Seems to me this is the second time Arroyo has blown his cool. How many times we gotta tell him...YOU DON'T ATTACK REFS! Especially before a game against the reigning WORLD CHAMPS! I'm beginning to think shopping Arroyo might not be such a bad idea. It's bad enough to witness all the "blow-bys," and missed shots (despite the two lucky threes he hit tonight). On top of that the Arroyo Fan Club is doing for Arroyo what the DHOF club did for YKW. Anybody notice the look Sheed and Rip gave Arroyo (4th Q) when Claxton(?) blew by him for an easy layup? Wonder what Joe is thinkin right about now?
Wow, it's an Arroyo bloodbath over at detnews. He was efficient in one area tonight: 6 fouls in 14 minutes.
Arroyo is garbage. Flat out. 6 fouls, 4 turns, 1 ejection, and 1 (likely) suspension in 14 minutes. If he hadn't hit those prayer (lucky) triples I would kick him off this team immediately. Just awful. We need a legit backup point guard if we want to win a ring this year. Flat out. We need a lindsey hunter with a jumpshot to come in behind Chauncey.
Well, one upside of the probable suspension of Arroyo is that we may get to see Acker play for the first time this season.
i saw the same problems in opponents cutting in easily, and the bad rebounding in the first half. in the second half the team locked them down. they lost the board war 33-39, but they got the boards when they needed to. rasheed shot ugly from 3 he was 2-9, but he hit 2-3 in his last 3 attempts which were all huge makes. the pistons were outscored in the paint 42-28, but when lindsey comes back he won't get taken like arroyo does.
Pistonloyalist - yes we may see Acker play but I would guess the more likely scenerio would be activating Hunter early. He is supposed to comeback Monday. I thought Arroyo got shafted with that incidental contact. Thats all I saw. Arroyo seemed to just step into the ref as the ref stopped and turned. But he did make contact so technically the league will have to look at it. Pastor Flourney - did you make it? Seemed like a pretty good stadium - have to love the organ. Pistons brought that back on one of the retro nights last season. Lee - I don't think NOR was drawing much interest the past 2 years wheras OAK has had mostly sellouts. I do see your point though. Back when the Pistons were drawing 14,000 a night the same thing could have been said if something happened here. But we have the history and they don't. In Oaklahoma its a novelty. Still fair is fair. The owner originally chose NOR and thats what Stern approved. If OAK is the better bball city then they should have done more research before selecting NOR as the place to move to from Charlotte.
On the Pistons D: Let's just face it. Our defense sucks this year, unless its the 4th quarter. The blow bys, the missed assignments, bad postition, failure to challenge shots....if you haven't noticed the entire Pistons team is guilty of this behavior so far. Evans is not the only offender...Lee. Defense is effort. ..and our effort in the first couple quarters is progressively getting worse. We played our best ball at the beginning of the season. Notice how our point differental is decreasing. Each game we grow in Flip's system, the defense takes a step back apparently. All one has to do is look at tape from last year versus this year and you can see that there is virtually no energy being given on the defensive end..most of the time. No fighting through screens, no help defense and terrible positioning. Hopefully, this improves because this level of play will not get it done against the Spurs in the NBA Finals. We will not just shoot them out the building for 4 games like we have done all of the rest of the teams in the league this year.
I have some mixed emotions about my first Live Piston's game. I do understand now what people mean about how watching the game in person gives you better view of whats going on (I.E. people not making effort when the camera is not on them.) Things I Loved- 1. Rip Hamilton- He goes %100 all the time. He is the greatest mid range shooter in the game IMO. If this team was the Bad Boys he would have to be JD. Why Isaiah (i.e. Chauncey) gets the bulk of the attention he quietly has just as big of an impact. If he ever gets past the Bowen Barrier he will dominate. 2. Antonio McDyess – This guy is solid and on any other team would be putting up 15 points 8 rebounds even if he came off the bench. He seems to be back in his grove, and ready to contribute in a big way. 3.Tayshaun Prince- This guy has the ability to create a mismatch most every night. I would like to see him get more involved like he did some last year. However, he had 12 points, 6 rebounds and 6 assist. 4. Carlos Arroyo- Yeah, I know he has been heavily criticized on this board for his ejection and yes it will hurt if he is suspended. However, at least he showed some enthusiasm.(See things I hate below) and he didn’t get burned on defense no worse then the rest of the guards but at least he cared enough to foul them. 5. Oklahoma City Fans- These fans are not just fans of the NBA, but they are Hornets fans. I know people say they are wrong if they keep the team in OK City but that is not their call but the teams and NBA. If they are coming out to support them, then they have every right to keep them there. All of these pro teams wanted out of NO because of lack of fan base, why should they be held where fans in general (not all but many) don’t appreciate them and they will make much less profit. If you owned a company and you had a chance to make a lot more money would you not take that opportunity or would you feel you had to stay because of a storm you had no control over? Some would go, some would stay, but it’s not fans fought either way. Things I Hated Offensive rebounding- It seemed to me everyone was ready to run down the court to try to score before the ball ever hit them rim. I don’t know if the bright lights of more points have got in there way but, someone besides Big Ben has to rebound. Pistons Effort most of the night- It seems that they are conserving energy for the playoff’s by not locking down, but when they have to. When they needed to play better D they were great. However, they continued to let people grab offensive boards and drive to the lane at will. I believe this is why that in their 5 losses they have been destroyed by almost 15 points a game. Why they are resting other teams are scorching them, and by them time they turn it on it is to little, to late. The bottom line is you should never take a play off and cheat the fans who spend the hard earned money to come watch you make millions playing a game. Sheed’s misguided offensive aggression- He is shooting more shots like we need him to do, just in the wrong place. I have no problem with him shooting three’s in fact it is one of our main weapons but cut down on the three attempts and take “some” of those inside. Flips Bench Rotation- ***However, it was the greatest sporting event of my life seeing my Pistons in the flesh
i beg to differ. our defense sucks until the 4th quarter in most games bacause the pistons if there is one thing bad about them is that they don't try until they need to. you saw against san antonio they wanted to win bad, and that they needed to play good D against a good team so they shut them down. yesterday the team sucked the first half so they picked up the effort the 2nd half. when lindsey comes back there will be a lot less penetrtion, and i think the rebounding will get better. rip said that the other guys tried to help ben on the boards in the second half because they can't expect him to get all the board. i think our gaurds will try to help on the boards from now on.
I'm not a big fan of Russian Roulette 4th Quarter Defense. The result is tired legs eventually leading to injury and an undeveloped bench. I am not inclined to rely on our offensive consitency to win the big one. Lax defense begets bad habits. I would hate to see a bad habit developed during the year show itself in the playoffs. Defense is effort and like Ron Harper said early in the season, the difference between a dynasty and a traditional championship team is simply bringing it every night. If we can't bring 48 mins of mayhem then we need to bring in substitions that can keep the intensity high. I pray that the return of Lindsey will bring us back to playing championship defense because history has exposed offensively propelled teams with bloated regular season records.
yeah i hope lindsey can somehow get the benches team defense better. arroyo gats taken to the rim a lot and then thew bigs have to get out of rebound position to help.
What's wrong with it? Our bench might suck, but I don't think it has a whole lot to do with the rotation.
We have quite a few players on our bench that can be great role players but they must be given consistent playing time. CD, CA and ME have no clue what kind of PT they are going to get from game to game. We must also begin to get some rebounding help from Darko or Dale Davis or we are going to be just like the redwings were many times “Great” regular season and a very disappointing post season. The thing that makes me nervous about their play now is after 82 games it may become second nature.
