What is it about the Jazz that give the Pistons fits? The Pistons couldn’t even beat them in the preseason. In fact, they haven’t beat the Jazz since 2005, and they haven’t won in Salt Lake since 2002. The Jazz just dropped a game last night to the Timberwolves, but I’m not sure what that means — maybe they’ll be tired on the second night of a back to back, or maybe they’ll be amped looking to right their ship.
We’ll find out — the ball’s about to tip (TV20). Leave your thoughts in the comments.
The sweet sounds of George Blaha gracing my League Pass broadcast. The basketball gods are smiling down upon me.
i will be very impressed if we win this game. the jazz just match up so well with us. from the lanky small forward to the bruiser point guard to the inside-outside power forward. it’s a mormon mirror.
at least either cleveland or boston will lose tonight.
Amen LawyerBoy!!
Chauncey: “you know what I’m sayin…you know what I’m sayin…you know what I’m sayin?”
Blaha: “We know what you’re sayin.”
It looks like the Boys in Blue want this one. It’d be nice to finally outplay the Jazz in Salt Lake City after all these years. Decent mini-run by the Jazz to make it a fairly respectable 30-21 at the end of one. I like what I see so far and apparently Maxiell has the Mormon Baby Munchies.
WHAT A SPECTACULAR PLAY BY TAYSHAUN!
seriously.
i want more of that.
and more blocks like that too.
this pleases us. We are pleased with a ten point lead against the team that has had our number.
Are they booing in Utah? I don’t remember any Western trip the Stones have taken where I’ve heard this much booing…
Bench is hanging in there.
is Amir hurt?
I love how JMax is just going at that rim. He’s getting fouled, but he’s knocking down FTs. excellent work.
At the same time, though, Utah has apparently found the elusive 7-foot wide basket — the one that’s impossible to miss, no matter where your shot comes from. Given that, and given the fact that this is the third game on the road against a tough opponent, played in a notoriously tough arena, I’m liking, very much liking out halftime position.
Amir burned his hand on a Bunson burner whle working on his cure for A.I.D.S. He will use the proceeds to end world hunger and patch the Ozone layer. He will return in the fourth quarter to record a septuble double.
I’m getting “League Pass Will Be Right Back”
Anyone else?
My girlfriend will not quit laughing when Blaha or Kelser say “Boozer”. She also is sick of the Saturn Presidents day commercial. She doesn’t watch much basketball with me.
that “will be right back” shows up on occasion but has always been only temporary…
Celts beat the Cavs. Ben had 6 and 6. Color me unimpressed.
Wow, what’s with the doe-eyed routine? This is like Towson St. v. Duke.
this is a HUGE game for JMax - he’s really working hard.
What did Dice get on the midseason report-card? He is playing out of his mind lately!
Stuckey needs to get it done from the FT line if he’s gonna live up to the hype.
good to see Big Ben earning that money… 6 points, 6 rebounds (on an awful shooting night by CLE), 0 blocks
Superb D by Sheed…
Penalty Situation!!!
Back to back white man flops…
Best. Officiating. Ever.
Matt Harpring flops more than Anderson Varejao
But Casio (can he really be called Big Ben anymore?) did have an assist.
I can’t fathom that call on Dice.
Ball don’t lie!! Weren’t the fouls 7-2 in our favor a couple minutes ago? I think they just called a foul on ME to send the 27th best Brewer in sports (Corey, and all 25 Milwaukee baseball players) to the line.
As someone who drafted Okur, where the hell has THAT been all season?
As someone who drafted Okur in fantasy, where the hell has THAT been all season?
wtf how do you leve okur open like that after what was just demonstrated.
The Mehmet Mullet is Maddening for Mike in Michigan. Millsap’s Much Maligned Momentum Miraculously is Missing. M’fin Mehmet a M’finagain. Mmmmm Michelob.
Goddammit Okur.
who on the pistons doesn’t know that ALL okur wants to do is shoot 3 pointers? pathetic.
Our defense has been horrendous.
Who is this Okur guy? I swear I know him from somewhere…
what a waste of a game
gah. if this is the only loss we have on the four game road trip. so be it.
