So, with the time that has passed, and after all the initial anger or oblivious feelings, or worry that everyone here felt right after the game, I'm curious if anyone has changed their opinion about the game, or where the Spurs stand compared to the Pistons. I'm not saying we should have won, we lost, I understand that, not making excuses.
The reason I am writing this is I rewatched the game last night, and I feel much better about the loss. While we played badly, even with being badly beaten on rebounds, and the lack of team ball, if we would have made some shots we normally do, it would have been much closer. And it wasn't just the Pistons D, we protected the ball well. While we had lousy shot selection, shots were not guarded as ferociously as I had thought, we just missed open shots, especially 3's that we would normally make.
I felt more like instead of us getting crushed and playing without heart, we just did not take advantage of oppurtunities and mostly, it just wasn't our night.
Am I just rationalizing?
I think the Spurs vs. Pistons in the playoffs would be nothing like the two regular season meetings.
That said, we played with no heart, Finley didn't show up to play, and we need to rebound the ball. But I'm liking what Finley is doing off the bench the last two games against the Grizz.
Finley never "shows up" against Tayshaun. Since Tayshaun became a starter (their last 6 meetings):
Finley: 32.3mpg, 6.6ppg on 22% shooting (11 of 49 from the field)
This is nothing new.
Something needs to change between now and June. There was no sense of urgency. The Spurs were utterly dominated on the glass. With Horry as your primary big backup your bigman rotation is already going to be on the slight side. When Nesterovic is your starting center with his 4 rebound per game average and his 0.2 trips to the line per game average, you are going to be ed. There is a reason the Spurs were ready to give him away for the stinky rotting corpse of Tariq Abdul-Wahad's career back in the summer.
This team is abyssmal when it comes to championship level play. One can only hope they are floating and can hit a switch come April. History has shown that is not a prudent strategy.
Losing @DET was bad, but getting embarrassed, playing with no energy, mentally soft, totally destroyed @att was worse. Even Sean said he expected them to come out with a lot more and ready for revenge. They came out as flat and as ineffective as they were in Detroit. Sean said their record is "pretty", but the Spurs haven't played well all year.
Spurs got destroyed @DAL, the went back and took the second one. That's what I was expecting in the second Pistons game.
Spurs may show up with their silly SPAM later, but not having HCA in the Finals will be a extremely difficult to overcome. Spurs have 44 games to make up 5 Ls on the Pistons with Tim probably not healthy anytime soon, maybe not even this season.
They will have to split the first 2 games @DET to have even a prayer. Splitting would increase possibility of going back to DET up 3-2, instead of down 2-3.
But everything turns on Tim's heel permitting him to play interior defense. Tim not anchoring the defense, then no good defense by Spurs, and no le.
yeah looking back on it and seeing how spurs responded to the 2nd detroit loss (barely beating memphis at our own floor, although i admit the road win was very nice) i still have yet to see ANYTHING this entire season that shows me that the spurs will be ready to play ball when it matters. but the memphis win was great so hopefully we can get something going and find some consistency
Detroit is better than the Spurs right now.
That doesn't mean the tables can't be turned come March/April or the NBA Finals.
It's still January. Notice how many minutes the starters played for Detroit in the game - if it was so bad, why wasn't the Detroit bench out there the last four or five minutes of the game?
The truth is, Flip is really stretching the Detroit starting 5. While I believe they are quite conditioned athletes and can take the playing time, its still to be seen if it will affect them later in the season with injuries or just being burned out.
Exactly. Right now, it's JANUARY. Much as I enjoyed that win...it's JANUARY, and the dominating Pistons juggernaut has opened a staggering....2.5-game lead. I'm not complaining, but that's a pretty thin lead.....
It's much easier for the losing coach to take out their players early than it is for the winning coach to do so. The losing coach has nothing to lose in that situation. As the Spurs learned last year (13 points in 35 seconds), anything can happen. If it was a 20 point lead the starters would have been on the bench, but it was hovering between 11 and 15. Also, our bench went to check in with a couple minutes left, but they never got a whistle.
As for the comment I've responded to 1000 times (starters being burned out)... It's just not realistic. They're playing less minutes than last year. The Pistons leader in minutes only plays about a minute and a half more than the Spurs leader in minutes. The difference is, our leader is the energizer bunny (Rip), yours is a 29 year old big man with an injury. Just because our 5th starter plays more than the Spurs' doesn't mean he's going to be more fatigued than a player on the Spurs who plays more. Plenty of players in the league play more than any of the Pistons starters.
