Great win in OT over the Pacers

Great win last night! Remember the times when games against Indiana were pretty much the highlights of the season. I hated their guts, Ron Artest, Stephen Jackson, Jermaine O'Neal, Ugh....! They were a tough squad with good players, but they entered the stands and caused the infamous Palace Brawl. Of course no fan needs to throw a beer on some player's head, but in soccer certain players get thrown at with worse things and are similarly crazy in their minds. Don't believe??? Here's another example !

Alright, enough with crazy soccer footage. The Pacers have pretty much traded in the likes of Artest, Jackson and O'neal for a crazy high-flying white guy (Josh McRoberts) a crazy Eminem look-alike and a softer Center (Roy Hibbert). Summing this up, you cannot hate this team anymore, they are kind of likable actually.

Nonetheless, it feels pretty good to win again. After the Pistons last two disastrous performances they had a lot of bright spots in this game going into the All-Star break. I will especially look at Greg Monroe's improved helpside defense and great execution by Detroit down the stretch. They almost surrendered two leads at the end of the game, but the Pistons did a good job of protecting the paint and creating good shots, plus they kept their cool.

Greg Monroe's quick rotation

Last time, as some of you might recall, I blamed Greg Monroe for missing defensive rotations occasionally. It happens to rookies and it was not meant to degrade him or anything. Well, his learning curve is stellar and you will see it in this example.

This is a similar set-up to last time against the TrailBlazers. The Pacers' Darren Collison is holding the ball on the left wing and his center is coming over to set a screen. Ben Wallace decides to show, but Collison goes away from the screen straight towards the basket. Will Bynum does not realize in time what is happening and gets blown by. It happens to the best of us and Collison is a great player.



The area shown in red is marking the space Monroe has to cover when he realizes he has to come over.



Monroe's thinking process is rapidly becoming quicker, so his quick thinking enables him to come over in time to block the shot.



Of course, Darren Collison is not exactly Lamarcus Aldridge. Aldridge is way bigger! Collison is quicker though and I believe the space recovered by GM10 is enough that he could have taken a charge if he had wanted to. Great play by a great player. I like his abilities a lot already. If he continues to progress the way he does and inserting Jonas Jerebko next season, this could be an exciting starting line-up for the Pistons, featuring Jerebko and Monroe at Power Forward and Center!

Great defense does not equal great results

I thought about doing a frame-by-frame analysis on this one. I think this sequence is too long and I have two more coming, so you have to look at the video!



Let me walk you through this. The Pacers start out on the right wing. Collison gets a screen from Granger who sets a screen for McRoberts who receives the ball from Collison. So far it is just movement to make the defense tired. McRoberts (J-Mac) hands the ball off back to Granger who is supposed to be the primary option I would think. McRoberts sets a side screen and immediately rolls down to the basket. Ben Wallace, the great defender that he is, rotates perfectly and J-Mac cannot use his supreme athleticism to get a dunk.

Meanwhile, Ben Gordon does a great job of fighting the way bigger Roy Hibbert for position down low. He might not get perfect position, but then again he gives up well over 9 inches. He disturbs Hibbert enough so J-Mac does not think he has a window to pass and he the pass is denied. I personally think he could have hit the target, in a split-second situation of a game-deciding play, as a coach I would forgive him for wanting to make the best pass and not the first pass.

J-Mac instead throws the ball to the opposite side of the court into the hands of Collison. Collision makes the right decision and immediately starts penetrating blowing past Rodney Stuckey. But look who rotates over perfectly yet again! GREG MONROE! He blocks the shot with both and hands. Great defense so far by the Pistons! There is a loose ball and it touches several hands before it reaches Danny Granger's hands on the three-point line. Granger hits a heavily contested jumper going to the bank! Wanna how contested? Look at this screenshot!



If you would want your opponent to have a look, wouldn't it be this exact look? A contested, long three with the shot clock winding down and a hand right in his face?! Unfortunately, a great player hit a tough shot!

