe, then watching as Michigan lost for about four straight weeks as the BCS turned into another political expression as Florida hopefuls and arch-rival Ohio State began to chant, “anyone but Michigan,” after the polls came back with OSU #1 and Michigan #2, followed by a demotivated Michigan accepting a lesser bowl, followed by a demotivated Michigan getting bounced hard in that bowl, followed by Ohio State squandering their dubious calling for opponents besides Michigan treachery with a laughable loss to Florida. That’s where my divorce began.
When did college sports become so awful?
The SEC’s one enemy. The other is Myles Brand.
How does a non-connected bystander fix it? One can’t. They can either accept what’s happening, or they can turn their back on it. I chose the latter.
Sauce, fwiw that’s one of the most rational reasons for giving up on college ball I’ve ever read.
PERSONALLY I strongly prefer “Because Lloyd’s a massive failure” but hey you’re answer was pretty good too…
It’s been a hard to watch season if you enjoy College Ball, otoh for people who only care casually this year has been an absolute dream.
At this point I’m still pretty pissed at Michigan for both losses, one of which was shocking, one of which was merely a shocking lack of effort.. Otoh I KNOW Lloyd is done and headed to an assistant AD role… sooo hope springs eternal and I’ve been thinking about next year since umm… Labor Day.