The Pistons are looking to avoid the season sweep at the hands of the Bulls tonight (8pm, ESPN) at the Palace. Will no Big Ben mean no buddy ball in the first quarter? Let’s hope so — the Pistons have been smoked in the first quarter in two of the last three games. I’ll be covering the game for HOOPSWORLD, but feel free to leave your thoughts on the game in the comments.
Archive for the 'Bulls' Category
The Pistons are in Chicago tonight (8:30, TV20) looking to shake off last night’s loss to the Kings. But be warned: Chicago always seems to have the Pistons’ number in the regular season, even when they don’t have anyone else’s. Plus, when the Pistons drop a game, they tend to do it in pairs: eight of their 11 losses this year have been part of a back-to-back defeat. (Is there such a thing as a “reverse jinx?” I hope so …)
Kirk Hinrich is likely to sit out for the Bulls, which puts Thabo Sefolosha in the starting lineup next to Chris Duhon. I have no clue who the Bulls plan to guard whom in Detroit’s backcourt, but either Rip Hamilton or Chauncey Billups will have an advantage all night long, even (especially?) when Ben Gordon comes off the bench.
Also, like I said last night in my post-game post for HOOPSWORLD, I’m curious if Walter Herrmann’s PT last night was an effort to get him sharp for matching up with Andres Nocioni tonight. Those guys are teammates on the Argentinian team, it should be fun to watch them go at each other, even if it’s only for a few minutes.
That’s enough pseudo-analysis for now: as always, leave your thoughts in the comments.
(For the second part of that video, go here)
Chicago has won only five times this year … including once against the Pistons. While this rivalry may not be quite the same level of Pistons-LeBron (no offense to the other 11 guys in Cleveland), it’s still something more than just yet another game on the schedule.
Besides, the Bulls have won three of four, which counts for something (even if they have beat up on the lowly Bobcats twice in that span). Can the Pistons extend their winning streak to six? Tune in and find out. It’s an early one, though: the ball tips at 7pm, an hour earlier than usual to accommodate ESPN. As usual, leave your thoughts in the comments.
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]
It’s Pistons and Bulls in Chicago on TNT! Okay, I sound like a commercial, but this should be good. The Bulls are 0-4 but you have to figure they’ll put up a good fight against a bitter rival at home in front of a national television audience. (Las Vegas agrees, listing Detroit as one-point underdogs.)
And besides, if the Bulls don’t win soon, Scott Skiles may have a heart attack and/or kill someone — he almost ripped the head off Joakim Noah earlier this week when Noah suggested (gasp!) that the Bulls looked “out of sync” in losing to the Clippers on Tuesday:
“I don’t know. If I had just played my first game, I’d probably keep my mouth shut, to be honest with you,” Skiles said. “It’s obvious we’re not playing to our ability. I may have a little problem with the phrasing of (Noah’s comment), but the point is probably spot-on. But again, it probably should be someone else speaking for the team.”
Because, you know, Ben Wallace and the rest of their veterans are such vocal leaders. In any case, Chicago’s fans have yet to give up hope, as evident by this inspirational “the sky isn’t falling yet” post a Blog-a-Bull.
And I agree: the sky isn’t falling. Over the course of a season, a four- or five-game losing streak really isn’t much to lose sleep over, especially when one of the games went to overtime. It’s not ideal, of course, but it happens, and there’s no reason to think Chicago won’t eventually bounce back. In fact, I still pegged them the third best team in the East yesterday over at HOOPSWORLD … but here’s to hoping that first win doesn’t happen tonight.
As usual, leave any thoughts on the game in the comments.
Yes, yes it was.
Admit it: for a while, you were doubting if this roster was even capable of feeling a sense of urgency, right? I sure was. After wasting two opportunities to clinch the series, the Pistons had to win on the road in a hostile environment.
I didn’t even want to think about what would happen were the Pistons to back into a Game 7 situation. Yes, it would have been at the Palace, but the entire sporting world would have been rooting for the Bulls, if for no other reason than to witness both an upset and a collapse of epic proportions.
Fortunately, we don’t have to contemplate such a scenario anymore, as the Pistons amazingly retained their focus the entire game to pick up the elusive fourth win. Down goes Chicago, down goes Ben Wallace, down goes having to listen to an entire summer of comparisons to the 2004 Yankees.
