At San Antonio October 20th, 8:30PM NO TV The preseason wraps up with a matchup against the world champion Spurs.
I only could listen on the radio, to the SA broadcast thru ESPN.com Only Tay played among our 4 stars, and he went 1 for 7, not much help. Our starters started the game out bad, and started the 2nd half with an 0-9 effort. Our starters? Stuckey, Flip Murray, Tay, JMAX, Dyess. Dyess got some jumpers to go down, but only pulled down 1 rebound in his 15 minutes. There were rebounds to be had, Jason Maxiell was pulling down lots, especially offensive boards. To be fair on the rebounding thing though, with Flip Murray in, and Dyess, well, SA never missed a shot hardly, so there were no defensive rebounds to even get. Hayes played off the bench. Flip Saunders made sure, yet again, that the Pistons never have 5 good defenders in the game. Hayes at least shot well this game. JMAX played a ton, about 39 minutes, per the announcers as he left the game. Lots of rebounds, and about 14 points or so. JMAX was hitting some outside shots, and getting inside some too. Samb missed his first 9 shots at least (maybe 11). But he nailed his last 2. And he knocked down four for four at the line. Stuckey shot a lot, and missed most. But for stretches he was dominating the game by driving inside and getting to the line. This ended on his last such trip in, when he banged knees with a SA player, and left the game after splitting at the line. Mejia played a bit at the end of the game, did a few things, made a mistake or two. When Stuckey went out, we were down just 14, still time to win the game. But hey, after that, we had Flip Murray in the game, along with Dupree, and SA, with its scrubs, went on a 17-2 run. Afflalo scored 20, mostly outside shooting. Flip Murray had a horrible stretch in this game where he missed shots and turned the ball over. (part of that 0-9 start of the 2nd half.) For the game, he shot very poorly. He did make a couple of outside shots and drove in and made a layup.
Didn't see or hear the game, but the defense giving up 55% shooting tonight and over 50% for the 2nd or 3rd game in row is not a positive trend to say the least. I only hope the coaches and team review the tapes of each of those games and defense, the most critical part of the Pistons persona/dna is worked on by both the starters and second tier guys before the season starts next weekend.
Looking at the box, Prince was the only Piston starter from last year who played and he only played 17 mins. Three of their starters played Duncan, Parker and Barry. Duncan played 25 mins going against Maxiel and Maxiel had a nice game. Guess you can't complain too much if you wanted to see the young guys get practice. Afflalo has a great game. Stucky got to the line a lot, how many times last year were we calling for someone to take it inside. Samb and Meija played.
This is extended practice time for the youngsters. We'll start talking the play of the starters once we get some games in the regular season.
I was at the game. To me it seemed like the Spurs had a lot of well-executed plays and ball movement, whereas the pistons seemed to be playing 1 on 1 ball, on offense and defense. Afflalo was really impressive in that game, showing some quick and graceful finishes at the basket in addition to good outside shooting. Samb's defense was pretty poor, but there were some things to like in his game too. I'm happy with putting him in the D-League to bulk up and improve his defense. I like his outside jump shooting. He missed a few jumpers leading up to the two he made late in the game, but each time I thought his shooting form looked really good and the shots he missed were close. Stucky fearless, and that was fun to watch, but he didn't get all the calls he wanted under the basket. Hays is a great target for the drive and dish to the wide open 3, which gave the Spurs a taste of their own medicine. It was just one of those games, where our guys slipped and fell for turnovers. It seems like every time they come to Texas and I get to see them, it's a game like that. :(
