vs Milwaukee Bucks Friday February 19 8:00 pm

I'll definitely be there!

Who's excited for some basketball tonight?

Is it true that John Hammond managed to acquire Primoz Brezac yesterday? If so, the race for Executive of the Year (and probably the decade) is over.

Better dust off Kwame...............

It's been very hard to watch our bench over the past bunch of games. Guys you know, based on their histories, who are excellent offensive players, are stinking it up: Bynum, Gordon, CV - and those same guys are playing terrible defense as well.

Obscene coaching. Playing Tay 42 minutes on this, a third game in four nights. The rest hardly matters. Kuester is absolutely detrimental to the health of the team and needs to go.

Rip seems to have his shot back. Gordon and CV, our "great saviours obtained from years of cap moves," managed virtually no scoring for us. Wilcox, the guy we wanted so bad we gave away Afflalo and Amir to clear cap room for, we did not play in this game. Meanwhile, another guy Joe Dumars gave away, Carlos Delfino, helped kick our hind ends tonight.

And how is it that Stackhouse was picked up for nothing by the Bucks? Oh, thats right, he would take minutes from Rip. Or Gordon. Or Bynum. Or Stuckey. All sacred.

Apparently not that sacred though. With Tay playing so many minutes, we kept the small ball down to just 8 forgettable minutes. Which means only a couple minutes each for our four guards. So why is it ok all the sudden to play these guys so little?

Yep, yet another game with no backup small forward used. Just like every other game since Tay returned to the rotation. And yet another loss. Which I guess is what that loser Kuester is comfortable with.

Stuckey had a fine game. His opponent went 1 for 16, so you can't complain much about Stuck's D tonight.

Bynum looked perhaps a bit healthier tonight. Why he needs nearly 20 minutes though I don't know. Oh gee, thats right, Kuester has to avoid playing a backup small forward at any cost. Probably some kind of. (I edited that thought, sorry.)

JMAX and Ben just played the D. JJ had a good scoring night.

Lots of good effort by a lot of our players. But pathetic coaching on Kuester's part pretty much negated it all. See you all Sunday. (6pm game.)

If CV, Bynum or Gordon could hit the ocean by dropping the BB from a ship in the middle of the damn thing, then your argument about Tay and Rip playing too much would be more valid.

Scales tipping back to a top 5 pick.

Yep I think Joe saw the writing on the wall and decided to stay pat without any trades. Good move, so the top five pick does look promising.

Well I just saw a replay of the game and Lee your assessment is right on.

Let me add a couple of more notes:

Only the defenseless Pistons could hit their first 11 shots and still lose a game...in fact not only lose the game but lose the lead so soon after hitting those shots. I am not sure what was worse to start the second qtr,our defense or our offense....its a tie.... The Bucks secondary not only outclassed our second unit (which included a tired Tay) in the that second qtr, but they basically outgunned our bench 53-14 for the game.

Our guys were out hustled to loose balls, offensive rebounds and every pass thrown near the sideline was picked off or knocked off Pistons hands. 16 TO's and all at inopportune times.

Our prized free agents were 2-10 shooting and although CV played 18 minutes, he didn't take his first shot until about 7 mins left in the game. I am certain we could have gotten at least 10 points out of Daye if he had half of those minutes.

Meanwhile Piston castoffs Delfino and Stackhouse had 28 points as Delfino literally kept the Bucks close in the first quarter with a couple of three balls while the Pistons were being so prolific from the field.

Delfino and Sammons the guy the Bucks picked up this week, combined to hit more threes (7) than the Pistons took.

Rip followed up his 36 pts the other night with 29. The other starters were good too, but with bench not giving us any real scoring and then allowing the bucks bench to score at will, the question was could we comeback and win it??

Well leave it to Sammons to beat us (Ben) with the late three and for the Pistons to waist several scoring ops when they were down 81-80 with about 4:40 left in the game and only scored two more buckets in the final 4+ minutes of the game.

Yep Joe and Q have us taynking..

I 'm thinking that JJ needs to come off the bench. Put CV in the starting line-up (even though he hasn't earned it) so Ben can help him on defense and "hopefully give us another person to stretch the D.

Let JJ help the bench get on track. His hustle may be enough to generate more scoring ops for Gordon and WB.

Can you reward a player by sending him to the bench to help the second unit in today's NBA?

Only 85 points tonight. After a 29 point first quarter, the Pistons follow it up with 17, 19, and 20 point quarters. This team has been a huge disappointment offensively this year. In the first quarter, the offense flowed because they moved the ball, but this team is way too quick to fall back on the one-on-one game.

Guys like Stuckey, Bynum, BG, and CV just want to take their man off the dribble and do it all themselves. I have a hard time believing that Q isn't barking at his guys to move the ball during timeouts, but whatever he is saying isn't getting through. This team has way too many scoring threats to be putting up the low point totals that they are consistently.

awful basketball...i couldnt watch after 2nd qtr.....42 minutes for Prince??? only 27 for JJ? 0 for Daye? Who is Dumars and Kue trying to fool?

When you can't score, you can't win in this league. Folks can keep screaming that defense wins championships, but before you can even think about winning a championship - you need to win games, and offense wins games.

It just hit me why we suck on offense thanks to Blue's post, we have 4 guards that can not handle the ball. We all get nervous with Rip's handles, Ben Gordon is shaky as hell too, and I'm tired of commenting on The Quintessential One. If your guards can't keep the ball on a string and make pinpoint passes your offense will always look funky and disjointed, plays will rarely exhibit "execution" but rather mere brokeness, which turns into bad offense.

This has been the hallmark of Dumards' teams the last few years. Everything they do is for their guards and they get very little in return from them. They can't even run a P&R.

Jennings may have forced shots etc. last night, but he also got them lots of easy shots.

Well Jennings moves so fast his hair actually shifts from side to side, did you see that?

Charlie Villanueva has been a bench player for the vast majority of his career. He belongs there. He doesn't defend or rebound nearly well enough to be starting.

CV actually started about half of his games (131 of 274) before coming to Detroit. So far, he has started 16 of 51 games with the Pistons. He hasn't shown a whole lot lately.

From today's Det News........scoreless 3 times........geez.

Charlie Villanueva, Ben Gordon must deliver more for Pistons | detnews.com | The Detroit News

It is surprising that this isn't all too easily seen.

A couple of other insights have also been suggested: You first build your offensive core and fill in the rest of the starters with individuals like JJ and some specialist that keep the pattern going for a tougher defense.

All good defensive players must have an offensive stimulus (now and then) to keep them motivated. This is why LB like to get set plays for BenW early on in the game...it lasted well into the the fourth quarter and then was placed as a sneaky plays throughout the game.

The good coaches have an innate sense of flow control for the game. How to understand the other teams', under what conditions do certain players respond from within your own ranks, and how team members understands certain habits that reflect on their responsibilities while their team mates have certain deficiencies and lapses.