Detroit had an answer: Ben Gordon

What I especially liked last night and why I broke this down in more detail than usual is that Detroit kept its poise. They could have broken together after this possession. The usual events would have played out like this: Stuckey gets the ball, Stuckey runs a one-on-five fastbreak, Stuckey takes a highly contested lay-up, Stuckey misses, Indiana hits another three, Indiana wins.

This time the Pistons kept their cool and executed. Ben Gordon played during crunch time (oh what a rarity!) and it paid dividends. Stuckey dribbled the ball to the right wing.





He gets an on-ball screen set by Tay, he uses it. At the same time Ben Wallace and Greg Monroe set off-ball screens for Ben Gordon. Gordon curls off of the two screens and Stuckey does a great job of hitting him right in stride. Gordon takes the wide open jumper and it is Swish-City!


First play in OT

So, one could understand if the Pistons had let this one go. After all they played pretty well down the stretch and the Pacers hit a couple of lucky shots and somehow managed to get into overtime.
Overtime is a curious thing. You basically are where you started, the score is 0-0 or 104-104 for that matter. You could call it a five-minute mini-basketballgame. Often it is important how you start out in OT. Either you miss a shot or you make it and I would like to see a stat how often the team which scored the first basket in overtime ends up winning the entire game.

The Pistons came out to play. They got the ball and ran a nice play for Ben Gordon. Basketball is all about utilizing your players' biggest strengths and minimizing the impact of their weaknesses, a system which has been perfectly working for the San Antonio Spurs and Greg Popovich.

Gordon dribbles the ball up the court. Tayshaun is posting up, Ben Wallace is in the high-post and Monroe and Stuckey look to get out of the way. It's a nice set-up and Gordon enters the ball into Tay who is a little too far out since he couldn't hold his position.



Ben Wallace then sets a screen on Brandon Rush who gets caught by surprise a little bit, because Ben sets it into his back. Monroe and Stuckey have spaced the floor so the free-throw line area is not occupied at all. Wallace does a great job of setting the screen, this is a very underrated skill in basketball and, quite frankly, not a lot of players set great screens anymore. Ben Wallace would not have become an All-Time great if he didn't have some trick up his sleeve on offense. It might not get him great stats, but it gives Gordon an open jumper. Tayshaun lobs the ball to Ben Gordon who gets another wide open look.





You don't win games with one or two plays, but Detroit executed very well against the Pacers. There are cases in basketball, when a few unlucky bounces cause you to lose a game that you were supposed to win. The Pistons almost lost this one. Instead of slipping they decided to keep the composure and executed as well as they did.

Have a great All-Star break! Go Greg Monroe!

Detroit's defense dooms them

The Detroit Pistons played well last night, for the most part, yet they still lost 105-100 to the Portland Trailblazers. A team with one of the finest big men in the league, Lamarcus Aldridge. To me he is one of the biggest All-Star snubs of recent NBA history! This man can flat-out play. He has postmoves, a great jumper and is not a liability on defense.

After a slow start to the game he really got going. He finished with 36 points on 12-of-17-shooting. He is not just another big men dominating Detroits big men, I have rarely seen a finesse player scoring on Ben Wallace this easily. He made it look easy and I don't there are a lot of better Power Forwards in the league right now.

The first play occurred with nine minutes to play in the third quarter. Detroit has had problems all year defending the pick and roll. It does not get much easier when the other team has players like Lamarcus Aldridge and Andre Miller. Miller is a master at the P&R and and LA is the prototype big man with a great 20-foot-range and the athletic ability to drive it to the hole.
The Blazers used a reverse swing play against a set Detroit zone defense. Miller swings it to the right wing, gets the ball back and swings it to the left wing. This is used to get the zone moving. The more a zone, the more holes are created to attack. Wanna beat a zone? Swing the ball!