Disgusting
I’m SOOOO happy that we didn’t play Amir. Hats off to Flip!!! He’s a fucking genius… as he’s shown in the playoffs the last 15 years.
Well, that sucked.
Kevin S: I too have Okur in fantasy, and Millsap for that matter. Still, a W would be preferred.
We have a penchant for making our former teammates show up for games. I mean, Okur has be USELESS all season, and NOW he shows up? Let’s pray we don’t meet Cleveland in the playoffs.
Yay. Post game interview with the Turk.
If Boston signed Jerome Williams, I would start following cricket or jai-alai. I,for one, hope Rodney White doesn’t resurface.
so why did amir get a dnp-cd? tell me it’s not a dnp-cd. please tell me that. what kind of f-ed over-thinking would result in him sitting next to juan dixon and walter hermann all night? i hope this wasn’t flip saunder’s actual decision. he can’t be that dumb, right? no way a guy that dumb is running our 42-16 club. that couldn’t be.
I revisit my assessment of Flip… he’s an idiot. honestly, unless Amir was puking all night, or had a traumal injury… I see no reason to sit him on the bench next to no name #1 and no name #2. I really think Flip is a fucking moron that’s cost us at least 1 championship…. and this year might be ship #2. really. I hate Flip… fire him and hire Laimbeer. At least we know Laimbeers not a total idiot.
Blame Flip, blame Sheed for being bored, blame our D, blame Stuckeys inexperience, blame the long road trip, blame whatever flaw you want, all Pistons fans wanted more this W more than our boys in blue, and its disheartening that they can’t win the games we want them to win, and things like this lead to me to believe our team will once again lay an egg in the playoffs, but I hope I’m wrong.
Re Amir:
He may have a broken wrist
Late in Sunday’s game against the Suns when he went to dunk he was fouled on the arm. As a result he couldn’t fully extend his right arm on the dunk and his right wrist came crashing down on the rim. They had the camera on him afterwards until he shot his foul shots. You could see him grimacing very bad and holding his right wrist as he went to shoot. He badly missed both shots like he was shooting with a numb hand.
He only played 8 minutes against Denver. I did not see that game.
So most likely his right wrist is badly sprained and he may have re-aggravated it in the Nuggets game or it just became so sore that he couldn’t go tonight.
On the other hand he could have broken it. Sometimes with small breaks you don’t know you have one until a couple days after.
I doubt that it was a CD-DNP. Most likely he is hurt or got sick.
What a great game by both teams. I love watching these two go at it. For a recap from a Jazz fans perspective, check out http://myutahjazz.blogspot.com
I can’t wait until we meet in the finals.
Mike - It looks like Flip just decided to shorten the rotation specifically for Utah.
http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/DETUTA_080227_recap.html
Sorry I don’t buy KL theory.
He wasn’t quoting Flip
I still think something is physically wrong with AJ.
No reason to shorten the bench and give Sheed 40 minutes especially since he didn’t shoot squat all night and spent the night outside the arc.
Sorry. I just don’t buy KL theory. Especially because if you read the reason that he gave about the Hex it makes no sense. In fact it is just dumb.
It could very well be that AJ’s wrist is still sore and that Flip did not want to risk aggravating it tonight by playing AJ. He decided to give him the night off so that the wrist had a few more days to heal, prior to the Clipper game.
The reason being is that AJ is from L.A. and I am sure that he has left a lot of tickets for his family and friends. So Flip wanted to make sure that AJ was healthy for Saturday’s game.
Or it could be that the injury is really bad. The first reason though makes more sense because if the injury was serious then there would have been something in the press about it.
Clearly we will know more come Saturday or even before.
I think yak takes the win for his comment about Amir curing AIDs. Good stuff.
As for the loss, pretty disappointing. We have such high standards for our team that it’s really frustrating to see them lose, whether it’s from a lack of effort, or an off-night, or bad officiating, or whatever. Sometimes the other guys just bring it and it is what it is. Hopefully Amir is good to go, and we’ll get some wins on the next few road games (ha, that sentence makes it sound like whether we win or not totally hinges upon Amir).
