Chauncey Billups may be out, but “two league sources confirmed on Thursday that [Tayshaun] Prince will be among the players chosen” for Team USA this summer.
Tag Archive for 'Tayshaun Prince'
Chauncey Billups has pulled out of the Olympics citing a personal family issue. From Ric Bucher at ESPN.com:
“It’s a matter of what you want to do and what you need to do,” said Billups, who declined to be more specific about the family matter prompting his withdrawal from the team. “Winning a gold medal is the one thing that I haven’t accomplished, and I was looking forward to standing up on that big stage. That’s what I really wanted. But I was taught family comes first, above anything else.”
[…] Billups was concerned that his family issue might either distract him in Beijing or force him to return to the United States before or during competition. While the squad has not been officially announced, he was confident he would’ve been selected and, with competition to make the roster fierce, didn’t want to take a spot if he couldn’t be fully committed to the cause.
Whatever it is, I wish Billups and his family the best.
Tayshaun Prince is also on the bubble, which seems odd to me. On a roster full of superstars, he actually saw a good deal of playing time last summer, and he seems like the perfect no-ego glue guy Team USA has sorely lacked in recent years.
(Not that I’m complaining — as much of an honor as it is to represent your country, playing competitive ball all summer isn’t exactly what a guy who’s advanced to the Conference Finals every year of his career needs to be doing to re-charge his batteries.)
Chris McCosky doesn’t think Chauncey Billups will make the final cuts for the Olympics. Chris Sheridan agrees, and puts Tayshaun Prince on the bubble, as well.
Chauncey Billups expects to be more aggressive in Game 2. From Keith Langlois’ blog:
Billups said he came out of Game 1 feeling pretty good physically and expects not only he, but backcourt partner Rip Hamilton, will attack more often in Game 2.
“I’m going to – I probably will,” he said. “I know with Rip and I not being aggressive and trying to score the ball, our chances, they go down a little bit. So I think that he and I both have to be a little more aggressive, and that’s not necessarily taking shots but just getting into the teeth of the defense. You know they load up, you know they’re going to be coming off on penetration, and (it’s important) to get guys easier shots and not fight the shot clock so much.
“The rhythm was a little bit off, but even when they don’t let you reverse the ball, then that’s when you’re going to take action, take seams. That’s just something that once you see how teams are playing certain things, that’s when you make certain adjustments. I think we’ll do a better job of that tomorrow.”
Like I said before, Game 1 was all testing the hamstring and regaining rhythm; tonight’s game is when we should expect the real Chauncey Billups to step forward. Rip Hamilton plans on giving his backcourt mate a hand. From Chris McCosky:
“If you watch our offense, 80 percent of the time it starts with the ball in Chauncey’s hands,” Hamilton said. “We have to put him in a situation where he can come out and catch the ball and not have to spend a whole lot of energy bringing it up the court.”
Hamilton suggested that he or Prince could bring the ball up.
“[Boston] is so aggressive on the strong side of the ball,” said Hamilton. “Chauncey has to spend so much energy bringing it up, then when he comes off he’s facing a loaded-up defense. Once he gets out of that, there’s seven or eight seconds on the shot clock.
From the sounds of things, Billups is hoping he’ll be able to get Rasheed Wallace more involved, as well. From Chris Silva in the Free Press:
The Pistons want to get their versatile big man more involved tonight, but defensive player of the year Kevin Garnett isn’t the only Celtic standing in the way. Because Boston loads up on the strong side, Wallace is seeing defenders from every angle.
“They’ve got a guy at the elbow, they’ve got a guy coming behind if (Wallace) is to get by KG, so you’ve got to be able to create ways to shoot the ball,” Chauncey Billups said. “You can’t just (isolate) him down there. (Garnett is) too good defensively.”
Neither Billups nor Wallace looked anything like the players they were for most of the year up until this point; if they revert to form, this series should head back to Detroit all tied up.
As I’m sure many of you have already seen, Joe Dumars sat down with Keith Langlois for a rather lengthy Q&A for Pistons.com on Wednesday morning. Every time he does this I want to quote the entire article on DBB, but instead I’m just going to pick a handful of highlights and urge you to read the entire thing.
Langlois: At this point last season, you were going into the conference finals with an 8-2 playoff record. This year, pretty similar – you’re 8-3. Yet I get the sense that you feel better about where you’re sitting this year than you did a year ago. Is that so?
Dumars: No question. No question. I feel better about it. The difference in that record, the 8-2 and 8-3, the first game we lost in the playoffs, against Philly, was probably more beneficial to us than what happened last year. It got our attention. We had every guy’s attention the next day at practice. Guys knew. We cannot go back down this road, inconsistency and a lackadaisical approach. It made it easy to hammer home that point to guys from that point on. So I feel better – you’re absolutely right. I feel better about where we are right now heading into the conference finals than I felt last year.
