Kori Ellis
12-03-2004, 03:11 PM
Foul ball: Spurs adjust, Pistons don't
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=stein_marc&id=1937861
By Marc Stein
ESPN.com
They are the league's last two champions. They are the two teams widely predicted to meet in next June's NBA Finals. They are also tough to lump together these days, off to dissimilar starts that don't belong in the same paragraph.
San Antonio is 13-3 and has scored 100 points six times already, including in its past three games. The Spurs are actually becoming a running team, if you can believe it, feeling so emboldened by the dominance of their defense.
Detroit, meanwhile, is a sputtering 7-7, having allowed 100 points four times already -- as many times as in the entire 2003-04 season. Their coach has repeatedly complained that the NBA officiating edict to call games tighter on the perimeter was specifically enacted to in response to the withering defense Detroit played to win the title in June. And that's just one of the issues confronting Larry Brown.
Get used to this picture: you should see it again for seven games next June.
A compare-and-contrast breakdown follows, in advance of Friday's ESPN showdown at the SBC Center and the return of Ben Wallace from his six-game suspension:
THE WHISTLES
Teams were warned early that the refs would be trying to limit hand and arm contact away from the basket. Brown immediately railed against the movement -- and he's still railing. Meanwhile, armchair coaches in the Alamo City fretted that, say, Bruce Bowen wouldn't be as effective as he has been in recent seasons if the league was determined to make it easier for drivers to get to the basket.
So far, it's purely a Pistons problem. After having just seven foul-outs in 82 games last season, Detroit has endured 10 disqualifications one month into the new season. Rip Hamilton alone has fouled out five times.
With former Defensive Player of the Year Wallace missing eight of the first 14 games, Detroit is allowing 94.1 points per game. Of greater concern, opponents are shooting 45 percent from the floor. That puts the Pistons on the fringe of the league's bottom third in field-goal defense.
San Antonio? As if nothing has changed, the Spurs are the league's best in points-per-game allowed (85.2) and field-goal D (.409). Bowen and Manu Ginobili don't look any more beatable on the drive than they were before.
"It's because our philosophy was always not to foul, not to foul shooters, not to use our hands a lot," Ginobili said. "So for us it's great, because that's what we've always been doing. We are just trying to make guys make tough shots, with your hand in their face. We're not one of the teams that has a philosophy to go and foul if you get beat."
And ...
"Like every rule, what you pay on defense, you can take profit on offense," Ginobili said. "So we are just trying to drive more, try to draw contract or get some easy baskets, because that's how it is."
Even though the two clubs shared a shot-clock-era record last season for team defense, holding the opposition to 84.3 points per game, Brown thinks that the Spurs are better staffed to deal with the refs' perimeter vigilance. It's Brown's belief that, outside of Tayshaun Prince, Detroit doesn't have on-the-ball defenders with the instincts and speed of Bowen, Ginobili and even Tony Parker.
"We haven't executed the way we're supposed to," said Pistons forward Darvin Ham, not denying Brown's argument that Detroit defenders have been too easily beaten on the outside. "We haven't had a lot of alertness.
"But we're not out there trying to foul. We play an aggressive style. The way we play, we believe in getting into our man. But now if you breathe on a guy they're going to call a foul. It's a lot stricter than what we thought. I know the refs are human, but at the same time I would think that we would get a little bit more respect, being the defending champions, than what we're getting."
THE CONTINUITY
Detroit, frankly, hasn't had it -- continuity, that is. Wallace has missed more than half the season to date and Brown has also taken multiple leaves (totaling six games) to deal with a hip problem. Carlos Delfino, a key newcomer to the Pistons' retooled bench, has also missed six games with a knee injury.
The Spurs? Unlike last fall, when Tim Duncan went to training camp without David Robinson for the first time -- and without Stephen Jackson and Speedy Claxton, to name two other lost components from a title team -- Duncan and Popovich welcomed back every key contributor this October. The Spurs only added to their core in the offseason, bringing in Brent Barry and heady rookie Beno Udrih, whose court sense is drawing raves from Pop.
"Whatever you thought we were last year," Pop says, "we're the same thing this year with a little more depth."
The result? Unlike last year, San Antonio isn't using the first two months of the new season to learn Pop's defense. Instead the Spurs are trying new things, like pushing the ball upcourt. It remains to be seen if they'll be bold enough to push the pace against Detroit, knowing that the Pistons shouldn't have focus-trouble in a nationally televised game against a West juggernaut, but Ginobili insists this fast-break stuff isn't a phase.
"We are trying to do it a little more," Ginobili said. "I think we can do it even better. We've got a great defense, probably the best in the league -- in the top three for sure. We've got two 7-footers (Duncan and Rasho Nesterovic) who get a lot of rebounds. We should be able to run even more."