Now it gets brilliant. Portland uses two high-post players! LA sets a screen and Dante Cunningham stands at the free-throw line. The defense needs to respect his jumpshot so Ben Wallace cannot sack all the way down into the zone. Cunningham receives a pin-point pass.



Simultaneously to the pass LA rolls to the basket. When Cunningham catches the ball he splits Wallace and Prince with a pin-point pass down-low. Greg Monroe needs to recognize this earlier so he can get in better help position. He is one of the smarter rookies when it comes to this and this is game speed and beautiful execution! But Monroe is still a rookie so he will have missed rotations. At least he goes in hard and saves the dunk!
As you can see, swinging the ball created the glaring hole in the middle and Detroit does a really bad job of moving the zone as a unit. Usually Stuckey would have to guard Cunningham in the high-post since he is not really guarding anyone!







The second play was partially already covered by Patrick Hayes! Allow me to break it down even more detailedly!
The play occured with :36 to play in the game with Detroit being down by one. Miller handles the ball on the left wing and Aldridge come up to set a screen to the middle of the court. This helps Portland, because instead of having two predictable options (pass or drive) this creates several options (pass to LA, Batum, Matthews or drive).



In order to deny the drive, Chris Wilcox shows really hard on the screen, way too hard in my opinion.



Then again, I'd rather have a play show too hard on a P&R then not at all like it happened so many times during the first two months of the season. Stuckey does not have the height to bother a wide open LA jumper and Daye is too far away. This is not Daye's fault, it's just a fact.
Miller realizes Wilcox is showing too hard and finds Lamarcus Aldridge who nails the jumper.





Quite honestly, it is puzzling to me Coach Kuester didn't sub in Tayshaun Prince at some point. Prince is the only player on the roster who has the speed and length to bother Aldridge's shot and still stay in front of him. You don't have to worry about Miller's shot all that much since he is not known for a great midrange game. Instead of subbing in Stuckey Kuester should have gone with Tay and we would have had a combination of length and athleticism, a combination much harder to beat off pick and roll plays which involves a finesse Power Forward.

Detroit is in a lot of games, but we come up short a lot of times. We just don't have the talent. Bynum can be great and at the same time overly aggressive. He had great plays last night and then screwed it all up with three unnecessary drives late in the game which led to transition buckets for Portland. I don't know if our Pistons were tired, but they looked slow getting back on D.

Ben Gordon did a terrific job keeping the balance of driving and shooting. He was very aggressive penetrating when given the chance and knocking down jumpers when defenders left him a little space. The Pistons could have and probably should have won this game. Maybe the players will get older (that's for sure) and wiser (fingy's crossed) and make better decisions down the stretch on a more frequent basis!

Thanks for reading!

Pistons make S-Jax look like MJ and lose 87-97 to the Bobcats

It was just one of those nights! At the beginning of the second half I thought the Pistons had a real shot at winning this. They started with an 11-2 run playing great defense and executing on offense. Ben Gordon was curling around screens, like, uhm, Rip in his better days and McGrady ran the offense smoothly near perfection.

The Pistons then decided to play less defense and play sluggish offense, considering the game was over with an 8-point lead in the third quarter. Surprisingly, the Bobcats hustled back with great defense and fast-breaks and within a minute the game was tied by a Stephen Jackson three-pointer.

Stephen Jackson had a stellar performance scoring 39 points on 14 of 26 shooting. Detroit did their part to make sure he did not cool off until later in the fourth. He first had to hit 8 of his first ten shots before things changed. Daye fouled Captain Jack on a three-point attempt, but at least he hustled and tried to compensate for his mistakte. Not so good that he tripped and fouled, well, it happens.
Jackson made 15 of his 17 first half points against McGrady. Kuester decided to switch Prince onto him which left McGrady guarding Gerald Wallace. The ice-cold Wallace (7 points per game over his last three games) scored six points in the third quarter. Prince did not guard Jackson a lot better either.