Also worth mentioning: the Pistons entered the ECF last year having just lost two of three. Now, the Pistons have won six of their past seven. In other words, yeah, the Pistons have one more loss than a year ago, but they also have momentum.
Langlois: My next question was going to be was last night especially satisfying when you see Stuckey come in and not just hold down the fort, but to make plays in the fourth quarter and to have the ball in his hands for 30 minutes under pressure situations and not turn the ball over once, to take it at Dwight Howard the way he did.
Dumars: The answer to your question is yes. And that’s why you stand strong and do not waver in January and February when the kid might have some rough patches and you hear, “Well, maybe you should pull back.” No, no, no. No. Let him get through this, because there’s a bigger purpose. And the bigger purpose is a closeout game where he has to start. If you don’t stay with that kid through the season, through his ups and downs, if you panic, if you become impatient, if you go away from him, kill his confidence, he will never play like that in Game 5. That’s why, in the middle of January, you have to make those tough decisions and stay with him and assure everybody that this is going to work out. By the way, I’ve got to say this, too. You make that decision, I create a mandate that young guys are going to play, we still wound up with the second-best record in the league. We won 59 games – more than anybody in the West, more than everybody but one team in the entire NBA. It’s not like we suffered in the regular season for it. Sometimes that gets lost. How many more games do you think we’re supposed to win?
After reading that, my first thought was, “well, that’s nice, but why hasn’t the same strategy been used with other players (*cough* Amir *cough*)? But later in the interview, Dumars explained what sets Stuckey apart from most young players:
Dumars: In my eight years here, I’ve never seen a young player, a rookie, have the composure he has from the first day he got here. He didn’t just develop this composure over the course of the season. The first day he walked in here, he had that composure and air of confidence about him that lets you know he wasn’t in awe and he was never going to shrink when the moment came. It’s not like you saw it unfold over the season. Day one. He’s possessed that. I was telling my wife last night, he has that certain thing that lets you know when the big games come, he’ll be there. He’s going to be there. I don’t know how to describe it, or what “it” is, but he has that certain “it.” You never see him nervous. He may make a rookie mistake. But it’s not that he’s afraid or nervous, it’s that he’s unfamiliar with how to handle certain things. From day one, he’s had that.
Last but not least, Dumars thinks Tayshaun Prince’s block on Hedo Turkoglu was more impressive than his storied block on Reggie Miller:
Dumars: This was impressive. Miller never saw it coming. This was a mano-a-mano play. Hedo turned the corner and decided “I’m throwing it down. I’m not going to try to lay it up. I’m not going to try to float it.” And that’s a mano-a-mano thing you say to yourself on the court. And Tayshaun said, “I’ll meet you at the rim.” You have plays like that where both guys make up their mind that “I’m going to impose my will on you.” Hedo made up his mind and Tayshaun made up his mind. Those are the most impressive plays. Because there is no surprise element here. It’s one guy saying, “I’m coming.” And the other guy saying, “OK, I’ll be there.” And that’s impressive.
“I’ll meet you at the rim” — that’s classic.
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.”
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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?’
Tayshaun Prince was named to the All-Defense Second Team today. In the “receiving votes” section, Chauncey Billups earned five first-place votes; Rasheed Wallace, three.
Before the series started, I thought Tayshaun Prince’s biggest contribution would be slowing down Andre Iguodala. Instead, Prince has flat-out stopped Iggy while still having the energy to carry Detroit’s offense for long stretches. From Marc Narducci of the Philadelphia Inquirer:
“Whenever I get by [Prince], there is always somebody there, and they do a good job of drawing charges,” Iguodala said. “It is kind of playing with my mind, trying to find out where everybody is on the court.”
There is too much thinking going on and not enough instinctive reacting. The Sixers should let Iguodala run off screens and run the break, but should take the decision-making out of his hands and have him concentrate on defense.
Prince, by the way, has shot 19 for 21 in the last two games. It’s about time the Sixers focused on stopping him, because most of his teammates have been inconsistent.
Also, I found this interesting — Flip Saunders isn’t the only coach in this series being second-guessed for his rotation:
In the playoffs, coaches shorten their benches. Cheeks should be subbing more and having the Sixers pressure Detroit all the time, trying to wear down the older players.
That means giving Rodney Carney, one of the most athletic players in the league, a few more minutes. Is it any coincidence that Carney’s longest stint - 21 minutes, 24 seconds - came in Game 3, the Sixers’ best effort of the series?
Kind of sounds like our infatuation with Amir Johnson, if you ask me. In any case, I’ll be at the game tonight for FanHouse, but leave your thoughts in the comments.