How’d they do it? By getting back to the basics. Detroit’s defense (including a very healthy dose of good ol’ man-to-man) frustrated Chicago to no end. The Pistons clamped down on the Bulls’ big three of Luol Deng (17 points), Ben Gordon (19 points) and especially Kirk Hinrich (11 points on 3-13 shooting).
Hinrich did finish with 11 assists but committed five fouls, allowing Chauncey Billups overcome a poor shooting night of his own (3-12 from the field) by helping him get to the line 14 times. Chauncey never missed from the stripe and finished with 21 points.
With so much attention being paid to Chicago’s three “stars,” P.J. Brown got loose for 20 points in the first half. It was frustrating to watch but Detroit weathered the storm: guys like Brown may get lucky for a couple of quarters now and again, but it was hardly a surprise when he was held scoreless after halftime.
While this series has largely been described as a battle of the backcourts, the Pistons never would have won this game were it not for outstanding play by their bigs: Tayshaun Prince had 17 and nine, coming through with bucket after bucket when it mattered most with eight points in the fourth. Chris Webber scored just five points but grabbed nine boards, including four offensive, in just 23 minutes. His counterpart Antonio McDyess added five points with 10 boards in 25 minutes.
But perhaps most impressive was the performance by Rasheed Wallace, who scored 16 with 13 boards and two blocks — not to mention two consecutive scores waved off (one for a loose ball foul, the other for traveling). But Rasheed more or less kept his cool, and Flip Saunders’ leap of faith of leaving Rasheed in the game despite foul trouble paid off on both ends of the court. He still spends a little too much time around the three-point arc for my tastes (he finished 2-8 from long distance), but he was completely locked in for all 39 minutes he played.
As for the Bulls, well, there’s plenty of reason for this team to feel good about itself as it enters the offseason. While I’m not sold on their undersized backcourt as a franchise cornerstone, Gordon and Hinrich are certainly capable of having their moments. But even more so, I’m walking away from this more convinced than ever that Deng is on his way to being a star.
No matter how sympathetic you may still be toward Ben Wallace, it’s unavoidable to face the Bulls in a playoff series without wondering if his $60 million contract was really money well spent. He spent the entire series hobnobbing with his former buds before and after games even as his current teammates were getting obliterated on the court. And then, before two of the three most important games of the year, he was 15 minutes late to the arena. I don’t care how bad traffic might have been, taken as a whole these weren’t the acts of a true leader.
Had he come through on the court it might have been possible to overlook the poor example he set for his younger teammates in the locker room, but that didn’t happen, either. What was his line in Chicago’s final game of the year? Six points (including just 2-8 from the free-throw line), seven boards, 29 minutes. Detroit, on the other hand, got 10 points and 19 boards from their center position.
When the Bulls first signed Wallace, I predicted he’d give them two good years before he’d start stealing their money. I may have been one year too generous. Webber was routinely beating Ben to rebounds on Thursday, and Webber can hardly move. Ben needs an offensive-minded running mate in the post, and soon. You have to imagine Bulls GM John Paxson will make it happen this summer between free agency, trades or using the Knicks’ first-round pick, but then again, most of us assumed he would’ve tried harder to address the need last year at this time, as well.
In any event, before Game 1, most of us were predicting a long series, and that’s what we got, not to mention the re-kindling of a classic rivalry. And not to disrespect the Nets or the Cavs, but I really think this was the most difficult hurdle in Detroit’s path to the NBA Finals — though here’s to hoping the players don’t get caught looking as far ahead as I am.
Pistons 95, Bulls 85 box score [ESPN]
GameFlow [PopcornMachine.net]
(Thanks to DBB reader Wayne for the graphic!)
Hopefully Doc and Little Mac — err, Rasheed Wallace and Chauncey Billups — come out swinging. (Figuratively speaking, of course. If someone wants to literally come out swinging, here’s to hoping it’s Dale Davis or Nazr Mohammed or somebody from the end of the bench.)
The Pistons didn’t fare too well their last trip to Chicago, getting completely outplayed in three out of four halves of basketball, with only the Bulls’ Glass Joe impersonation in the second half of Game 3 saving Detroit from being down 2-3 right now.
