“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.