The first loss is in the books. It was bound to happen sooner or later, and that it occurred against the Bulls, a division rival looking to atone for an 0-4 start as well last year’s showing in the playoffs, wasn’t a big surprise. In fact, even though the Pistons had a chance to win late, it felt like they were on the verge of stealing the game, not winning it.
They trailed for much of the game, and seemingly every run to make the game close was followed by a lull in which Chicago jumped back ahead. Were it not for Rasheed Wallace — his 36 points were the most ever as a Piston — Detroit never would have been in this.
Whereas Chicago came out with a well-rounded team effort (five guys scored in double-figures, and eight played at least 16 minutes), the Pistons pretty much relied on Rasheed Wallace (36 points) the entire night. Tayshaun Prince and Antonio McDyess combined for just seven shots. Yes, they also combined for 10 free throws, but you’d still like to see a bit more aggressiveness.
As for the Bulls, well, this is exactly the reason why so many fans in Chicago are crowing about Tyrus Thomas. The guy is some kind of athlete, as he proved when he literally jumped over Rip Hamilton to block his shot. It was a remarkable play (and bound to hit YouTube sooner or later). Unfortunately, as much attention will likely be paid to what happened afterward — after Rip was knocked to the ground, he tripped Thomas up by grabbing Thomas’ ankle. Don’t be surprised if the league wants to talk to Rip about that one.
But while Hamilton may have momentarily lost his composure, Rasheed did a good job holding his emotions in check. ESPN’s David Thorpe noticed this, as well:
Maybe other players and the organization have convinced him to change his ways. When he missed two shots late, he didn’t blame anyone, or look at referees. That’s a good sign.
He’s better when he doesn’t project his feelings of frustation on the people around him — just tell it to the headband.
(That last line probably sounds weird, but that’s really what Rasheed did — he walked away from the play at one point and yelled to himself as he pulled his headband over his head down around his neck.)
As for Ben Wallace … wow. As much as some fans may still resent him, I just hope that it really is his ankle that’s slowing him down because he’s barely better than worthless at the moment. He scored six with a pedestrian seven boards, but as the NBA.com box score points out, he was also -8 on the night, the worst out of any Bulls player. He played just 25 minutes, sitting the entire fourth quarter. But that opened the door for another former Piston, Joe Smith, who scored seven of his 13 points in the fourth, most of them on timely buckets to keep the Bulls ahead.
So that’s that. No one expected 82-0, so forget and move on. The Pistons flew home after the game and will take on the unbeaten Clipppers at 8pm tonight at the Palace.
Bulls 97, Pistons 93 box score [NBA.com]
Random thoughts:
A) Complacency… or laziness. And how are we different this year?
B) Flip Murray sucks, tunnel-vision coupled with bad decisions. He’d be great if basketball was 1v1, 2v2, or 3v3. Unfortunately…
C) Saunders is his same old anal-retentive self. He gets caught in this cyclical mentality based on the fact that if we’re behind we need to play our starters. At face value that seems rational, but our starters are who created the deficit to begin with. If we’re down by 3+ points after the first period why not sit the starters? It A) would definitely give our bench time on the court to develop, B) send a message to the starters that “Hey, you want to play lazy in the first quarter. Fine. Say hello to the bench.” and C)It just might get us back in the game. At least Maxiell, Hayes,… and *gulp* Murray(soon to be Stuckey) try. Now, look at what happened last night: our starters averaged 38 minutes, our bench didn’t develop, AAAAND we lost the game.
The Skiles thing was overblown:
I don’t think the Pistons were all that complacent. Maxiell had three fouls and three turnovers in 12 minutes, and that sort of performance puts you back on the bench. Basically, Chicago hit a lot of open 20 ft. jump shots in the first half.
It’s also tough to fault McDyess for not being aggressive enough. When your other front court option drops 36, your going to do a bit of standing and watching.
Tyrus Thomas looks amazing during some games, and then disappears during others… Completely. To the point where you have to think he might have head issues.
I think that Ben Wallace is just going to start slow. He always has, and he is getting older. If he wants to have juice left for the playoffs, this makes the most sense.
Ok, maybe. Why are we falling behind to an 0-4 team in the first quarter? They had to sit Gordon 2 minutes into the game. Didn’t the Bulls have to sit another starter as well?
The free throws weren’t falling, but really where was this “new team” that’s supposed to push the ball? The Pistons we’ve known for the last 5 years fall into this feeling-out-the-opponent-in-the-first-quarter mentality. We’ve slowed it to a half court game by default since Carlisle… Why? Why, still, after Dumars has mandated that complacency is out the window, do we stand around in the FIRST quarter???
Forget the half court offense, for now, push the freakin’ ball. Good things will happen.
Granted, things weren’t going the Pistons way, but there’s no excuse for us to be losing to an injured Ben Wallace, 2 backups, Heinrich, and Deng after 1 quarter.
“It basically comes down to this: Detroit is a post-up team that can’t shoot jumpers, and Chicago is a jump-shooting team that can’t post up.”
~Jalen Rose on ESPN.com
WHAT?!
Until Maxiell’s block, they got nothing from the bench - and Flip was painful: dribbling out the first 2/3 of the shot clock on offense then kicking the ball off his knee and slowly getting back to play horrible defense. Even Hayes had a rough night.
