when Cleveland DEMOLISHED the Piston's 2 weeks ago, i wrote them off. i figured, ok there's always next season for Tom. I guess the AI thing isnt gonna work out. whatever.
i mean, i called it (the loss to CLE) a coach-canning loss i think. and i stand by that. it was a pitiful performance and there's no excuse to play at that low of a level in the NBA. Rasheed was just acting like a child (again) and nobody in a blue jersey wanted to play D.
But today in Boston i saw a completely different Pistons team. Detroit played well together and beat Boston in a really good game. in Boston. I'm interested in Tom's take on this as our resident Detroit insider.
first of all, i think it needs to be said that Boston was playing without KG and a few of their bench guys. Also they gave Mikey Moore and Stephon a lot of minutes, trying to introduce them into the Celtic's system. but even still, Boston was playing at home, and they are clearly playing at a higher level recently than the Pistons, even without KG.
and Detroit was playing without AI (back injury i think).
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you flatter me:D I knew you wanted me to wax lyrical some more on detroit:D
Waht i keep hearing form dudes like Hubie and others, and i tend to agree, is the pistons are just a lot more comfortable without iverson. They don't need to focus on getting the ball in a his hands.
Many of the pistons have struggled with adapting to iverson, but none more than stuckey. Now their offense can flow a lot more naturaly, and with a lot less isos. Stuckey was struggling enough that prince was playing way too much point foward. the last two games though, stuckey has played a lot better, and has run the offense more often.
In boston tonight, the pistons put up way less contested shots than they have been. Boston played pretty good defense, but instead of forcing up shots, Detroit frequently went on to the 2nd option and if that was a bad shot they went to the 3rd option. Detroit had, it seemed, i lot of points today with less than 5 seconds on the shot clock because of this.
Right, so that covers the issue of players being more comfortable with AI gone.
but there is another thing that no one has mentioned. Rip Hamilton, since he went to bench has honestly played as well as, or even quite possibly better than i ever seen him. I've heard the last season or two he's greatly improved his off the dribble game, but i have been shocked at how well its been since his benchment.
Not only is his scoring up, but assists have been way up too. I think the benching really lit a fire under his keister. Seems to me he is thinking, "Bench me? Yeah, right. I'll show them."
In past seasons, i am basically used to seeing rip doing nothing but catch and shoot midrange shots off of screens and curls. Now when he is on the floor, he is getting the ball almost every possession. I've seen him dribble more the last couple months than i have my whole life combined, hehe. Now he does catch and shoots, post-ups, pentrating, and he takes some possesions on the point.
His game in orlando was easily one of the best games i ever seen him play, he was ridiculous in the 4th quarter. He has had many higher scoring games, but his whole game was just so complete.
These two wins could potentially do wonders for the pistons confidence, which has been rock bottom i think. I sure hope so. If detroit plays to their full potential i think they would have a decentish chance of beating Orlando in a 7 game series and i hope we are lucky enough to make it that far.
But, even in their best moments, they have still not been as good as CLE or BOS has been consistantly. And that is mostly because of defense. In Boston today, they played great defense for a lot of stretches. But, like the rest of the season, the defensive rebounding was pretty bad. I was starting to feel like Boston had more offensive rebounds than Detroit had defensive rebound. I'm sure that was not the case, but god, how many times did Boston get 3 possessions on one trip because of lack of boxing out by detroit.
I've even heard some pundits say, straight up, that Detroit is a better team when iverson doesn't play. Ouch!
That 8 game win streak detroit had early on is so baffling. Cause when they had it, stuckey and AI actually played well together. And Hamilton and Rasheed were both out with injuries. That kinda bunks a lot of the current theories for pistons success and lack of success. Oh well.
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