Said Popovich, "Execution-wise at the offensive end, (we're) better at this point in the season than in past years, to the degree on some nights that we've forgotten our identity at the defensive end. So it makes me feel like I have a job. I can keep reminding them (about defense)."
THE HUNGER
Duncan was asked before the season's start how long it had taken to get past the hurt of blowing a 2-0 series lead against the Lakers and the Derek Fisher buzzer-beater on the Spurs' floor in Game 5. "I don't think you ever get totally over it," he said.
No surprise, then, that the Spurs have started with more intensity than we usually see from them in November, even after their foremost rivals were disbanded. They're trying to reclaim what the Pistons have, and Popovich hasn't been afraid to nudge them early. After a sleepy showing in Seattle in the third game of the season, when they clearly took the Sonics lightly -- before the Sonics had become the darlings of Month One -- the Spurs returned home to find that the coach had taped an oversized bull's-eye to each chair in the locker room to remind every Spur that he's a target in the new, Shaq-less West.
Brown's challenge has proven trickier. As much as he and his players have talked about warding off a championship hangover, they haven't been able to. And the inevitable letdown, to Brown, is as big a factor in Detroit's .500 launch as the injuries, the adjustment to the refs and the fallout from the ugliest brawl in NBA history.
Getting Wallace back should help immensely. Even though a team as deep as the Pistons are reputed to be should be able to handle one long-term injury or suspension, there's no minimizing Big Ben's impact defensively. It's true that the Pistons couldn't have won their rings without adding Rasheed Wallace to Ben, but as Ham points out, "Ben is the only guy in the whole league who can change the whole game without really touching the ball."
Without Big Ben, Detroit is just 3-5 and allowing 96.1 points on 47.5-percent shooting. With Big Ben freshly off suspension to face the Spurs, Ham expects the Pistons to start getting serious.
Said Ham, "I talked to Sam Cassell in the preseason and Sam was telling me and Chauncey (Billups) that, after Houston won that first (championship), come '94-95 the only thing on their mind was, 'Let's just get to the playoffs. We don't care what seed we are. We just want to get this regular season over with.'
"We're trying to fight that. It's human nature. It's human nature ... not to have a letdown, but to exhale a little bit.
"I think we'll be fine. Everybody's talking like they were expecting us to be 14-0. We're not happy at all with the way we've been playing, but at the same time we know who we are. We know deep down in our hearts that we're the best team in the world. We know it. My money's on the Pistons every time."
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=stein_marc&id=1937861
By Marc Stein
ESPN.com
They are the league's last two champions. They are the two teams widely predicted to meet in next June's NBA Finals. They are also tough to lump together these days, off to dissimilar starts that don't belong in the same paragraph.
San Antonio is 13-3 and has scored 100 points six times already, including in its past three games. The Spurs are actually becoming a running team, if you can believe it, feeling so emboldened by the dominance of their defense.
Detroit, meanwhile, is a sputtering 7-7, having allowed 100 points four times already -- as many times as in the entire 2003-04 season. Their coach has repeatedly complained that the NBA officiating edict to call games tighter on the perimeter was specifically enacted to in response to the withering defense Detroit played to win the title in June. And that's just one of the issues confronting Larry Brown.
Get used to this picture: you should see it again for seven games next June.
A compare-and-contrast breakdown follows, in advance of Friday's ESPN showdown at the SBC Center and the return of Ben Wallace from his six-game suspension:
THE WHISTLES
Teams were warned early that the refs would be trying to limit hand and arm contact away from the basket. Brown immediately railed against the movement -- and he's still railing. Meanwhile, armchair coaches in the Alamo City fretted that, say, Bruce Bowen wouldn't be as effective as he has been in recent seasons if the league was determined to make it easier for drivers to get to the basket.
So far, it's purely a Pistons problem. After having just seven foul-outs in 82 games last season, Detroit has endured 10 disqualifications one month into the new season. Rip Hamilton alone has fouled out five times.
With former Defensive Player of the Year Wallace missing eight of the first 14 games, Detroit is allowing 94.1 points per game. Of greater concern, opponents are shooting 45 percent from the floor. That puts the Pistons on the fringe of the league's bottom third in field-goal defense.
San Antonio? As if nothing has changed, the Spurs are the league's best in points-per-game allowed (85.2) and field-goal D (.409). Bowen and Manu Ginobili don't look any more beatable on the drive than they were before.
"It's because our philosophy was always not to foul, not to foul shooters, not to use our hands a lot," Ginobili said. "So for us it's great, because that's what we've always been doing. We are just trying to make guys make tough shots, with your hand in their face. We're not one of the teams that has a philosophy to go and foul if you get beat."
And ...
"Like every rule, what you pay on defense, you can take profit on offense," Ginobili said. "So we are just trying to drive more, try to draw contract or get some easy baskets, because that's how it is."
