Rasheed Wallace, Flip Murray (yes, Flip Murray) and Tayshaun Prince were the keys to victory last night. And to be fair, Flip Saunders probably deserves daps as well: Detroit’s zone defense in the second half was largely responsible for the Warriors finally slowing down. But in lieu of an actual recap, I just wanted to quickly acknowledge two other players, who maybe didn’t carry the Pistons to victory but still caught my eye.
First, Jason Maxiell, who played exceptionally well in a spot start in place of Antonio McDyess and caught the attention of the folks from Golden State of Mind:
Jason Maxiell is a strong, strong man. 14 points, 14 boards, and a vicious dunk. He’s not just a Danny Fortson clone, the guy is a powerful learper.
He did more than just pitch in a double-double, though, adding three blocks and five assists. On the surface, five assists may not look like much, but it literally doubled his season total and accounts for almost 20% of his career total.
Yes, you read that right. In 101 games spanning two years and change, Maxiell has 27 career assists, so five in one game is huge. Not to get too stat geeky on you, but his Assist Ratio (simply, the percentage of his possessions that ends in an assist) has jumped from 3.5 and 3.6 his first two years to 13.6 in eight games this year. That’s more a measure of how far he’s come instead of how well he’s playing (that still amounts to a paltry 2.3 assists per 40 minutes) but it’s obvious he’s making progress.
Also, and you had to see this coming, Amir Johnson. As I wrote for HOOPSWORLD this morning:
Amir Johnson, who didn’t play at all in Tuesday’s loss, played nearly 11 minutes on Wednesday, scoring three points with four rebounds, two assists and a block. All in all, he did a solid job filling up the box score in just a handful of minutes and appeared to grow more comfortable the longer he played.
Johnson, 20, obviously needs more seasoning, but it’s encouraging to see that he compared favorably to Brandon Wright, a lottery pick acquired by the Warriors in a draft-day trade for Jason Richardson. Wright played six minutes and finished with three points, four boards and a steal.
I’ve noticed that Johnson has appeared to need a couple of minutes to really get into the flow of things. Some players are like that, others are not (see: Hayes, Jarvis; Maxiell, Jason). That said, I think this could just be a temporary thing, a function of missing virtually the entire preseason, and perhaps more importantly, dealing with an ankle/Achilles injury early in the year.
I know he’s supposed to be very close to completely healed, but you can still see him stretching it during timeouts. He may just need a couple of trips up and down the court for it to get completely loose (or for him to trust it 100%). In any case, once he’s loose, he finds the ball. His lone field goal of the night came on a nice dunk in traffic — that’s the kind of thing we should end up seeing on a regular basis once he’s in the groove. And, for what it’s worth, he was +8 for the night and was the only Piston with a positive plus/minus number heading into halftime.
Oracle Arena
Visitors Locker Room
Halftime
Nov 14, 8:38pm PDT
Flip Saunders:
“so uh… hey… guys?”
“GUYS? hey Amir, come on… turn that off.. okay, look…. SHEED.. . ok look…”
“so I was thinking, maybe to start the 3rd, we come out with a zone… try and change things a little. what say?”
Lindsay Hunter:
[eyes cast down to ground, somber low growl]
Rasheed Wallace:
“GodDAMN flippy, they pay you to think, don’t they?”
Flip Murray:
“Just GIVE ME THE ROCK, baby.”
Jason Maxiell:
“Ima kill him. IMA KILL HIM!”
Damn, that was funny G. Maximus does play basketball like he’s Apollo Creed. With a lot of agression. Very good one.
I may be a hopeless optimist, but in complete seriousness, why doesn’t Maxiell start? Let McDyess heal up and see what the young JMax can do in the meantime. If he keeps putting up these double-doubles (leaving no babies in sight), maybe he’s good enough already.
It might not be so crazy. Even if you *don’t* think he’s the ideal starter for this team, think about how Afflalo started early on over Flip because Saunders wanted to maintain his rapport with the the 2nd unit. If I’ve heard *anything* about McDyess since he came here, it’s that he prefers to come off the bench. Have his stats even improved with the increased minutes? He’s already getting hurt as a starter, and the only one getting hurt with Maxiell on the floor are those poor, defenseless, tasty babies.
Am I alone here?
G,
That was hilarous… good stuff!
I think a pretty solid case has been made to keep Maxiell in the starting lineup once McDyess returns to action. We all know that McDyess prefers coming off the bench and Maxiell has given the team every reason to grant him McDyess’s starting spot. Perhaps this a is a rush to judgment, and more credence should be given to the idea of Maxiell consistently displaying starting quality ball, but I think it’s okay to make this move if the players are behind it. If it comes out that McDyess wants to be a starter (and he should feel comfortable enough with the organization to say so if that’s the case), then I suppose you go back to him being the starter. Otherwise, babies should no longer be safe again this season come tipoff.
I think Maxy could average a double double if he started
that being said though…
I don’t think having Dyess come off the bench is/was such a good idea. During the regular season he shoots lights out. But as soon as the playoffs come along his shot disappears. That’s fine if he’s a starter because there are four other guys who are used to picking up the slack. However, if Dyess came off the bench he’d be the best player and the offensive focus of the second unit. This would be fine until the playoffs, where suddenly his scoring would dissapear and it would suddenly be up to the rest of the bench to make up the difference.
I’m not sure how much it matters right now whether McDyess starts or Maxiell. The minutes are the important part. McDyess needs to warm up for the season, but Flip should make sure he doesn’t wear him out for the playoffs.
Another good part of having McDyess coming off the bench is that it spreads the team’s best interior defense around. If either Sheed or Dyess gets into early foul trouble when they are the starters, then Max comes and there is a drop off in defense. It is especially bad if Sheed picks up 2 quick fouls because you are then forced to either bring in Nazr or guard the 4 & 5 with two guys 6′9″ or shorter. If you start Max with Sheed then you can always start off with Sheed on the biggest offensive threat and have Dyess to sub in incase of foul trouble.
Overall point to this: we’ve got options. I can’t remember the last time we actually had so many options for starters. It’s a great change of pace, ain’t it?