From Dana Gauruder: “I can see why [Kwame] Brown is getting benched - he blew his starting job with too many defensive errors. But [Amir] Johnson has kept his head up after losing his starting job early in the season. He’s been productive and active most of the times that Michael Curry has used him. It doesn’t make sense to bury the 21-year-old but I don’t see how he’s going to get minutes unless the small lineup experiment flops.”
Tag Archive for 'Kwame Brown'
Yesterday, Michael Curry tried to deflect some of the criticism lobbed at Allen Iverson’s defense. From Chris McCosky in the Detroit News:
“I think he understands what we’re doing. At times he’s been OK, and at times he’s been really good. You look at that Knicks game, and we fell behind by 29 points with (Knicks guard) Chris Duhon doing a lot of penetrating; you look at that and think Allen wasn’t doing a very good job. But the reality is, 16 of those 29 points came because our five-man (Kwame Brown) missed his assignment. Allen, other than when he gambles, has done a good job defensively.”
Without context, it’s unclear if Curry actually meant to single out Brown or if Curry was simply referring to whatever player happened to be manning the position over the course of the game. Either way, Rasheed Wallace accepts his share of the blame, as well:
Q . What about pick-and-roll defense? It still doesn’t seem like everybody is on the same page?
Rasheed Wallace: “It’s something we have to get fixed, and we will.”
Q . You have always been a good pick-and-roll defender. Why does it seem lately like you are struggling with it?
Wallace: “A lot of times it’s just me not being as fast as I used to be. Sometimes, too, I’ve been playing that five-spot (center) and I been focused on being down in that paint and I get indecisive about whether I should leave the basket to go out to the shooters.”
Update: From Chris McCosky:
I had inserted Kwame Brown’s name next to “five-man” in parentheses because Brown started that game and was on the floor for much of the Knicks’ barrage. Well, Curry corrected me. It was both Brown and Amir Johnson who had been guilty of missed assignments. So I stand corrected on that.
From Keith Langlois:
“Depending on who they start, we may start Amir against New York and we may start Amir against Milwaukee (on Friday),” Michael Curry said after Tuesday’s practice. “Some nights we’re going to play Kwame as a starter, some nights it’s going to be Amir.”
[…] “I’ve said from the beginning, it depends on the matchups,” Curry said. “You all see Amir. Why would I put Amir our there and start him against Shaq and Bynum? That’s not a favorable matchup for him. As a coach, that’s not putting a guy in position to succeed. I don’t care about how many lineups we have. That doesn’t faze me. It’s a matter of putting a guy in position each night to give them a chance to be successful.”
When McDyess returns, he’ll assume the role he left - coming off the bench, usually in relief of Rasheed Wallace to give the Pistons both a scoring threat in their frontcourt and a big man who can spread the floor and give Iverson and Rodney Stuckey, especially, wider openings to probe.
I completely understand the idea of exploiting matchups (were I in Curry’s shoes, that’s how I’d do it), but for whatever it’s worth, he is kind of backtracking. Flash back to 11 days ago:
Something needed to be done and Michael Curry acted on that Thursday. He inserted center Kwame Brown into the starting lineup and moved Amir Johnson back to the bench.
“If he plays well, it will be permanent,” Curry said.
There were several specific reasons for making the move.
“We’ve thought about it for a while,” Curry said. “The reason we had Amir in the starting lineup from the beginning was because at that time it enabled us to speed up. With Allen Iverson here now, we don’t have that problem.”
Brown played about as well as anyone could have expected as a starter — he shot 75% from the field, averaged five boards in 20 minutes, played decent defense — so it’s not like he’s returning to the bench with his tail between his legs.
For whatever it’s worth, I agree with the decision, especially considering Johnson was often lost in the shuffle when brought off the bench. I just hope Curry does a better job explaining his roster decisions to his players than he does to the media.
From WDFN.com:
Michael Curry tells WDFN’s Stoney and Wojo that Kwame Brown will start tonight to play alongside Rasheed Wallace. Curry says he is trying to figure out the best way to get his bigs going and recognizes that Kwame and Maxiell have not played well together.
The Pistons simply haven’t played well in the second quarter this year (Tuesday’s game was the exception), and the Kwame Brown and Jason Maxiell pairing is one reason why.
Some will look at this move and say Amir Johnson is being punished by being sent to the bench, but I don’t see it. In fact, Amir might get more opportunities to score coming off the bench, especially considering how he’s been lost in the shuffle with Tayshaun Prince stepping up his game and joining Allen Iverson and (hopefully, when he emerges from his slump) Rip Hamilton as the team’s dominant offensive options.
Update: Here’s Curry’s actual quotes on the matter, courtesy the Freep:
“Amir is a smaller guy that roams the perimeter,” Curry said. “Max and Kwame are the same guy, even though they are different sizes. So by starting Kwame, you have a center. Rasheed can move out and play the four more.