Only 17 assists? Sounds like we’re playing gym ball against them (one person pounds the ball and everyone else watches). I’m not sure why utah is such a bad matchup for us, but they deserve credit. Sloan has the stones figured out, and gets the most out of his team each time we play. Screw it. It’s not like we’re going to see them in the playoffs.
That Utah crowd was GREAT. They really got into the game in the 3rd and gave their team a push. I’m not sure about the previous 5 losses, but last night the Jazz were by far the more physical team. They out-muscled and out-scrapped the Pistons in the 2nd half. At one point I found myself wishing that Jarvis would elbow Harpring in the face for being an asshole. I don’t think our guys are use to not being the intimidators.
That being said it took an energetic home crowd, solid play from their two stars, and big nights from Okur & Milsap to get past our boys.
Also, where did all the flip venom come from? Seems to me like we have the second best record in the league, have gotten our starters minutes down, and just lost to a division leader on the 3rd game of a 4 game road trip. Fire flip? Hire laimbeer? Come down off the ledge, people. And Amir doesn’t play and THAT’S why we lost? The kid who just started getting minutes in the last month? You guys are crazy.
I thought the loss was more a product of Millsap providing a HUGE spark to the crowd/Jazz with Okur shooting a hot tramp ball in 2nd half. We just werent able to match them at the end of the game and Sheed was ice cold and went 0for with his tramp ball.
I really wanted to see a win but Im not really surprised at the outcome considering our current history with Utah.
Millsap was VERY impressive tonight. We really seem to be entering the undersized PF era with guys like Maxiell, Millsap and a bunch of others I dont wanna look up right now. It seems like not to long ago teams were snatching up terrible 7footers, even if they couldnt play, just to have 7footers.
Bring on the Clips.
i won’t say we lost because amir wasn’t playing. but i’ll say that this game was following the formula for past pistons blow-outs. the only change came when we didn’t have amir and sheed in the second quarter blowing the lead from 15 to 30. the lead started to drop at exactly the time we would have been bringing in amir. he’s a part of the rotation now, it was silly not to play him unless he genuinely was hurt.
According to McCosky in the DetNews this morning the Pistons aren’t commenting about why AJ got a DNP last night after playing in 16 consecutive games, many after which Flip praised his play.
It seems to me that fans are entitled to be given a reason why a rotation player gets a DNP.
Blame this one on Joe. D.
If a rotation player is being disciplined for being late to the plane like he was earlier in the year, or for any other reason fans should know.
If a rotation player is hurt fans should know.
If a rotation player is sick fans should know
If a rotation player is removed from the rotation fans should know.
Dumars has screwed up on this one big time.
I have never criticized him since he has been VP until now.
If the coach refuses to give a reason for dropping a player out of the rotation during a regular season the team needs to comment when asked why.
Horrible communication by the Pistons
I would be writing this regardless of which rotation player got an unexplained DNP.
You guys had that one. We didn’t deserve it.
Over-react much?
No over reaction.
You don’t not play your best defensive player who has the 3rd highest Roland Rating on your team without giving an explanation to your fans
The below is not me. It is from Pistonsforum.com
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TaShawn TaShawn is offline
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Re: Amir Johnson - Detroit Piston Tracker
NEWS FLASH.
Amir Johnson has statistically surpassed Aaron Afflalo as the best defensive player on the Pistons.
Here is how the master list looks.
Player/ points allowed per 100 possessions/ eFG% allowed
AJ/ 99.0/ .415
AA/ 101.1/ .446
CB+RW/ 102.5/ .472
TP/ 102.7/ .471
AM/ 104.0/ .484
RH/ 105.1/ .478
JH/ 105.8/ .470
RS/ 106.4/ .478
JM/ 107.7/ .477
The beautiful thing is that this isn’t just a case of a guy playing great defense, but hurting the team on offense. In fact, the spread between his offensive stats and defensive is +12, with Chauncey Billups as the only player ahead of him with a +13.1.
The amazing thing to me after looking at that list is how bad Stuckey and Maxiell are shaking out (on paper) on the defensive end.
Just want to conclude by pointing out that Amir may have “earned” playing time more than any bench player in Pistons’ history. Dang.