Speaking of Prince, the entire game he looked kind of moody to me. I know he usually looks a little bit irritated, but last night he appeared especially mad to me. He played a good game, going for 16 points, 3 rebounds and 5 assists, yet I cannot shake the feeling something was wrong. Maybe it was the referees who did not call fouls on Wallace when Prince tried to score. Prince is a veteran though, he should not be all that bothered by a couple of calls not going his way. I hope he will regain his mental stability by the next game, maybe it was just a fluke.
I also did not understand why Kuester let so many plays get run through Prince in the third quarter when we desperately needed a score. Prince was covered by Wallace, one of the best and most athletic defenders on the forward position, and Prince did not get any clean look from the isos. I would have liked Ben Gordon get more shots, because he was stroking it well.

When Detroit was down by five, Kuester subbed T-Mac out and brought in Bynum. Bynum has the ability to get Detroit up again or increases the deficit with poor decision making and sloppy defense, last night it was the latter. Using Bynum often appears like a do or die decision to me. I was skeptical, to say the least, when Bynum came in. Charlotte is a good defensive squad with athletic guards and good team defense, a system in which even Kwame Brown is not a liability anymore (kudos to Paul Silas, making Brown a good NBA player should win him coach of the year honors). Bynum executed poorly, especially on passes, which were off by two to three feet at times, because he was either off-balance or off focus. He missed a wide open Daye who had to move away from his spot to catch a pass thrown by Will. The pass was not hard to make, just poorly thrown. Bynum finished a team-low -14 for the game in 19 minutes of action!!! According to 82games.com. the Pistons play 1.3 points better with Bynum on the court. Then again, Bynum usually plays in the second unit which is one of the best in the NBA. When he gets to play with the starters, he usually destroys the flow of the game. I love to watch him play, but he has got to get smarter and become less of a scorer and more of a playmaker.

Detroit is now 4-6 during their last ten games. I'm curious to see if letting Rip sit and winning more games was coincidental. I don't mean totally incidental, but the effect (5-3 at one point) was just too big. Detroit usually won 38% of their games without Rip and 31% of their games with him over the past two years. So going from a 30ish winning percentage to 60ish winning percentage appeared kind of big. I don't think it makes that much of a difference if Rip sits or if he plays. I would rather see him play or get traded.

Next game is on Friday against New Jersey. We should be very well rested. We don't have any must-win games this season so let's just hope we play well!

I will do video analysis again soon. Bare with me but I got a math and economics exam coming up next week and I don't have time for a lot of writing right now!

Utah's Deja-Vu

Alright, Pistons lost against one of the Wester Conference's top teams. Boo fricking hoo, we should have expected it especially considering that we played Utah. Did you see the starting fives when we beat them in Utah the last time? Crazy world ...

Anyway, the teams flaws have been covered on several sites, blogs, etc.. We can talk about the lack of Ben Gordon in crunchtime. I just want to say this, Rip in his prime without Billups and Gordon in his prime, who would I rather have on the floor with two minutes left, Go!!! Gordon, hands down.

I want to talk about something different though, which made me so mad last night. Tim-outs are really precious especially in the last two minutes of a close game. The coach can tell his players how he intends to end the game, they can discuss it, talk it over, get some rest and look at the nicest plays of the game on video hanging from the rafters. Sounds great! So why did John Kuester treat them like a little kid treats candy on helloween??? We took our last time-out with 50 seconds left and down three. What's even more astonishing, look at the usage:

Third to last: Pistons come out, Tayshaun Prince gets the ball, Kuester takes 20 because he apparently does not like what he sees.

Second to last: McGrady gets the ball and holds it for a second, while Tayshaun sets a screen for Hamilton. Hamilton receives the ball on the left wing.



Tay posts up against AK47, a great defender and one of the few ones who match up very well with Prince, and receives the ball. He then goes to work and hits a nice, although contested, jump-hook for the tie.





In video:


Then Utah goes on and Raja Bell hits the three which really was not a three-pointer. Now it gets interesting.

