Adding injury to insult, Chauncey Billups and Antonio McDyess emerged from Tuesday's loss to the Trail Blazers questionable for tonight's tilt against Golden State. Billups suffered new injuries to his right hip and left knee, while McDyess aggravated an old injury to his left shoulder that's been ailing him for a while.
According to A. Sherrod Blakely, McDyess underwent an MRI after the game that revealed no structural damage. That's good news in terms of avoiding a worst-case scenario, but he still may miss a few games, regardless.
If both of those guys can't play, we could end up seeing a pretty strange starting lineup. From Chris McCosky:
If they can't play, the Pistons probably will start Flip Murray at point guard and either Jason Maxiell or Jarvis Hayes at power forward. The Warriors deploy a small lineup, so the Pistons could get by with Hayes up front.
Even if the Pistons could get away with Hayes at power forward, I can't imagine why Maxiell wouldn't just get the nod. I mean, he's just as mobile as Hayes, so keeping up with the up-tempo Warriors certainly wouldn't be a problem. Plus, wouldn't you want to keep Hayes' scoring punch off the bench?
Either way, I have to imagine Amir Johnson will get some burn tonight (right? Right?). I mean, could he ask for a more ideal situation? He's in his old backyard (okay, relatively speaking; he's from LA, not the Bay Area), the Pistons are short-handed in the frontcourt and facing a team that likes to push the ball in the open court. Seriously, I don't know if you could have scripted it any better. It's the perfect recipe for a breakout game -- here's to hoping Saunders doesn't resent Johnson's hype as much as some of those in the media.
It's another late one: tip-off is at 10:30 on FSN. As usual, thoughts --> comments.