The Playoff Perspective

Hello and welcome again to another edition of the playoff perspective, as brought to you by yours truly, Lil' Mack

As you know, the pistons took the first game of the eastern conference playoffs; sadly this was not the win that everybody probably expected.  It was, as the Detroit Free Press put it "a lucky win that the Pistons almost didn't deserve".  Ouch, and that coming from the home team paper, you can only imagine what Cleveland's papers must be saying if Detroit itself feels like this.  But really, can you blame the fans and sports writers in the city for being like that?  If you go back and look at some of the stats from last night, you will see that the starting five (excluding Rip) sucked.   Tayshane was mediocre at best, Billups was only there when we REALLY needed him, 'Sheed had an below average, way below average showing in terms of what he is capable of doing (especially with a matchup that the Cavs presents).  And Webber just looked plane terrible.

             Another problem that I had besides the fact that the starters where bad, was the fact that Dale Davis was the high scorer off the bench!!! Dale Davis, not saying that he's bad at his age, but where the hell were McDysse and Hunter.  Well let me correct that, Hunter had some good assts. and was good at on the ball defense so I can't argue with that there but man, it was terrible.  Oh, I almost forgot to mention that when McDysse was subbed in for Webber, he did so bad that Sanders went to Maxiell for help just to provide some kinda spark that the Pistons needed. (Which he did very well). 

            The only thing that went the Pistons way was their plane to shut down King James.  LBJ had only 10 points 12 rebounds and 9 assts. that whole game.  Now the points I don't mind, that's a good thing and a testament to our defense, but its when you start looking at the rebounds and assts that he got, that's when you start to see what would have really happened if the Pistons didn't lock him up defensively.  He is basically trying to get his team involved and it looks like it almost worked.  As it was quoted in the Detroit News "Lebron didn't have to beat the Pistons, his teammates almost did that themselves".  Truer words couldn't have been said, Igaduages (I know I'm spelling it wrong, just too lazy to correct it) had a team high of 20 points. When was the last time he did that, especially against us?  The answer is never.  Basically this game was controlled by the bigs, and the Cavaliers front court almost pretty much won out.  

            If the Pistons are to do better, they must come out more aggressive than before, they must hit their shots and they must get their big men active on both ends of the floor. To match up with the double team that the Cavs did to Chancye, they probably should go back to what they did before and start running some offence through Webber or something, cause if they don't pick up the intensity and take their game off auto-pilot, then they might just go back to having another 7 game series and the thing is we might loose this time.  If we don't, then we (most likely) face a Spurs team that will have had plenty of rest and it will be the 2005 Finals all over again, and nobody wants that. 

Pistons, we've got to do better!!

I'm out, like Miami in the first round.

The Pistons Advance / Fun at Hockey-Town Cafe

Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to second edition of my playoff coverage of the Detroit Pistons.  As you all know, Detroit FINALLY put to an end the season for the Chicago Bulls.  I don't know where the rest of you  where watching but I was able to enjoy the festivities down at Hockey Town bar/Café, where an interesting arrange of black and white people can come together and enjoy sports.  Well it would be interesting to note that this is Hockey Town café, so it should be documented that majority of the people in there where cheering for the Red Wings (they had both games on at the same time).  I found myself in an interesting position, I found myself avidly cheering for the Wings.  Now I'm a person that supports all the Detroit Teams but I have never openly cheered for the Wings in public, but under the circumstances I really couldn't help it but cheer every time a goal was made or every time there was a power play or even a goalie save. 

Now, granted, I'm not the one to get overly hype, over something other than the pistons.  But that atmosphere was just electric, but I have digressed from my point, back to the pistons. 

I think, in personal terms along with the rest of the city of Detroit, that this series should have ended 4-1 instead of 4-2, but that's the problem that the pistons have with winning.  They have this thing where they think they can just flip the switch and that will be it, and unfortunately, that will be the death of us, as you saw in last years eastern conference finals.  So now that we've moved on from that I just hope that who ever we get, be it the cavs or the nets, that we play with focus and composer and that we hurries up and close out the series as soon as possible.  I know I personally don't want  a repeat of last year with the cavs, where they drove us to 7 games and with the nets, well there's not much to say on that if you know about how we use to loose to them every time in the eastern finals in years past.  So here's hoping that Flip can keep the pistons focus and on point, cause we're going to need it for the Finals

GO PISTONS!!!!!! 

The Playoff 2k7

Today marks the day that the eastern conference is finally set to take start in round two.  With the Nets defeating the Raptors (by one point I might add) the tree bracket is now set up as follows: Detroit vs. Chicago and New Jersey vs. Cleveland.  I just want to point out to everybody that in my opinion with these match ups presents some interesting problems. 

One of those problems is that everybody seems to look to Cleveland to take the series against Jersey; I must say that I can not and will not agree with this statement.  There are a number of reasons why this will not work out in Cleveland's favor.  It mostly comes down to the consistency of offence that Cleveland posse when it comes to there scoring options.  This group of people consists of Lebron, Snow, Ilgauskus, Hughes and Gooden.  Out of this starting five, only Lebron shows the most out of offences consistency then any of these other people.  As for the Nets they have that starting five that features the "Big 3" in Kidd, Carter, and Richardson.  Also to note that Jersey gets better input from its bench than Cleveland does.  So when you put it all together you can't help but put your money on the Nets in comparison to the Cavs' cause their overall style of play is just better then the Cav's.

Nets in 6

As for the pistons and the bulls, I won't touch that one due to how they match up to us and I'm saving my remarks for after Saturday's game against them.  All I will say right now about them is that this series is going to be good and in the end I think it will be Pistons in 6 or 7

Well thats it for now

I'm out, like Miami in the first round