By Kevin Sawyer
I had to Tivo the game, so it was fun watching the amateur general managing from the peanut gallery in the last one. So what happened? We won. Why? Here goes.
For all the talk of this team being hot and cold, this was an outstanding defensive effort from start to finish. Having a bunch of nobodies drain 20 footers to close the shot clock is not a sustainable offensive scheme, so a better second half was inevitable. Under ordinary circumstances, the Pistons are up 39-37, and just waiting for their patented third quarter push.
We finally looked for the outside shot. Philly had been packing it in (intentionally or no), and we finally saw the great perimeter passing that allows us to exploit matchups against cobbled-together squads like this. Twice, we saw that little pass around the world until Prince buries an open shot in the corner that invariable makes announcers compliment our unselfish play.
Help defense! We were able to disrupt Philly’s dribble penetration by having a backcourt help defender deflect the ball as ball-handler turned the corner. This was a great move, which the Pistons employed to disrupt Duncan’s to-the-basket game in the ’05 Finals. And, um, Willie Green is no Tim Duncan.
Chauncey played the point. He didn’t shoot well, of course, but he finally became more aggressive about setting up the half court sets. As a result, Hamilton was finally able to play off screens and do all those other things that make Rip good. If you want to know if Billups had a good night, add Free Throw Attempts to Assists, and divide by Rip Hamilton’s turnovers.
Tayshaun Prince has been ridiculous. The Sixers don’t have answers for long, athletic players. If only the Pistons had another long, athletic player on their squad. One who could alter shots, grab offensive rebounds, and exploit the defense’s myopic focus on our backcourt players? Sigh, maybe the Pistons should look to the draft. We have a second round pick this year, right?
We finally stopped treating Andre Iguodala like LeBron James. Perhaps the team is still smarting from the slaying at the hands of the LeBrons last year, but the goal isn’t simply to stop one player from hanging 40 on you. The Pistons have been effective to a fault against Iguodala, allowing role players to post big nights. Tonight, they finally let Andre play a bit. In an ideal world, Iggy shoots 11-28, and notches 27 points with 4 assists. If that happens, we win.
We beat them at their own game. Controlling the tempo is something that announcers talk about. It’s gobbledygook. Passing up solid looks because it might allow Philly to run is a stupid idea. Want to keep Philly from running? Knock down your shots and get back on defense. The Pistons play at the slowest pace in the NBA. They don’t need to make a conscious effort to do so.
So to the heart thing. In the first half, I didn’t see a team without heart. I saw a team overthinking and overplaying every single half-court set. Unforced turnovers are the product of nerves, not ennui (ever seen a player dribble off his foot during shootarounds). The Pistons have a nasty habit of getting very tense at inopportune times, which has killed them as much as anything these last few seasons.
So here’s hoping the Pistons get back to their mad defense, three-point shooting, 42 mpg playing selves. This team can win a championship. There is too much talent here for pedantic psycho-analyzing. If the Pistons want to phone in game 5, they may do so, and might even be right to do so… So long as their dialing the right numbers.
Andre Iguodala has shot just 5-for-24 from the field and averaged half of his 19.9 points per game in the first two games of the season, but I’m convinced that at some point before this series is over he’ll have his breakout game. Tayshaun Prince is ready for the challenge:
Prince wasn’t about to give away any secrets about how he has kept 76ers leading scorer Andre Iguodala relatively quiet the first two games of this first-round series.
“I really don’t know,” he said Thursday when asked what he expected the 76ers to do to get Iguodala going. “Whatever it is, I just have to be ready for it.”
Conventional wisdom suggests that the Sixers will try to jumpstart Iggy by getting back to what they did for most of the year: running in the open court. From Marc Narducci of the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Coach Maurice Cheeks has emphasized the importance of getting easy baskets in transition. Yet Detroit rarely allows easy baskets. In the opening 90-86 win, the Sixers earned 16 fastbreak points. For a Pistons team that allowed 9.6 fastbreak points per game during the regular season, that was good production for the Sixers.
Without those easy baskets, Andre Iguodala has been struggling, relying too much on his jumper. He has had to shoot the jumper over the long-armed Tayshaun Prince and the results haven’t been pleasant. Iguodala is shooting 5 for 24 and he remains the key in this series. Yes, the Pistons did a good job of slowing down Andre Miller with a variety of traps in Game 2, but the biggest key is for Iguodala to get untracked on offense.
Now the Sixers have to adjust, which means Iguodala could be handling the ball more in the open court. And if he could get a few easy baskets early in transition, that would give the Sixers some needed momentum.
Can they succeed? That’s why they play the games. The ball’s about to tip on ESPN2 — leave your thoughts in the comments.
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