—————————————–
Check out his Roland Rating on 82games.com
What makes this all the more mysterious.
Is that we give up the fewest points in the league about 90. So our best defensive player doesn’t play and we give up 103 points and lose.
Not only that but AJ is our faster and quickest player. He normally comes in to replace Sheed.
Sheed played 40 minutes last night as was 2 - 12 from the field. So he certainly didn’t light it up on offense. On top of that Okur who Sheed was guarding beat us with his 3 point shots and had 24 points. AJ because of his quickness and length would have stopped Okur at the 3 point line as well as inside since Okur is not that strong.
The DNP deserves an explanation
Mike, dead on. All this speculation is meaningless. Someone within the organization needs to say something about why he didn’t play. It’s obvious he should have, it’s obvious he earned a chance to. After the hit Amir took for the team from Shaq, he deserves to be treated better than this. And as fans we deserve to know if something is up or our coach is indeed the fool many of us have been saying he is for a couple years now.
imho, if flip admits that he got conservative on the minutes because of how much he wanted to win the game he should be fired. immediately. i’m sick to death of thinking that flip has turned some kind of corner only to be proven wrong a month later. maybe the rest of the league is right, we are fatally flawed. fatal flaw, thy name is saunders.
Mike - Good point. iirc, didn’t Sloan mention being surprised the Stones didn’t put Amir on Milsap? I could be wrong though.
Either Amir broke a rule and the team is covering for him, or Flip Saunders is jack ass and should be fired today.
Craig,
Let me point ALL the things about Saunders that are signs that he’s not a good coach.
First, no team Flip Saunders has gone to has ever gotten BETTER once he’s arrived. And by better I mean playoffs, winning championships, etc… With Larry Brown no team he’s ever gone to has gotten worse, with the exception of Knicks. That’s a good coach.
Second, when times get tough Saunders stick to his vets. Now, at first glance this doesn’t seem so bad, but you get caught in a cycle where you have to keep sticking to your vets in tough situations because you haven’t developed anybody else to handle the tough situations. We’ve seen that the last 2 years. The only reason he’s developing his youth is because Dumars has laid down the law and left him no other choice. Saunders doens’t have anything BUT youth on his bench.
Third, he doesn’t adjust to unexpected events during a game. He’s most likely to sit on his duff assuming that this “phase” will pass and Detroit will pull it out. Besides our starters playing like sewage against Cleveland last year, he was simply outcoached. When we needed to run he kept his vets in and he slowed it down… just like always. A Bullets fan told me a story about how he remembers when Daly pulled Rodman off the bench and put Rodman on a 2 guard because he was shooting lights out. Where’s flips thinking outside the box??!? Flip’s inside the box that’s inside another box that’s inside another box. Straight by the book… and predictable. Thats bad coaching.
Fourth, Flip doesn’t stand up to refs on behalf of his players. I’d like to see him get T’d up sometime. I think he’s done it once since he’s been here. At first I thought it was just a Daly thing to grab the players and refs attention… but then I heard earlier this week Marylands coach talking about how coaches have to get thrown out of the game from time to time to emphasize a point. Its not crazy, its normal… and that’s what good coaches do.
Other than that, the things that annoy me about FLip are superficial… like how he wrings his collar like Rodney Dangerfield or always loooks worried.
Maybe Laimbeer wouldn’t be the best choice, I actually think Michael Curry would be. I pray that we brought him here to replace Flip. That would be just great.
Brad, I agree with 99% of your post, regarding how Flip has performed as a coach. I’ve been on record here asking for different coach already. Granted, since he’s taken over, we’ve managed to flame out in the ECF’s 2 straight years. And, he’s been over matched in one of those ECF’s by Mike Brown. But I think this inflammation after one loss is a little irrational. Every sign this year has pointed to him playing the bench and resting his starters. I think one loss to a team that seems to have our number is a bit rash. He’s going to coach the team in this years playoffs. Period. If he reverts to vets only playing approach in the playoffs, and we lose, then I’ll start the thread for flip’s ouster. I just think getting this agitated over a regular season loss were we didn’t play our 10 guy off the bench is a little overboard. Maybe that’s a good sign that little things like this blow up here since it’s the biggest problem the team has at the moment. I’d rather see how a rested starting 5 do with a different bench in the playoffs before calling for Flips job (again). I was also one of the loudest voices last off season calling for a dramatic roaster change (KG), and now we have the 2nd best record and a solid bench. Maybe Joe D. knows what he’s doing….