Last time-out: Remember, we have 50 seconds to go in the game and we just used our last time-out. So you would expect a fancy play. No, John Kuester apparently is a fan of The Big Lebowski's Walter with his utterance "A plan should not be too difficult otherwise you screw up! The plan is easy, that's the beauty of it!"
So the Pistons use their last TO to set up the exact same play. AK47 realizes it immediately and denies the entry pass to Prince. Prince goes up and sets a screen for a pick'n'pop play and ends up with a heavily contested three-point shot. Daye does a great job of getting the rebound and chaos reigns until McGrady finally gets the ball and sets up Monroe's dunk.



I would consider McGrady, Prince and Hamilton veterans in this league. I would assume they can run the exact same play twice in a row without throwing the ball away. Do you need a time-out for that? Do you need to use two time-outs within five seconds with 1:20min left in the game? I would say no!

So when Bell hits both of his free-throws with 17 seconds left, the Pistons are out of time-outs and have to go up against a set defense. Instead of drawing up a play and subbing in, uhm, our best three point shooter, McGrady has to take a one-on-one three-pointer which is a miss.

I do not want to be too harsh with my criticism, but those are the things that seperate great, mediocre and bad coaches. We could have had two time-outs in the last 50 seconds instead we did not have any, and no real shot at getting a great look from the outside. That was just frustrating to me, especially going up against "Mad Kobe" tomorrow night!

Pistons blow huge lead (Big Ben hit a 3)

My teachers taught me to always start with a positive. So let's start with a few positives:

- Big Ben Wallace sort of had a career night (23pts, 14 reb, 5 steals, 4 ass PLUS a three-pointer at the end)
- The Pistons had a great first half, dropping 72 points to take a 19 point lead
- we had a rather good first half of the third quarter as well extending the lead to 25

Well, after that it all broke apart. In the fourth we got outscored by 20, 23 respectively if Ben hadn't hit his three.

I made three Screenshot breakdowns. Two about the incredibly bad defense and one about a very nice play when I thought the Pistons had pulled it together.

Please start executing!!!!

This play reminded me of the Pistons of the past. Stuckey had the roll of Chauncey, there was a lot of off-ball movement with the ball barely moving at all. It's a perfect example of sharp execution and how it would enable an average team to play above average. Sorry for the quality of this sequence, my internet slowed down considerably, don't know why!

Stuckey passes the ball to Ben Wallace at the three point line (where he was especially efficient last night).



As soon as Rodney passed the ball he cuts towards the basket and curls around a Tayshaun Prince screen in order to get the ball back from Wallace.



Ben and Tay then set a double-screen on the weakside. Rip acts as if he was cutting baseline, fools his defender and uses the screens to get himself open for his trademark midrange jumper.





It looks like an old play, because it was so incredibly fluent. The players have been playing together for a lot of years and just reminded me of old times so I thought I'd include this one.

HORRIBLE PICK AND ROLL DEFENSE!!!

What especially annoys me and has been annoying me for quite some time now is the horrible pick and roll defense. It's almost an insult to the word horrible. I'd think even Shaq could potentially improve the pick and roll defense. Want proof? Look no further!

Charlie Villanueva does his best Nowitzki impersonation in this one!! I'm sorry, I love Dirk, he's German like me and he has the sweetest jumper in the league, but he used to blow so many defensive assignments that it was funny. Nothing's funny about this one though.
Leandro Barbosa gets the ball on the left wing and is guarded by Will Bynum. Amir Johnson is running over to set a baseline screen.



Smart fella that CV31 is he knows he has to show on the screen to stop Barbosa from penetrating, Leandro's bread and butter. For a reason that is beyond me, CV31 decides to show on the WRONG SIDE of the screen.



Barbosa uses the screen and converts the easy two. Admittedly it was a well designed play. Monroe has to stay with Bargnani on the perimeter since he is a real threat out there. Daye could've taken one more step towards the basket so he would've been in better help position. It doesn't excuse Charlie V for this disastrous decision though.



