Oh, yeah, forgot about Lindsey. So, barring injury or trade, Knight shouldn't have a problem, even in a season with way less games. Pretty cool that he has the floater game, can rebound, and can go deep at a high percentage. All he's gotta do now is quit throwing no look passes to Ben Wallace, and we're good to go.
You'd have to work pretty hard to come up with a worse matchup than Pistons v Bobcats in Charlotte. The Bobcats are depressing. They make the Pistons look like the late 70's Harlem Globetrotters with Curly Neal and Meadowlark Lemon. Knight had a big man's box score with his 13/10/4 assist line. He pushes the ball up-court naturally. Should Monroe shoulder some of the blame for the Pistons porous interior D? DJ Larry Mullens Jr. looked rather All Starish out there tonight for Charlotte. Both Monroe and Jerebko his some nice shots. Did the Pistons just win the 3rd game of their back to back to back? Has anyone lost that 3rd game yet?
Good game. Monroe keeps playing great BB and nice to see Jonas with a good game after a couple of tough showings. As for the Bobcats, Biyombo had 5 blocks in 12 minutes.
He did have some nice blocks. I LOL'd after he blocked Gordon because of Walt's prediction. I think he might have been able to catch Stuckey's instead of putting it into the 15th row. Can you imagine being a Bobcat fan?
Holy crap, Biyombo - 5 blocks, 2 boards in 12 minutes. That's 20 blocks/48 minutes - impressive. The Pistons' box score was pretty weird last night - their leading rebounder was their point guard, and their center was tied with the shooting guard for the most assists. All five starters scored in double digits, four of them doing so on 45% shooting (three guys were 5/11). Nobody had more turnovers than assists. Brandon Knight had his first career double-double, with one of those dubs being for rebounds, not assists. Macklin's fourth game (out of seven) with absolutely no numbers other than minutes to show for it - 0 points on 0/0 shooting, 0 FT, 0 reb, 0 steals, 0 assists, 0 TO, 0 PF, 0 blocks, 0 points. I was only able to watch a little of the third quarter, but the offense really moved the ball around well, and that's good to see. I blame some of that efficiency on Charlotte being terrible, but it was refreshing to see a complete lack of isolation basketball. They still get burned on the inside, but a big part of that is a lack of a true center/PF - even Monroe is more of a guard in a big man's body. This team is weird, but in a good way. Frank seems to me to be always thinking about the game, and I'm guessing that has to be loving the strange brew that he has with these players with unusual skillsets. I think we're going to see a team whose identity becomes about the team again - moving the basketball on offense and finding the open guy, exploiting mismatches, running the offense through their center rather than through their point guard. They still suck, but it's a fun kind of awful where you have to get creative in how everyone plays. They'll have nights where they get blown out and nights where they blow the other team out, and not many close games - they haven't had a game end with less than an 8 point margin of victory all year long.
Good stuff. Pretty much right on point. To me though, its a shame that coach will use this success against a very poor team as an excuse not to address his issues of strength inside. Once again, I can't say it strongly enough - JJ should be starting at small forward - and for now, as there are really no other good choices, Macklin should be getting a lot of those minutes vacated by JJ at power forward. On the progress of Knight and Daye. For one, regardless of team, those moves Monroe is scoring on are pretty awesome - and far and above his capabilities from last season. His progress is fairly dramatic right now, even after improving steadily all of last year. And Knight keeps making those shots - both when he drives in and hooks it way up off the glass, and last night even when he shot from the 3-line. Of course, we will have to see steady, continuous ability to hit those 3's before we get too excited. Meanwhile, JJ hit his outside shots as well last night - lets see if he can keep that up steadily. Hopefully as our starting small forward. And to Tay, don't think of it as a demotion, just something for the good of the team. If you think you are a starting small forward - how much better can you be being thrown in against the other team's 2nd units.
