Tag Archive for 'Rashard Lewis'

Pistons eliminate Magic in five

Published by Matt Watson on May 14, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs, Magic and Shameless Plugging. 22 Comments

There’s been a lack of activity on my part over here today and last night (not that it’s stopped any of you), but that’s in part because I’ve been pretty active on FanHouse. Here are some highlights from last night:

  • Flip Saunders on Chauncey Billups taking his time returning:

    “It’s up to the players [to decide] when they’re right,” said Saunders. “And when they’re right, I don’t want them to have any hesitation, because if they’re not right and they have hesitation, they’re not going to play very good, to be honest. So, he’s got to feel comfortable as far as about it.”

  • Stan Van Gundy on Jameer Nelson’s “guarantee” as well as calling out the media for making lazy judgments:

    “What happens all the time is how well [we] play determines what you guys write about a team’s character and everything,” Van Gundy told the gaggle of reporters. “So automatically, if you play well, you have great character. And if you don’t play well, it’s because you don’t have the ‘resolve,’ and the ‘mental toughness’ and all of that. We have all of that. We have to play well.”

    This is an excellent point. I’ve grown increasingly sensitive to assigning character flaws to a team every time they lose. The Magic didn’t lose last night because they lacked character. In fact, the opposite is true: they held Detroit to 36% shooting, they out-rebounded them and they gave up only three three-pointers all night long.

    Unfortunately, they also turned the ball over 21 times (for 34 Pistons points) while Detroit set an NBA playoff record with three turnovers, including not one in the final three quarters. Orlando showed a ton of heart by staying in this game all night long, but in the end, the Pistons executed and they didn’t. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. The Pistons have been to six straight conference finals for a reason.

    The Pistons see this type of logic used against them all the time. When the Pistons lose, it’s not because they’re complacent, they simply don’t well every single night. When Rasheed Wallace has a bad shooting night, he’s not being lazy, he just couldn’t get into a groove. If you ever see me relying on cliche instead of reality, please call me out.

  • Jameer Nelson thinks the media made too much of his “guarantee:”

    After the game, slumped in a chair in front of his locker with his feet soaking in ice and wearing only a towel, a dejected Nelson reflected on his “guarantee” and the attention it attracted. “I didn’t guarantee a win,” he said. “I didn’t say, ‘we’re going to …’ I said ‘we have to go win, we’re going to come get this win.’ And the media took it out of proportion or whatever they want to do. The media always wants a story. I mean, I really don’t care what people write, you know?”

    I mean, he did say the Magic were going to win, but if you read my whole post, he explains himself.

  • I spoke to Rashard Lewis before the game about a handful of things, including how competitive this series actually was despite the fact that Orlando only won a single game:

    We won one game, but at the same time, the record doesn’t say how hard we’ve been playing, how tough we’ve been taking a team down to the wire. They’ve beat us three times, we’ve only beat them once, but I can guarantee you that every game they had to go out there and win the game, it wasn’t handed to them.

And last but certainly not least …

Rip Hamilton’s reaction after the game:

“I didn’t even see who blocked the shot, to tell you the truth. The only thing I’d seen was Tay flexing. I went up to Rasheed and I was like, ‘Uh, who blocked that shot? It must be Tay, huh?’

Pistons go up 2-0 on Magic

Published by Matt Watson on May 6, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs, Games, Magic and Shameless Plugging. 60 Comments

I have all sorts of stuff from last night’s game going up at FanHouse this morning. Before the game, Rashard Lewis told me that the brewing war of the words between he and Theo Ratliff was over and done with:

“I’m a basketball player, I go out there to play basketball and not to trash talk. It was just something that he said and I responded to it. It wasn’t nothing personal, it was just me being a man and responding to what he said. But at the same time, I’m not that type of player. I go out there to play basketball and try to win for my team and let the trash talk stay on their side.”

After the game, Ratliff told me that Dwight Howard isn’t on the same level as David Robinson, Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon … yet:

“He’s a phenomenal talent — his athleticism, his size, but he’s still young. He’s going to continue to get better and continue to get better and he’ll probably be at the status of those guys later on in his career.”