Want another example just how bad the Pistons defend the P&R? I got one more! Detroit gives up a lot of threes in decisive moment. Remember the games against the Knicks or Orlando where the opponents seemingly got open looks at will and burnt the Pistons badly.

Coach Kuester is a defensive minded coach, that's why he got the job in the first place. He's been coaching this team for well over a year now and I just cannot understand why the team is still incapable of defending one of the easier offensive schemes. The Pistons aren't playing against Stockton and Malone, not even Deron Williams or Al Jefferson. They were playing Bargnani and Jerryd Bayless...

So let's see how easy it is to get an open three pointer in crunch time.

The Raptors single out Bargnani for an iso-play against Ben Wallace, not a big mismatch there because Bargnani isn't known for his strong post moves and Ben Wallace has made a Hall of Fame career out of defending the post. I probably would've content happy with a one-on-one situation in this instance. Rip Hamilton thinks otherwise and decides to double-team leaving his man wide open. I don't know if Kuester told his team to do so, then he's at fault. If Hamilton decided this on his own, well, then it's on Rip!



So we have an unnecessary double-team. If the team had been informed I would've believed the team had rotated: Stuckey to Bayless and Prince to Barbosa. You always want to make the opposing team make the toughest pass, not the easiest. Usually the double-team should've come from Stuckey or (and this is a sneaky one) from Prince from the baseline. as I mentioned before, I wouldn't have doubled at all.
What's incredible though is that when Bargnani passes the ball to the hot-shooting Jerryd Bayless, Rip looks completely puzzled (illustrated by the question marks) and first tries to run to the left wing not realizing that his man never moved at all. Bayless gets a wide open look hence three points for the Raptors.



Detroit never recovered from this shot!

I liked the lob play Kuester drew up. As Kelser said, it was just a little too far away from the basket for Stuckey to convert. We ran a similar play in high school called "O", never worked for us either... But it could've worked!

What's to learn? The Pistons cannot hold a 25 point 3rd quarter lead to get a desperately needed win at home. The defense gets worse and worse and I don't know why Kuester cannot fix it. It's not entirely his fault. Dumars gets a defensive oriented coach and signs Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, both not known for defense. We'll have to see how it plays out, I'd take a good defensive squad with bad offense over a good offensive team with bad defense any day.

Use Greg Monroe in the High Post!

Hey folks,

the people of Piston Powered have made a great case of using Rodney Stuckey in the post against weaker PGs, which is pretty much any PG whose name is not Tyreke Evans ... Last night he had some beautiful passes that led to three pointers, because the Orlando's defense had to respect the mismatch he had against Chris Duhon.

That's not what I want to talk about though. As I watched the game I realized what John Kuester should do within the next couple of months is put Greg Monroe in as a starter. Greg Monroe is getting better and better and his learning curve has been truly impressive. Although his stats of 6 points on 3 of 6 shooting, 2 rebounds and 4 assists don't look that impressive, he had a real nice game once again. The two rebounds don't take into account how many balls he tipped to teammates and his overall hustle was a nice display of his attempt to try really hard which is nice to watch during this season.

In the second quarter the Pistons had two consecutive possessions where they scored out of a half-court set-up getting clean looks, once Tracy McGrady at the basket and Ben Gordon for the jumper. So let me show those two plays to you NBA Playbook style!!!

The Pistons start the play out with Ben Gordon on top and with Monroe in the high post. Monroe will set the screen and immediately cut into the lane.



Since the defense has to respect Gordon's shot both defenders go out to contest the jumper and Gordon can get a pass into the lane where Monroe's waiting with his soft hands.



McGrady sees this and cuts to the basket. Monroe is a pass first Big Man (boy that's a rarity) and instead of shooting the 4-footer over a smaller but (still) more athletic Carter he drops it off to McGrady for the easy deuce.