“With Amir, Rasheed has been playing strictly five, and so I think that even affected ‘Sheed as we have gone through the last few games. So I have been trying to figure out the best way, without that shooting big, to use guys as effectively as possible. We think it is better not to have Kwame and Max come on the floor at the same time together.”
Natalie from Need4Sheed had a nice Monday, scoring some free gas from the Pistons and some quality video for her blog.
Good thing it’s still the preseason: Chauncey Billups (right ankle) and Kwame Brown (strained right elbow) spent much of Monday’s practice on the sidelines due to injury.
Like most of you, I wasn’t able to watch Friday’s 73-62 win over the Wizards (on account of it, you know, not being televised and all), but DBB reader Other Matt was actually at the Verizon Center. He offered up his observations in the comments to last night’s game thread, and since he had a chance to see something that 99.99% of the rest of us Pistons fans could not (for better or worse — it doesn’t sound like it was much fun), I republished his thoughts here:
I just got back. DC is freaking awesome. I’ve been living in downtown for the last 5 months and I will be really sad to move home. I love that I can go to basketball game, eat at a 5 star restaurant, and walk home within 5-10 minutes. I’ll plug Rosa Mexicana, which is right across the street from the Verizon Center, tremendous food and good tequila.
All that said, this game was awful. It was like watching paint dry –or worse– a Presidential debate. The first half was a return to Carlisle style offense. It was not pretty. I think we’ll miss Flip a little bit offensively. I think we were 13/38 at the half. We went about 6 minutes without a bucket after the Kwame buzzer-beater to end the 1st quarter.
I thought our defense was terrific. We were active, we were in passing lanes, we did a terrific job at forcing turnovers. We did a poor job exploiting a +10 turnover margin in the first half.
Kwame Brown was excellent. Many of you will note that I was, and have continued to be, dead set against him. He was our best defender and really played well offensively. I really felt for the guy, the crowd was KILLING him. It got to the point where I felt the need to stand and cheer every time he did something marginally good. Color me cautiously optimistic and impressed.
Dee Brown’s defense gave us, Stuckey especially, fits all night long. Will Bynum is at least 2 inches shorter than Brown, which is to say he’s like 5′10 at best. Bynum was a pest, but clearly came out on the short end of his matchup with Dee Brown. I think he gives up too much size to contribute anything meaningful to us this season.
Stuckey was pretty bad all night. He struggled offensively, the Wizards did a nice job trapping him and trying to force the ball out of his hands. I was disappointed in his performance (not that anybody other than Kwame or Rasheed was “good”).
I didn’t see nearly enough Maxiell or Walter Sharpe. I thought Sharpe made a couple of nice plays defensively, but didn’t get enough burn to try to build any positive momentum.
Rasheed was pretty good all night. I think he only took 1 three, which he nailed. He was active in the paint and rebounded the ball well. Even if he wasn’t credited with a rebound in the stat sheet, he kept several balls alive for us. Amir did the same thing.
Speaking of Amir, he’s got to get thicker. He was pushed around by the much stronger Etan Thomas all night. It was not a good matchup for him. He was active defensively. I thought he did a good job despite giving up a very obvious strength advantage. I wish he’d have played more, but the Kwame-Rasheed matchup was working so well in our favor it’s hard to argue with the results.
That’s about all I got for now, I’ll expand more in the morning.
I don’t have much to add, except for reminding everyone not to get too upset about the offense. Michael Curry is trying to add a few new wrinkles to the mix, and he’s using the preseason to take his team out of their comfort zone so that they’ll be ready once the games actually start to matter. From Chris McCosky in Friday’s Detroit News:
Here’s the deal: All those familiar offensive sets that involve Billups and Wallace — the high pick-and-roll, pick-and-pop plays, the cross-screening plays — they are still part of the system.
Curry would rather use the early part of training camp to develop other facets of the offense.
“I know we can do those other things,” Curry said. “But can they do other things? When we are sitting in a (playoff) series and a team has locked in to you and taken away some of those things, can you go to something else?
“Plus, we have to be able to run some things when we don’t have all our talent on the court.”
Billups and Wallace — though admittedly struggling to adjust — are on board with Curry’s plan.
“Once we pick (the offensive sets) up and can run them consistently without thinking, just reacting, we’ll be fine,” Wallace said.
I actually meant to post that quote on Friday morning but never had a chance. Ironically enough, it’s that much more relevant today. The silver lining to last night’s game? Well, we won, just in case that preseason record ever starts to count for anything. Plus, Amir Johnson played 17 minutes without a single foul. He also went 1-5 from the field and had just two boards, but it’s not like anyone else did much better — the Pistons shot 40% from the field; the Wizards, 32.4%.