The key, and this is simplistic, is jumping ahead early. I’m not worried about the Pistons losing a lead so much as I am them having always having to play catch up. If Ben Wallace is benched for the start (dude was late to the arena tonight, again), hopefully Chris Webber can get going early, because getting him into play-making mode would certainly help alleviate some of the pressure from Chauncey.
The ball tips at 8pm on ESPN as well as TV20, for those of you who need your George Blaha fix. And as always, leave your thoughts in the comments.
Remember how Scott Skiles kept on saying the Bulls were getting open shots in Games 1 and 2, but that they just weren’t falling? Well, they were open in Game 5 alright, and holy crap were they falling. I’m sure everyone will be talking about how the Bulls shot 72% in the first half, but honestly, that’s not even what got Detroit. Despite that blistering percentage, the Pistons entered halftime with a manageable eight-point deficit.
It was the third quarter that killed the Pistons. Just when it looked like the Pistons might make some noise by cutting Chicago’s lead down to six, the Bulls ran off back-breaking 13-0 run. And unlike the Game 3 theatrics, the Pistons really was no answer for it, as the lead ballooned to 23 late in the fourth quarter.
How could things get so bad, so quickly? For one, the defense never tightened up. Although they fell off their scorching pace from the first half, the Bulls still shot an unacceptable 57% in the third quarter. But just as importantly, the Pistons proved once again that they don’t have an adequate backup for Chauncey Billups on the roster. Billups picked up three quick fouls early in the third (thanks in part to Kirk Hinrich, who unbeknownst to most NBA fans actually suffers from an acute balance disorder which results in him falling helplessly to the ground at the slightest touch by an opposing player), and in his absence Detroit’s offense grew stagnant.
It wasn’t a surprise, really. The same thing happened earlier in the game when Billups sat out for a breather in the second quarter: his absence more or less coincided with an 12-3 run by the Bulls. It’s good news for him, I guess, since Joe Dumars will have a hard time not giving him as much money as he wants this summer, but it’s just killing the Pistons in the meantime.
But really, this wasn’t about what Detroit’s players didn’t do so much as what Chicago’s players did: Luol Deng, Ben Gordon and Kirk Hinrich were all clicking, and when that happens there aren’t many teams in the league they can’t beat. Deng (20 points, seven boards, four assists, two blocks) has been the model of consistency for the Bulls, and Hinrich (17 points, 13 assists) has more or less been solid.
But this was really Gordon’s first big game of the series, and he provided dagger after dagger for the Bulls by shooting 5-6 from long range en route to 28 points. He’s inconsistent as hell, not much on the defensive end and can’t rap worth a damn, but I will give him this: when he’s on, he’s on.
For what it’s worth, the Pistons did out-rebound the Bulls 37 to 35, but that was a function of Chicago’s insane shooting percentage as much as anything else. Chris Webber played better than the last two games with nine points and a team-high eight boards, though his lack of athleticism is still being exposed. Antonio McDyess scored 12 points in 15 minutes but also committed three turnovers. I wish we could have seen more of Jason Maxiell — he was a +11 on the night in just 15 minutes of play, scoring five with three boards. At the very least, you know Maxiell is going all-out on every play, while the other big guys were often doing more plodding than anything else.
And honestly, I still wish Amir Johnson could at least dress for these games — if nothing else, he could provide 2-3 minutes of unbridled energy, and I guarantee he’d do at least a couple of things that make you notice him on the court, whether it’s chasing down a loose ball or skying high for a rebound. It’s a fool’s quest to think it’ll ever happen — on this veteran team, such a drastic change in the rotation would just reek of “panic” — but to me it just seems like one of those no-brainers to at least try.
Then again, making adjustments — whether they’re drastic or small — never has been Flip Saunders’ forte. I’ve never been one to lay too much blame on a coach simply because I honestly don’t feel qualified to determine which mistakes are the result of poor execution and which mistakes are the fault of a bad scheme … but when a team is hitting open jumpers all night long with the nearest defender three steps away? It makes me wonder if the players are really being put in the best position to succeed.
This series might remind you of last year’s debacle with Cleveland, but it doesn’t really compare. For one, the Pistons were legitimately hampered by injury last year: Rip Hamilton was still feeling an ankle injury from the first round and Rasheed Wallace suffered a severe ankle injury in Game 4. This year? There’s no real excuse other than the mythical lack of “energy” or “focus” or “in-game coaching adjustments.” (OK, that last one might not be so mythical.)