Jason Maxiell explained why he’s so freaking active on the court:

MW: At the end of the last series, Thaddeus Young had a pretty entertaining quote about you. … He said, Maxiell is crazy, he’s crazy crazy. What do you think about that, that’s a sign of respect, wouldn’t you say?

JM: Yeah, to a certain degree. I guess with my size, I got to keep moving, going for offensive boards. They don’t run plays for me, so the way for myself to score is to get to the board.

And, of course, the clock thing. The Pistons obviously got a gift, but the Magic refused to blame that one play for their loss:

“They didn’t start the clock and he made the shot, but I didn’t think that determined the game,” said Rashard Lewis. “We were still in the game, we were down two points at the time. We still had another full quarter to go, we were still in the game, but I think we made a lot of little mistakes that made us lose that game.”

You can’t get too upset about an iffy call when you go out and finish the game shooting 25% and committing five turnovers over the last 12 minutes. That whistle on Keyon Dooling for “pushing” Rip Hamilton before the in-bounds pass? That was bad, too, but the Pistons were already up three with the ball so it’s hard to say that was a game-changer, as well. I will admit those types of things add up over time, though. I’m willing to chalk some of it up to the refs being partly influenced by a LOUD crowd at the Palace.

Orlando gets chippy (and chirpy)

Published by Matt Watson on May 5, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs and Magic. 4 Comments

From my FanHouse post on Saturday’s game:

Things almost boiled over in the fourth when Rashard Lewis wrapped up Theo Ratliff under Detroit’s basket. Ratliff shook off the contact, but Lewis drew a technical, as well as an earful from Maxiell. “I wanted to make sure my teammate’s okay,” he said after the game. “We’re all family here, so I let it be known [if they] try to get physical, it’s not going to be that easy for them and we’re going to fire it back at them.”

When asked if the rough play affected the Pistons, Maxiell laughed. “Oh no, not at all,” he said. “We’re a rough team ourselves. We’re going to do the roughing.”

As Theo Ratliff explained later, though, he didn’t really need Maxiell’s help. From A. Sherrod Blakely:

“I told him (Maxiell) to calm down,” Ratliff said. “There’s no sense in guys coming to my rescue. I mean, that was Rashard Lewis. He tried to foul me hard, but he’s a three-man (small forward). It was no big deal.”

Shard isn’t known to be the most physical player in the league, but it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have pride, and he didn’t appreciate hearing from someone on Detroit’s bench:

Ratliff’s comments made their way back to Lewis, who was visibly upset.

“You can have a lot of energy in five minutes a game,” said Lewis, referring to Ratliff’s limited role. “What’s he played? 15 games. Tell him to come out and guard me.”

But that’s the thing: the Pistons know they have a lot of energy playing five minutes at a time. As Flip Saunders explained during Saturday’s post-game press conference, it’s literally part of their strategy.

“[The] big thing is we try to send a lot of bodies at him. And we wanted to keep a fresh body on him all the time,” said Saunders. “I took Maxey out, I think five minutes, six minutes into the game. Some of the guys on the bench are saying, ‘Why take him out?’ I said because I want to keep somebody fresh on him, and our guys have to know that they don’t have to play 10 minutes, they can play six minutes and they can go as hard as they can, and hopefully what it’ll do is when you get in the third and fourth quarter, it’ll wear him down.”

And as Krista Jahnke explains, that’s just what the Pistons did on Saturday:

Maxiell worked the first five and a half minutes on Howard before Saunders subbed him out. Then Rasheed Wallace took over manning up Howard. Later, Antonio McDyess switched onto him, and for 12 minutes Ratliff helped out, too. When Howard put the ball on the floor, the Pistons would occasionally send help, but they battled him for the most part one-on-one.

“We’ve got so many guys running in there 6-10, big guys stepping in there after them,” Ratliff said. “They really can’t match up with us.”