Right on the next possession, McGrady passes the ball to Charlie V on the right wing and runs to the weakside. Simulataneously Monroe sets a soft Pick for Gordon on the weakside and then shows up at the high post position to receive the ball.



Gordon, meanwhile, has arrived on the strong block gets a weak pick from Villanueva but still manages to get enough room to receive the hand-off by Monroe and score an easy midrange jumper, Gordon's bread'n'butter!







As you can see, the Pistons played to their players strengths and got off clean looks. I think we could really create an offense around that player. He could be like Chris Webber in Adelmann's system with the Kings in the early 2000's.

Unfortunately, we didn't get the win last night, but I see how this team could work together. The roster needs some tweaks, but overall I see a few bright spots! The reason I want Monroe to get as much playing time as possible, is simply that he'll be a corner stone for years to come hopefully. I like his attitude and his hustle! We're not going to make the Playoffs anyway and if we should happen to make them, we aren't going to go past the first round ... So why not develop Monroe? What's at stake????

Miami and Detroit much alike

Alright, today I will mainly talk about team building, which is a pretty hard thing to do and will explain the problems Detroit and Miami are currently having. Obviously, I'm a Pistons fan and I take the losing pretty hard since I only started following them in the 2004 season and have stuck with that team ever since because I loved the unselfishness and I want to get back to that. On the other hand we have the Miami Heat with a spoiled superstar and Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh who seem to have found their liking to the sense of self-entitlement and poor work ethic the self-acclaimed King is putting every day.

Building a contender is not an easy thing to do. A casual observer would think one only needs to put together great talent and you automatically have a competitor. See, you can get a competitor that way, but not a championship caliber team. A competitor can get into the Playoffs and as far as the Finals on basically one players' amazing skill set (e.g. Cavs in '07 and Lakers '06).

Championships are won with a complete team that has fitting pieces throughout the roster. Duh, some people might say now. I've stumbled over a great metaphor a couple of days ago and it goes like this. Building a championship team is like building a house. You need bricks, you need steel, you need windows and you need the isolation, the energy cable, etc..

The Pistons are currently made up of bricks and windows and energy cables. We have no steel whatsoever. Stuckey and T-Mac have the potential to be steel, but I doubt Stuck will be the Man on the team and I don't think T-Mac will ever be it again. We need this building block (no pun intended). We have way too many bricks and windows and what have you. We don't have that frame though that makes our house withstand the storm that is coming.

To stay in this metaphor, the Heat currently have three frames for a championship house, but they don't have an energy cable or bricks. While all the three players have the skill set to morph into a brick or whatever is needed to win, they are struggling because they are not used to this roll, nor will they be any time soon. All three of them are used to being the frame and not the brick (except for LeBrick James, sorry for that joke).

So, you see, although the teams have very different expectations, Detroit and Miami are pretty similar when you've come to think about what they are missing. Actually, they are similar, because they are the complete opposite of one another. Detroit has way too many roll players, while Miami has three Superstars but no skilled roll players.

I don't want any of the three in Detroit, especially not James. I make no secret out of me hating him and everything he stands for. He takes his blessings for granted and for a, well, a blessing. He calls himself The Chosen One and he actually doesn't seem to feel chosen, he plays like it's a burden.

Detroit needs a star, either develop a star or trade for one. Joe D is having a rough patch. He's trading away players that excell in other places and takes on bad players that played well in other places. I really don't know why that is, I'd assume it is coaching to some degree, I wouldn't call Flip Saunders a bad coach though and John Kuester is doing a lot of things right and I really like how he's handled the tough situations thus far this season. He's gotten Stuckey and Tay back on board and my heart was filled with Christmassy love when Tayshaun had that great game against the Knicks. It felt like we had a good team again. Unfortunately, we always tend to lose close games against the Knicks.

That's it for now! Take care!

