No need4sheed

Don’t worry, the famous Pistons blog is always on, but Detroit beat the Sixers 83-78 without Wallace, sidelined because of a sore knee. Now our record is 3-8 (.273) and we lost six of our last seven games.

It was an ugly, close game, kinda like a Panathinaikos-Ulker in the Euroleague, with low scoring percentages. I didn’t see particularly tough defenses but post game comments talked about them, so maybe it’s me. “They didn’t play too well and I thought some of that was because of our defense,” said Andre Iguodala.

Before the start I honestly expected a blow out, but to our team’s credit, we always stayed in the game, and came back into it when I thought it was over.

Sixers were trailing 73-62 with 6.42 in the 4th – a pretty big margin considering the kind of game -and still fought back to make it a 1 point game on a three by Iguodala: 79-78 with 14 seconds to go. But Billups made a pair from the line and Dre missed another (tough, contested) three pointer at the end.

Detroit led basically all the night, but with margins always around 3-8 points. At the end of the first half it was 40-38 Pistons. Cheeks decided to go with a 8 men rotation, leaving Rodney Carney 48 minutes on the bench (I don’t like this, even if he is clearly playing bad) and giving 30 minutes to Lou Williams (I like this), who had another very good game.

Willie Green deserves some special analysis. You look at the boxscore and you may think “Uhm, he was decent”. WRONG !!!! He was horrible again !!! He had three airballs (!!!!), one when he was wide open, and four turnovers, each dumber than the other. “The human turnover machine”, “The offense flow stopper”, not coincidentially, had the team’s worst plus/minus (-18).

Andre Iguodala (in the picture, blocked by Sheed’s back up and athletic freak Jason Maxiell) had another bad night. He was 1/9 from the field in the first half, his only basket being a fastbreak dunk. He was active under the boards and dished out 6 assist, though. He insists shooting from the perimeter instead of driving to the basket, not a sign of high IQ, honestly.

Interesting that Sixers played a little bit of stretch defense, with some (timid) attempts to double team that I never saw this year. It didn’t pay immediate dividends but at least it put some pressure on Pistons’ guards. Maybe we’ll see more of this solution in the upcoming games.

Rasheed’s absence gave us some room under the boards: we outrebounded the Pistons 47-36, but it wasn’t enough. Detroit used a balanced offense (all startes in double figures + solid contributions from the bench, particulalrly Afflalo and former Sixer Mohammed) to overcome Rip & Chauncey’s sub par games.

Rip Hamilton had an iguodalish kind of night (LOL): 0/6 in the first half, another amount of surprising bricks in the second, and the little dunk to close the game at the buzzer. He missed many open shots so, again, I didn’t realize we did such a great job on him.

Antonio Mc Dyess scored some long jumpers that hurted us in the fourth. Afflalo had a very good first half (4/5) and was Pistons top scorer by halftime with 8 points.

Coming to the conclusion, I have some questions:

1) when was the last time Andre Miller went 2/2 from the line? A 80% career shooter is 13-21 this year (54%)…. If it’s true that making free throws is only a matter of focus, then he is thinking about something else when he’s at the line. Hey, Reggie Evans was 3/3 yesterday…

2) why in the hell we continue to give the ball to the same Reggie Evans in the low post ???? One time he had a couple of dribbles and a kick out pass that looked more like a punt: ball in the stands… this happens at least 3 times a game, and I think he is 0/33 overall in that situation…

3) why is Willie Green playing at all?

Among the good things, Thaddeus Young was on the floor to start the fourth quarter and played a “clean” game with no big mistakes.

Sam Dalembert had a nice game as well and I don’t understand why Mo didn’t play him more, since he (finally) avoided foul troubles. We could have used him more in the offensive end, given Pistons’ weakness in the paint.

Sixers face the red hot Golden State Warriors tonight, coming off a 123-115 win at Washington, and I hope I will watch the game live again. Baron Davis had a triple double yesterday and we have always had problems with quick PGs…