Even though the two clubs shared a shot-clock-era record last season for team defense, holding the opposition to 84.3 points per game, Brown thinks that the Spurs are better staffed to deal with the refs' perimeter vigilance. It's Brown's belief that, outside of Tayshaun Prince, Detroit doesn't have on-the-ball defenders with the instincts and speed of Bowen, Ginobili and even Tony Parker.
"We haven't executed the way we're supposed to," said Pistons forward Darvin Ham, not denying Brown's argument that Detroit defenders have been too easily beaten on the outside. "We haven't had a lot of alertness.
"But we're not out there trying to foul. We play an aggressive style. The way we play, we believe in getting into our man. But now if you breathe on a guy they're going to call a foul. It's a lot stricter than what we thought. I know the refs are human, but at the same time I would think that we would get a little bit more respect, being the defending champions, than what we're getting."
THE CONTINUITY
Detroit, frankly, hasn't had it -- continuity, that is. Wallace has missed more than half the season to date and Brown has also taken multiple leaves (totaling six games) to deal with a hip problem. Carlos Delfino, a key newcomer to the Pistons' retooled bench, has also missed six games with a knee injury.
The Spurs? Unlike last fall, when Tim Duncan went to training camp without David Robinson for the first time -- and without Stephen Jackson and Speedy Claxton, to name two other lost components from a title team -- Duncan and Popovich welcomed back every key contributor this October. The Spurs only added to their core in the offseason, bringing in Brent Barry and heady rookie Beno Udrih, whose court sense is drawing raves from Pop.
"Whatever you thought we were last year," Pop says, "we're the same thing this year with a little more depth."
The result? Unlike last year, San Antonio isn't using the first two months of the new season to learn Pop's defense. Instead the Spurs are trying new things, like pushing the ball upcourt. It remains to be seen if they'll be bold enough to push the pace against Detroit, knowing that the Pistons shouldn't have focus-trouble in a nationally televised game against a West juggernaut, but Ginobili insists this fast-break stuff isn't a phase.
"We are trying to do it a little more," Ginobili said. "I think we can do it even better. We've got a great defense, probably the best in the league -- in the top three for sure. We've got two 7-footers (Duncan and Rasho Nesterovic) who get a lot of rebounds. We should be able to run even more."
Said Popovich, "Execution-wise at the offensive end, (we're) better at this point in the season than in past years, to the degree on some nights that we've forgotten our identity at the defensive end. So it makes me feel like I have a job. I can keep reminding them (about defense)."
THE HUNGER
Duncan was asked before the season's start how long it had taken to get past the hurt of blowing a 2-0 series lead against the Lakers and the Derek Fisher buzzer-beater on the Spurs' floor in Game 5. "I don't think you ever get totally over it," he said.
No surprise, then, that the Spurs have started with more intensity than we usually see from them in November, even after their foremost rivals were disbanded. They're trying to reclaim what the Pistons have, and Popovich hasn't been afraid to nudge them early. After a sleepy showing in Seattle in the third game of the season, when they clearly took the Sonics lightly -- before the Sonics had become the darlings of Month One -- the Spurs returned home to find that the coach had taped an oversized bull's-eye to each chair in the locker room to remind every Spur that he's a target in the new, Shaq-less West.
Brown's challenge has proven trickier. As much as he and his players have talked about warding off a championship hangover, they haven't been able to. And the inevitable letdown, to Brown, is as big a factor in Detroit's .500 launch as the injuries, the adjustment to the refs and the fallout from the ugliest brawl in NBA history.
Getting Wallace back should help immensely. Even though a team as deep as the Pistons are reputed to be should be able to handle one long-term injury or suspension, there's no minimizing Big Ben's impact defensively. It's true that the Pistons couldn't have won their rings without adding Rasheed Wallace to Ben, but as Ham points out, "Ben is the only guy in the whole league who can change the whole game without really touching the ball."
Without Big Ben, Detroit is just 3-5 and allowing 96.1 points on 47.5-percent shooting. With Big Ben freshly off suspension to face the Spurs, Ham expects the Pistons to start getting serious.
Said Ham, "I talked to Sam Cassell in the preseason and Sam was telling me and Chauncey (Billups) that, after Houston won that first (championship), come '94-95 the only thing on their mind was, 'Let's just get to the playoffs. We don't care what seed we are. We just want to get this regular season over with.'
"We're trying to fight that. It's human nature. It's human nature ... not to have a letdown, but to exhale a little bit.
"I think we'll be fine. Everybody's talking like they were expecting us to be 14-0. We're not happy at all with the way we've been playing, but at the same time we know who we are. We know deep down in our hearts that we're the best team in the world. We know it. My money's on the Pistons every time."