Steph Curry humiliates The Birdman

Man, this play is just as good as the most thunderous throwdown by Lebron or Dwight!

Pistons finally coming into their own

The Pistons are finally playing with some kind of consistency. We've waited for this since the 5-4 start to the season that had us hoping for a playoff run against one of the elite teams in the East and maybe surprising one or two teams, meanwhile having terrific contracts as potenital trade bait if the right offer was made to Joe Dumars. Well, mainly injuries prevented the plan from happening and after the good start, Detroit decided to drop 21 out of their next 28 games, sporting a 13-game losing streak and generally losing to teams that were very very beatable losing to the Raptors twice for instance.

A losing streak like that usually takes a toll on the players especially when the veterans wo have been leading this team for several years are out and injured and a new hierarchy has to develop. Rodney Stuckey isn't capable of leading this team yet (or ever) and the new additions Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva have been struggling with injuries of their own. A lot of people aren't satisfied what those two have shown but what a lot of people also don't understand is that supposedly minor aches can have a big impact on what you are capable of doing. Sprained ankles don't seem to be bad for a pure shooter like Gordon, but you lose lift and agility, that way you don't get the seperation from your defender, your drive isn't as big a weapon and when you shoot the jumper you don't get up as high. Kobe never seemed to have problems shooting because his finger was hurt, he started struggling with the ankle and groin injuries. Players usually play through sprained wrists pretty easily, but everything that aches in your lower back or downwards has a huge impact on your performance. That's why it has been bad for the Pistons, since most of their injuries were lower body injuries that effect the players in so many different ways, and what's worse, next morning when you get up out of bed, you feel every single move from the night before.

But there has been a change in dynamics ever since Tay and Rip returned from their injuries and their play has picked up. Tay looks like the Prince of the Palace again and Rip has been dead-on the past three games, even though he almost cost us that Spurs game but whatever dude.If you look at the last 20 games they have won 10 of those 20. I don't know if you realized that, I sure didn't. I'm so accustomed to this team winning around .700 of their games that being mediocre still seems, well, really bad. The overall record also doesn't help to see small improvements.They have against the teams they are supposed to lose to, but all in all they have been hovering around .500 and you can see from their win against the Spurs, this team has the talent to compete. Ok, San Antonio is not the team of '05 or '07, but they are still a playoff contender in the Western Conference so we'll take that win. The Schedule will become a little bit rougher playing Denver, Boston and Cleveland in the next two weeks, but if we get out of this playing at .500 still, I will be pretty proud of this team.

We have a lot of good pieces, we need some more additions but summing it up. I like this team, it's got character. Don't get down on Joe Dumars, he's the best GM there is for this franchise. I'm not saying the FA signings this summer were horrible, I think both C-Nuv and BG will be valuable assets for the years to come. Instead of focusing on trading Rip or BG I think we should explore trades for Stuckey. This team needs a true PG and a true C, that's all there is to it. We won't be a title contender with those two positions filled out, but the balance will be much better.

Welcome to the Bynumite Blog

Hey Basketball and Detroit Piston Fans,

I've finally started my blog! I wanted to do that for a long time but never really had either the time or the courage. Also I never really had a name!

To introduce myself: My name is Jakob Eich, I live in Hamburg, Germany, I study English and wanna get into sports journalism some day! I've been a huge basketball fan since I'm 10 years old and I really enjoy playing myself!

Thanks to Nathalie Sitto from www.need4sheed.com, I found a name that fits my standards. Will Bynum is my favorite Piston right now and I think her "Bynumite" expression is just perfect! If Nathalie reads this, you got all rights to the name, I just love it!!! I don't want anybody to think I came up with that idea!

So, I'll update the Blog every now and then if something happens in the world of basketball. I don't know if I'll be able to post every day, but I'll try. I'll cover other things from the NBA too, but the Pistons will be my main focus.

I hope I'll be able to share my love for basketball with all of y'all! I'm really passionate about it!

Take care and check my future posts out!