As long as Amir didn’t pull an Andray Blatche, we’re fine.
Okay, the last handful of posts are a joke, right? You guys can’t be serious about wanting to fire Flip after one bad loss. It’s not like Utah matches up really well with us or anything. Utah is one of the few teams I worry about having to play in the playoffs because I’m not sure we can beat them in a 7 game series. Deron Williams is a matchup nightmare for us. He can get to the rim or he can set everybody else up. He can beat either Billups or Hamilton off the dribble at will. Sheed either has to bang with Boozer down low or he has to stand out by the 3 point line and guard Memo. I’m not a huge fan of either situation. And if Sheed is banging with Boozer, our best rebounder (Dyess) is hanging out on the perimeter with Okur. Utah just isn’t a good matchup, don’t let one gag-tastic collapse fool you into thinking that we should handle them easily.
As for Flip, I’m as worried about him in the playoffs as everybody else. If last night was a window into how he’s going to handle the rotation, we could be headed for a second round exit. However, there’s an entire season’s worth of evidence that he’s going to play the bench and the kids have a pretty long leash.
But let’s be serious for a minute, if we can. Amir is absolutely unequivocally not our best defensive player. Is he a useful piece of the rotation who spells our best defensive player (Sheed)? Definitely. Did we lose that game because we didn’t play Amir? I really don’t think so. We lost that game because our perimeter defense was atrocious down the stretch. I really don’t think Amir would have helped that. It was a frustrating game. They happen over the course of an 82 game season. Seriously, we can’t have people out in full force calling for us to fire everybody after every loss.
Reference my last post if you wnat to know why I hated Flip before, during, and after that one game loss.
The thing that swayed me from tolerating Flip to hating him again was being up by 18 points… then losing… then seeing a DNP next to Amir’s name. Which makes me think Flip is back to being anal retentive ultra conservative… which I really, really, really, really hate.
I think an open minded coach would throw Amir in the starting lineup to see how he reacts. Daly used to do that stuff all the time. worst case scenario Amir can’t handle it and after a game or 2 we throw McDyess back in the starting lineup. No biggie.
Instead, we get a coach who raves about his play one game then gives him 0 minutes the next. I’m assuming Amir did something really stupid and they’re penalizing him. But, I don’t know… it could just be Flip being Flip.
Yeah, I get that you hated Flip before. But here’s where I think you’re a little off base. You can’t compare Flip to Daly. That was a completely different era of basketball (essentially with different rules). It’s like comparing apples to oranges.
You can’t be serious with wanting to mess with McDyess and the starting lineup. The guy is like the most superstitious person on the face of the earth. I’d prefer we not go screwing with his routine and his head this late in the season. This is one of the 2 best starting units in the league for a reason, suggesting that we mess with it just to see what happens is insane.
There’s a lot of internet smoke that Amir is hurt and he couldn’t go. Frankly, the organization doesn’t owe us sh*t in terms of disclosing injuries. I’d rather they didn’t, I don’t want other teams knowing what’s wrong with our guys. If Amir was banged up last night, then Flip should’ve been fired if he HAD played him. We’re going to need the bench down the stretch to keep the starters fresh, and to develop experience so we can exploit certain matchups in the playoffs.
I’m nervous that Flip is going to start jacking around with the rotation and everybody’s minutes. But I have an entire season’s worth of evidence and diminished minutes from the starters that says otherwise. I’m not going to load up the cannon and start blasting Flip every time something happens that I don’t like. We don’t know why Amir didn’t play, and frankly it didn’t matter last night, we probably don’t win if he had played.