The Pistons are still in the position of power, of course, needing just one win to close it out, but it’s a big concern that they couldn’t do it at home. I still think that the third time trying to close out the series will be the charm in Game 6 on Thursday in Chicago, but I no longer know if my confidence is fueled by optimism, logic or denial.
Bulls 108, Pistons 92 box score [ESPN]
GameFlow [PopcornMachine.net]
DBB Preview: Pistons go for the knockout punch in Game 5
I’m already kind of bored with the Flip Murray dunk (not really, I could watch that thing for hours), but this was the first “view from the stands” video that I’ve seen. So enjoy. Hopefully Murray gets a chance to top it tonight (in garbage time with the Pistons up big, natch). In lieu of an actual preview, let me direct your attention to what I wrote on the FanHouse:
Ignore the scores of the first two games. They mean nothing. Instead, look at what happened the last two in Chicago: the Bulls essentially owned the Pistons for three of the last four halves of basketball, with the last 24 minutes of Game 3 being the only thing preventing this series from being tied up. That should be a surprising realization for casual observers who have bought into the description of this series being out and out dominated by Detroit.
I believe every word of it, too. Most of us were expecting a long series, and just because the Pistons won the first three games doesn’t mean it can’t still happen. Here’s to hoping it doesn’t, though. Game 5 tips off at 8pm on TNT — leave your thoughts in the comments.
Really. That’s it.
Unless you wanted to get into how Chicago’s big three of Gordon, Hinrich and Deng combined for 63 points, or how Big Ben turned back the clock (in a good way this time) with 17 boards, or how Chris Webber went 0-for-Chicago, or how Rasheed Wallace missed 10 three-pointers … that Flip Murray dunk is probably the only thing worth remembering from this game.
(Though even that dunk lost some of it’s “cool factor” when Murray proceeded to miss the ensuing free-throw and Hinrich immediately drew a foul on the other end … but still, for at least a moment, it helped take the sting off what was a frustrating game to watch.)
[Update: Murray’s stare-down is vindicated! Witness Hinrich’s nut shot in the third angle of the replay. (Thanks to Justin for pointing it out.)]
The final score is both accurate and deceiving at the same time, if that makes any sense. The Bulls were in control of the game for good once they closed out the first half with an 11-1 run to take a seven-point lead into halftime. A disastrous third quarter saw Detroit trailing by as many as 23, but that was followed by a predictable comeback bid which saw the Pistons cut the lead to single-digits late in the fourth.
Unfortunately, the Pistons could never quite get over the hump. The key play as I saw it down the stretch was when Chauncey Billups was posting up with the Pistons down seven with a few minutes left in the game. A bucket would have made it a two-possession game, but instead Billups was called for charging. Ben Gordon quickly hit a three on the other end, turning a would-be two-possession game into a double-digit deficit.
That was pretty much it. The Pistons tried to stretch out the clock with some fouls, even turning to the Hack-a-Ben strategy, which was foiled when Ben Wallace hit three of four free throws (and good for him — I’ve always thought that was an ugly way to play the game). All of that constant fouling to stop the clock at the end allowed Chicago to pad their lead.
So while a 15-point loss is deceiving in that Detroit actually had a chance to win late in the game, it’s accurate in that they had no business winning. Chicago shot extremely well (49.3% compared to Detroit’s 37.3%) and killed Detroit on the boards (51 to 33).
This was a frustrating game, but let’s keep things in perspective: no one predicted a sweep before Game 1, and most of us would have been happy with a split in Chicago. With their backs against the wall, the Bulls finally came to play for the first time the entire series.
It was bound to happen sooner or later — despite their best efforts to convince you otherwise in the first three games, the Bulls are in fact a good team. Certainly not a title contender, no, but definitely a force to be reckoned with in the playoffs. Besides, the silver lining (there isn’t one, I’m being kind) is that ticket-holders for Game 5 now have a chance to see the Pistons clinch the series at home on Tuesday.
Bulls 102, Pistons 87 box score [ESPN]
Flip Murray’s Dunk In, On and Over Kirk Hinrich’s Face [FanHouse]
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