- Chauncey Billups got smaller over the summer:
Billups has shrunk a bit. His shoulders aren’t as hulking and his back and arms not as muscularly defined.
“I don’t know, man, I did work out hard this summer but I weigh almost the same,” he said after practice Tuesday. “There may be about five pounds different.”
[…] “I didn’t lift as much this summer,” he said. “I did more core work, more conditioning, with the intentions of being in better shape. I have always come to camp in good shape. I always work hard in the summer. But it was different this year.”
- Vince Ellis of the Free Press took out his
roadparking lot rage … against former NBA ref Jess Kersey. - TV ad sales are stronger than ever for the Pistons this year:
“We’re about 95 percent sold for our game telecasts right now and our pregame is 93 percent sold,” said Dan Hauser, Palace executive vice president. “I expect we’ll be fully sold out within two weeks – before the season opener.” […] “The one difference this year is we’ve had more up-front buys,” he said. “In the past we’ve been at about 80 percent. This year we’ll be sold out.”
In all seriousness, I wonder if TV ad sales are going up because season ticket sales are going down — a lot of fans who could afford to go to games in the past will be forced to stay home because of the economy. (It might also be related to the fact that every non-nationally televised game will be shown exclusively on FSN as opposed to TV20. Or not — this stuff is out of my realm.)
- Question: Will we see a quieter, gentler Rasheed this year? From Vince Ellis:
Curry said he has 16 rules that are keys to winning. One is to leave the refs alone. That might be a tough one considering how Wallace and Rip Hamilton have been known to share an opinion or two to the officials. But Curry isn’t too worried. “We just want to have rules in place so that guys know that they’re held accountable for it,” Curry said.
- Answer: No. From Keith Langlois:
“No way on God’s green Earth can you lock me up,” Wallace baited Brown. “I go hard; you lollygag.” On it went. Wallace told Brown he couldn’t hang with him through all his NBA stops and told him he was lucky he didn’t go up against him in high school. When Wallace’s unit sat and Brown’s continued to scrimmage against another five, the harangue continued.
Brown, playing more and more aggressively, scored a basket.
“One basket in 3½ hours!” Wallace blared. Brown scored again. “Two baskets in 3½ hours!” came the cry. Brown scooped up a loose ball at half-court, charged to the rim and practically carried poor Cheikh Samb through the rim for another basket. “Three baskets in 3½ hours!” echoed throughout the Pistons’ practice gym.
I feel for the guy — that has to be one of the most painful interviews of someone not running for vice president I’ve seen in a very long time. On the other hand, it’s somewhat amusing to see an NBA guy interviewed before he’s mastered the art of cliches. It won’t take long before he learns (Update: because they actually teach this stuff, and Henry Abbott is finding out) — as you’ll see below the jump, Arron Afflalo, in his second training camp, has it down pat. Continue reading ‘Some day Walter Sharpe will watch this and laugh’
There’s been talk about the Pistons going 10 or 11 deep on a regular basis this year. How is Michael Curry going to juggle that rotation? By being sure to utilize a guy’s talents when the situation calls for it. From A. Sherrod Blakely of MLive.com:
“I’ve told our players this summer when I’ve talked to them, we have a very talented team; not just our starting five,” Curry said. “Sometimes you’re going to come out of the game not because you’re tired or because you made mistakes, but because it’s time for other guys to get a chance to get out on the court and play and perform as well.”
[…] Curry spent 11 seasons in the NBA as a player, with the bulk of his career as a backup, who saw action primarily because of his defensive play.
That experience allows Curry to understand better than many coaches the frustration that reserves sometimes feel when not given an opportunity to play when the team appears to be in need of what they do best.
“If someone who is supposed to be a defensive guy and that position is being scorched, if he’s a defensive guy, he expects to be in the game,” Curry said. “And if we sold him on playing that role, than we have to put him in the game at that time.”
It’s interesting that he mentioned “if we sold him on playing that role” — unless I’m reading too much into it, I’d imagine he’s referring to Walter Herrmann and Kwame Brown, a couple of free agents the Pistons signed who may or may not have turned down more money elsewhere.
Herrmann, frequently ignored by the old regime last year, is a great big ball of long limbs and long hair on defense, and what he lacks in technique he makes up for in frantic energy. The much-maligned Brown, meanwhile, is a talented interior defender capable of banging with some of the league’s bigger post players.
So what does this actually mean? One of the biggest complaints fans had about Flip Saunders was his slow in-game adjustments, but if Curry is serious about throwing a different look at a guy who’s getting hot, it’s possible that won’t be as much of a problem. Some NBA starters might not appreciate a rookie coach keeping them on a short list, but if Joe Dumars accomplished anything this summer it was sending the message that nobody is entitled to anything and everybody will be held accountable.
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