The fatigue comment really isn't logical when you think about. No one player plays an absurd amount of minutes. None are even in the top 30 in minutes per game.
i agree with freshprince22. im also sick of this "oh their starters will be tired" granted their bench isnt as strong as last year, its not like they're constantly playing super up tempo ball like phoenix did last year. this is a tough starting five and i dont see fatigue really "catching" up with them come playoff time. plus at the rate they are running away with the league the pistons will probably be 10 games ahead of us by march and will prolly just play their bench for the last couple of months waiting for the playoffs.
Everyone thought the colts would win SB40, it is possible that Miami plays PHX in the finals even though the Spurs n Pistons are still the heavy favorites.
yeah but single game elimination and best of 7 series are 2 entirely different worlds
currently Detroit would only be very small favorites over Miami n the east about -140 and Dal n Phx both think they can beat SA.
Detroit is so far ahead of everyone else in the league, it's ridiculous.
Spurs are beating other divisional contenders, and then getting destroyed by Detroit. If the Spurs can beat most teams, and then get destroyed by Detroit...how bad are these other teams?
Manu starting will definetly help our energy against big D. But, unless we do something about our board play...its gonna be meaningless. Mebbe Finley coming off the bench and not going all da time against Prince will work out better also.
Detroit knows our offense now, and play against it perfectly. We're gonna have to work on our offense sets a lot more. Timmy and Sheed "usually" cancel each other out. But, Timmy's gonna have to be feeling pretty good for even that to happen. I also think Nazr plays better than Rasho against Detroit's front line.
We've got a lotta work to get to Detroits level. We've done it before, letsee if we can do it again.
And I think the most important factor in all of this...is how Pop does his job to prepare the team. Barring injuries...our success this year depends a ton on how he gets this team ready. We ain't now...if we are in the playoffs, he'll deserve the Kudo's, imho
I don't see how you were able to stomach that debacle all over again, but oh well. Yes, you are rationalizing. Let's be real about one thing - the Spurs got their asses WHIPPED. 5 days, 5 weeks, 5 months or 5 years from now, that ass whipping will still just that.
The troublesome fact is the Spurs had everything to play for. The recent memory of that Xmas day fiasco was still fresh; they were defending their home court; and their compe ive pride alone should have forced them to come out and play with an "edge". They did not.
They should have never allowed any team, especially the Pistons, to outhustle, outrebound, outdefend and virtually outplay them for the better part of an entire game.
Say what you want, but this was not just any ol' game. This game had both playoff atmosphere and championship implications along with it. Yet, it still wasn't enough to inspire the Spurs.
The Pistons, on the other hand, have taken their championship loss to the Spurs and have made recliaming the le their crusade for this season. They are playing with a purpose. They are playing mad.
While I don't believe the Spurs are as bad a team as they showed, I do believe the Pistons are every bit as good a team as they demonstrated.
Let's hope our team regroups and develops that "sense of urgency" before the start of the playoffs.
I hate when people are saying It's November, It's December, It's january and so on
Come on. The spurs are the NBA Champions - where is their pride?
Chicago Lakers had it.
Are they still working? (j/k) But you've got to admitt they got to make their statments as a champions. We all know the Pops strategy. He sits down in the All star break, sum up everything and makes a plan to the rest of a season (the rotations, the role by the players).
If the spurs won't be playing like they were last season or without a hustle. It's over.
You saying they are not playing up to thair potential. Okay. But we are not sure if they will play by their potential. Thats all.
Bench isn't as strong as last year?? Is that a typo?? We had no bench last year. This year we have essentially added Arroyo, Delfino, Evans, and Dale Davis to McDyess and Lindsey Hunter. The bench is MUCH better this year. '03-'04 is tougher to judge. In the regular season, yes, the bench was great. But Corliss and Memo didn't even show up in the playoffs. They had a couple decent games, but were bad overall. Mike James is the only guy who contributed a decent amount, and even his impact was overrated. Elden Campbell was only a factor against Shaq.