Whoa, for some reason everyone seems super pissed. I like Amir’s potential as much as the rest of you, but c’mon. We lost because they out-hustled us and played smarter than us down the stretch. Amir has barely played all year, and now you guys are shocked that Flip didn’t put him in the game so that he could be the difference-maker? If Amir was guarding Okur, I can fully picture Okur pump faking Amir out of his jersey by the 3-point line and driving to the rim. Or drawing a foul for a 3-point play. Amir has crazy potential, but he’s barely showed us anything consistent all year. And yes, he hasn’t had consistent minutes so that we can see he has consistent skills, but one game is not the end of the world.
I still think it is AJ’s wrist.
see my posts above for the reasons that I think that.
Also note the link that has been added at the top of this website.
Stat love for Amir
i don’t hate flip, i also don’t think he should be fired unless we fail to at least make the finals. but even then if it’s obvious he made bad decisions. i also think it’s fair to say that his teams have always underperformed in the playoffs. when the announcers are calling your coach out on national tv, that’s not good for anybody involved.
part of me truly fears that in his mind, the only really good thing coming out of this vastly improved bench is the rest it’s giving our starters. and that stuckey, jarvis and max will be able to play five minutes per game in the playoffs without getting in any of the remaining starters’ way. i fear that he has no concept of the psychological aspect of the game, and what amir and max bring to the team on that front *when they play*. max and dyess are defending and rebounding beasts. sheed and amir break games open on either side of the court. i fear flip doesn’t see that. he sees “safe” and “unsafe.”
you can’t be safe in the playoffs, you can’t play to not lose.
i wish they’d at least acknowledge it in some way. my fantasy team is on the line you bastards!
if it is his wrist i hope he’s all right and i acknowledge that i’ve been pissing in the wind all day. if it’s not, then, you know, boo flip. bad coach. no w for you. no, not yours.
garrett, i’m not even really sorry about the loss to be honest. i’m just upset that flip did *exactly* what we feared he’d do. got conservative with the bench when he got scared.
that being said, i think he would have been the difference maker, and here’s why. usually, lately, when amir comes in, we’re like 15-20 up. then they put sheed back in and the two of them break the game loose and usually push the lead to 25-30 by half time.
that didn’t happen. instead flip didn’t put in amir, and coincidentally, we started to lose the lead at that point. this gave them both confidence and about a 15 point jump off on their eventual second half run. okur’s 3’s wouldn’t have mattered if we were still up 20.
some serious that time of the month or something. The game’s end was a sucker punch to the nice fresh breath that it seemed like we’d get a win against utah. I was hoping to, but didn’t get to say:
utah… but detroit’s the tallest!
There is a great book called “How to lie with maps”. It comes to mind when someone says amir is statistically our best defensive player. We all watch the games…you’d rather put Amir on Kobe or Lebron than Tayshaun…
relax, bummer to lose this game, amir info will flesh itself out, the team is okay, flip has broke his old habit this year, one game != his decisions over the rest of the season.
I don’t see why everyone is so scared to “mess” with the lineup. Didn’t we start Maxiell over Rasheed as an experiment last year for like 3 games? Did that send us into a tailspin? We, of course, had other issues that we were dealing with… namely Nazr, but it’s not the end of the world to change things up. Its also not set in stone. Its not like if you started Amir you’re committed to have him start the rest of the year. This is his third season in this system, you should expect him to behave like a veteran. If he doesn’t perform, tell him to get back in the gym and that he’s not ready yet, and put AD back in the starting lineup. Its not personal against AD or Amir… its business.
Found this on Mlive.com
“Amir Johnson, who had a serious head cold the other night before the Utah game when I talked with him. He should be good to go on Saturday against the Clippers.”
… I still hate Flip.
pinion, imo you’re equation is a little bit off, it should read one game! + his entire career > his decisions this season. especially with the well publicized joe d. mandate. i think people are too willing to dismiss the overwhelming bulk of flip’s career and joe’s being forced to interfere with his coaching just because we have a good regular season. 64 win seasons don’t win championships, 7 man rotations don’t win championships, bad coaches don’t win championships, flip saunders doesn’t win championships.
also, the benches success this season really throws into sharp relief how flip wasted good bench players in the past. delfino and nazr are both having pretty excellent season elsewhere and imo max could have been performing at this level last year. flip is using the bench this year, yes, but it’s the exception that proves the rule, and i think it will end in the playoffs, unless Joe D. interferes again.