Still, other than Sheed it was a rough game for the Pistons and they still had three good, open shots to tie/win at the end against a desperate team at home. I sure don’t have any fear right now that the Bulls are a team for Detroit to fear in a playoff series.
And is anyone else already sick of watching Rip bitch about every call? Especially when he makes an obvious foul? Even Sheed was pulling him away from the officials last night.
I can’t stand watch Flip Murray dribble the ball off his damn foot half the time he has it, let Prince play backup point until Stuckey is healthy and if Murray has to play he should be a 2 only.
Why is everyone all-of-sudden bashing on Flip Murray? Its like no one can pick whether you like him or you don’t.
I think Tayshaun playing transparent had a bigger effect on the Pistons lost last night. 1 FG made and 5 points is not something im expecting out of Tayshaun, i hope he picks up the intensity tonight against the Clips.
This game was a great example of why we NEED Amir to be the real deal. Sheed, although he played great, has a hard time guarding guys with the athleticism of Thomas, and Maxiell just isn’t big enough…how many offensive rebounds did Tyrus and Joakim have??? It seemed like the had twice as many shots as Detroit. Amir can be that guy with the length and athleticism to cause the opposition to adjust to US, not the other way around.
Decent game. Both teams still have solid defense. Chicago’s about the same. This was one of those regular-season-level games for both clubs.
What I noticed . . .
By now, with Chauncey, Rip, Tayshaun, and Rasheed, it’s like watching poker superstars do their thing. Rasheed could be likened to a blend of Hellmuth and Matusow, given the outbursts.
However!
When Rasheed’s trying to calm Rip down on a couple of plays, that tells me something about where Rip’s head is.
It’s like Rip got a series of bad beats, and he was steaming about it. That steam kind of didn’t help . . . it just made him, in particular, play with less skill.
For all the awesome Rasheed did, Rip kinda undid. Rip even managed a damping effect on Tayshaun.
My level of concern with Detroit’s direction, after these opening games . . . minimal. I’d like more attempts in the paint from everyone. The collective shooting effort is just about average. The defense seems to work pretty well. It should be a decent run.
“Ok, maybe. Why are we falling behind to an 0-4 team in the first quarter?”
Because they are also a 50 win team that plays like a 60 win team at home.
I don’t even care about the loss. it was bound to happen. it’s the time distribution that gets me.
If he’s gonna burn up the starters to get home court advantage just to waste it on a tired group of people losing the playoffs than how far have we come from last year?
The Bulls being at 0-4 were bound to win a game against no matter who they played. Then add us at 3-0 and we probably didn’t give it everything we could have going against a team without a win. With us being the team who eliminated them in the playoffs and being 0-4, how can not expect the Bulls to give you everything they got.
I know it’s hard to put the bench in the game while you are down, but I think we needed more bench minutes. We lacked the energy off the bench, the bench barely got any minutes.
Can you have too many scorers out on the court? If you can, we might. I’d like to keep Rip and Prince from being on the court together to much, and see how that works. Prince was great without Rip here, I think we have to many scoring options when both of them are out there. Put a shotblocker/postup player (Maxiell, Nazr, and Amir) out there so we can get some better use out of Prince.
Flip Murray can score and is great off the bench, just please stop putting him at point guard. Flip can’t play as an effective point guard, period. When Flip is on the court, please make sure someone else at PG. Price looked great at PG, and with the matchup problems his length causes, it makes it even better. How long is it going to take them to figure this out?
It’s no surprise when we are down, Saunders forgets to use the bench.
You can’t expect to get much out of the bench, when you don’t let them play. Now if we played some better defense and used our bench’s young guys to outrun the Bulls we probably would have won. Let’s just hope he remember we have a bench against the Clippers … maybe even call a timeout when we look lost out there to remind them to focus and play with intensity. If it wasn’t for Sheed that would have been much worse.
People,
You can’t cry out “COMPLACENCY!” every time the team falls behind in the first quarter. The Bulls are a great team playing at home. That being said, some thoughts:
The Bulls offense is awful with Ben Wallace in the lineup. They really need all five players to be scorers.
We should tweak our pick-and-roll defense against Chicago. Perhaps have another wing slide over to help so our older bigs don’t have to step over the screen and then race Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah back to the basket. Better rotation from the other bigs would help too.
Bad defensive rebounding.
No movement. Someone asked if you can have too many scorers. No. And you especially can’t have too many players that can shoot and pass selflessly. The problem is there’s no movement. In their desire to exploit mismatches, they end up having one guy posting up and everyone else standing around. If we ran an offense like the Jazz or the Lakers I think the team would be unstoppable.
Boy, I hope you guys are right about Amir Johnson. If he can be as good as Tyrus Thomas (who I despise, by the way), I’ll be very happy.
Any thoughts on who will be the first NBA player to knock Joakim Noah out? Ruben Patterson? Artest? Stephen Jackson?
Did ya’ll seriously not see this L coming? I want them to win every game, too, but if there’s such a thing as a must-win in the first half of the season, this was it for the Bulls. They’ve been losing because they were distracted by the Kobe rumors, not because they’re a bad team. So they found their focus against the team that knocked them out of the playoffs last year. I expected them to play with energy and intensity, and from the POV of the radio broadcast, they did. They also got shots to fall while we struggled from the line early. They will brush themselves off and get about the business of coming home from an early, long road trip with a decent record.