As for the tempo. The Pistons are actually the 2nd slowest paced team to the Grizzlies. That is what is so incredible about what Flip had done to the offense. They actually average less than possessions than last year, but score about 6ppg MORE. A lot of that is because the Pistons are on pace to set an NBA record for fewest Turnovers per game (by almost a full Turnover per game). Not to mention all the wide open shots.
well hunter is injured and mcdyess has been a no show most of this year. i think the biggest reason your starters play as much is mostly b/c of the lack of a bench. the 2nd unit for detroit just isn't getting it done but since the starting 5 is so strong they are just dismantling everyone
McDyess is following the exact same pattern he did last year. Awful start, then he slowly warmed up and it clicked one day. He has been great the last month and a half or so. He isn't scoring quite as much as last year simply because of the fact that Delfino and Mo Evans are sharing the load. In the last game Delfino scored 11 points, and the game before that Evans scored 18 points. There just aren't as many touches for him. He's still rebounding, defending, and knocking down those shots he always does. He's just getting a few less touches because we have more options. Last year we literally had no one else who could score off the bench. Arroyo could dish, and Lindsey could defend. That's about it. We used to just pound it into him. Now, he can get his points more in the flow of the offense. We only have to pound it in when Evans and Delfino can't get it going. Consider this...
McDyess's first 9 games: 3.7ppg on 30% shooting
McDyess since then (26 games): 8ppg on 52% shooting
And he is playing a little bit less because Flip loves Rasheed. He loves using him to initiate the offense in the high-post (which is why Sheed is averaging a career high in assists).
BTW, the starters are playing less than last year as a whole. The starters would play a lot no matter what bench they have behind them. They have such great chemistry that they are much better as a unit. The whole is better than the sum of it's parts, you know? That's why all the starters play similar minutes. None play a huge amount of minutes, but they all play a good amount.
Last edited by FreshPrince22; 01-18-2006 at 07:36 AM.
<----- Still not worried. Barring major injury, the Spurs will catch the Pistons before the playoffs.
There were a lot of people crying this crap last year. too. And yet...
I think it's waaaa-aay early to make an assessment like that.
Pop is getting that urgent tone in his voice already, and it's not even the all-star break yet. He's ready to start smacking heads when they don't do what he tells them. We'll be ok. Count on it.
Our starting center combined for something like 8 rebounds TOTAL in the two games against Detroit. Our starting SG (Finley) combined for something like 5 points TOTAL in the two games against Detroit. We combined to score an average of something like 74.5 TOTAL in the two games against Detroit. Of course you're going to lose when that happens.
The last championship; Utah swept Chicago in the regular season.
As defending champs, the Lakers lost the season series and HCA to the Spurs a couple of times, then destroyed them in the playoffs.
SA beat Houston 5 of 6 times in '95, finished the season 13 GAMES UP on them - then got schooled by the defending champs.
Then in '96, Spurs won the division only to get DISMANTLED and embarrassed in a series of blowouts to the Jazz.
Also, it is VERY unlikely that the finals will go seven - making HCA irrelevent. Before last season, can anybody remember one going that long?
It has been since 1990 since SA played ANY series which went 7.
ONLY championships are remembered - regular season is completely irrelevent. You people have very short memories, or are very young.
Let's review WHY the Spurs will win the championship this year against Detroit:
1. Spurs won last year.
Since then:
Spurs added Michael Finley (he's better than a hurt Devin Brown, or any Glenn Robinson)
Spurs added Nick Van Exel (he's better than a rookie Beno Udrih)
Most importantly, and somewhat unexpectedly Tony Parker improved ALOT (I guess since he is still very young, a time when point guards typically make great strides)
Detroit added no significant new players.
Billups has improved his regular season play, making it on par with his playoff performances for the last couple of years (which is the player the Spurs faced, anyway)
Detroit lost a coach with a championship pedigree, and one who is considered one of the top in the league.
Detroit added a coach who has won EXACTLY TWO playoff series in his entire career.
Actually it was 69ppg
I don't think anyone can say it was a fluke though like it seems you're implying. The same EXACT thing happend both times. Finley didn't score in either game (Career 22% shooter against Tayshaun as a starter). Duncan didn't go off like he usually does. The Pistons won by 15 both times. The Pistons held the Spurs to 68 and 70 (both easily their lowest point totals this year). And finally, the Pistons out rebounded them by 20+ in both games.
Last edited by FreshPrince22; 01-18-2006 at 09:39 AM.
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