The First Annual, once in a decade Pistonees vote has come to a close and we have tallied up the winners and are ready to open the envelopes.

Who did you vote for?

Did your pics go home with the statue?

Bennie, Jeff and yours truly announce and dissect  the award winners that you picked.

Here are your  the Pistoneee Winners.

Bennie, Jeff  and Natalie with the Pistoneee Winners – The Best of The Detroit Pistons

Bennie and Jeff had a brilliant idea to hand out Pistoneees. What are Pistoneees? Well they are the Pistons Decade awards voted on by you …the people.

Listen to the Nominations and then make your final decisions and vote.

Vote – The Best of The Detroit Pistons Decade

Bennie and Jeff with the Pistoneees – The Best of The Detroit Pistons

Like Bennie and Jeff mentioned, we will be announcing the awards later in the week, so get to voting.
I will put up a link to this post at the top of the page for easy access to voting.

Who is most deserving of a Pistoneee? You decide!

Key Points:

• Losing aside, it was nice to get Ben, Rip and Tayshaun back.  Because of the suspensions to Daye and Jerebko on opening night, this was actually the first game all season long at full strength.
• Pistons started this one strong in the first few minutes of the game, but Toronto slowly pulled away leading by as much as 20.
• Fantastic third quarter where the Pistons outscored the Raps 28-13 to give them a chance in the second half.
• The Pistons still winning the board wars (40-36), and still not winning games.
• Huge game from Chris Bosh a 16 rebound 25 point double-double in 38 minutes.
• Chucky Atkins deactivated and the box score listed DaJuan Summers with a strained left knee.
• The thing that the Pistons have been hanging their hat on has seemed to disappeared in the past few games. It’s not just the pick and roll defense that’s suffering either.
• After being out 8 weeks with a back injury, Tayshaun Prince looked pretty good.  Prince scored 9 on 4-for-8 shooting with 3 boards and  3 assists in 26 minutes.

Photo/Getty Images

• Gordon looked a bit rusty to start, but caught his groove in the second half finishing with 15 on 4-for-15 shooting with 5 boards.  I’m guessing he’s back to his usual self by Tuesday.

“We had our chances tonight,” Gordon said. “With all the injuries and guys coming back, I still thought we had a chance to win the game. We just didn’t convert on plays that we needed to.” Via The Detroit News

• Five Pistons in double figures.
• A decent 40% shooting percentage compared to the twenty something they put up last time against Toronto. However the thing that may have done the Pistons in was it’s 33% shooting in the third quarter while allowing the Raps to shoot 62%.
• With BG, Tay and Rip back and “The Swede” starting at PF I was surprised the Pistons didn’t rest Charlie Villanueva.   Charlie scored 8 on 2-for-7 shooting with 2 boards, a blocked shot and 4 turnovers.
• The Raptors really have the Pistons number this season.  This may be one of the best Raptors teams I can remember in quite some time.
• The Pistons seem to have trouble getting to the line lately they were 23-for-33, while Toronto was 32-for44.
• Rodney Stuckey’s high…..high glasser had to be the shot of the night, this thing bounced off the top of the backboard and fell right in.

Video Courtesy of The NBA, FSN and The Detroit Pistons

• Rodney scored 13 on 5-for14 shooting with 8 boards, 5 assists and a steal. Solid all around game for Rodney.
• Detroit trailed 74-69 after three thanks to a (as Blaha said) a “man sized third quarter” from Jonas Jerebko. Prince got the Pistons to within 85-84 on a turnaround jumper with 5:47 left in the fourth, but that’s as close as it got.
• Just 9 turnovers for Detroit.
• A Bynumite ankle breaker.
  
• Will Bynum finished with just 4 points, 2 boards and an assist in just 14 minutes on the floor.
• Clearly Jonas Jerebko was the player of the game, enormous hustle all game long and dunks and consecutive three pointers in the third to get the Pistons back in the game.

Video Courtesy of The NBA, FSN and The Detroit Pistons

• Need4Swede, despite the return of Prince in the starting lineup, started the game at PF. Jonas finished the game with 14 points with 7 boards, 2 steals and a block shot before fouling out on a bogus call in the fourth quarter. I hate to say it, but had Jonas not been called for that last shot, thing may have ended just a bit different.
• Rip, Ben and Tay back but Jonas was the difference maker.
• Happy to see Chris Wilcox being the guy I thought he was going to be when he got to Detroit. Six quick points in 12 minutes with 2 boards and a blocked shot. That’s nice production in short minutes.
• Highlights of the game via NBA.com
  
• Can they get things together for their next game at home against the Knicks? My guess it that the losing streak ends Tuesday.
• Apologizing it was a long time coming, but Mr. Atkins is not tooned.  I also have a bit of a surprise with a couple new additions to the header of the site.

Photo/Getty Images

I’ll let George and Greg tell the tale:

Video Courtesy of the NBA and The Detroit Pistons

Side note: Gerald Wallace was a killer, love his game, but we really don’t need to see his mouth piece the whole game. It’s for the inside of your mouth Gerald…ok?

I’ll leave it at that, because the now five game losing streak is weighing on the team and their fans. We will get a chance to get things going again when the Pistons face the Raptors tomorrow night at the Palace.  Hey, we may even get one of the injured back tomorrow if Santa is nice to us.  If anything, it will be nice to see Amir back at the Palace, even though he’s not in red, white and blue.

And make sure you read Vladan and Martin’s daily journals of their trip over at Dunk on U.

Thanks again to David Wieme and The Detroit Pistons for making such special trip turn out magical. And from Vladan and Martin themselves, here is part of an email I received this morning.

Natalie,

If you see David, George or Greg Kelser, please tell them how much we appreciate everything they have done for us and that we will always remember this day for the rest of our lives.

We can’t even describe how much everything you have done for us means to us.

Special thanks to George Blaha and Gregg Kelser who were kind enough to take time out of their busy pre- game schedule ….

And then to Shout out Vladan and Martin on the broadcast.

What you don’t hear or see on that clip is what David Wieme of The Pistons did to make the boys’ 5000 mile trek something they couldn’t possibly imagine or forget. Thank You Dave, you’re kind of a big deal.

And thanks to all of you who emailed, and commented on the site so we knew it happened minutes after it happened.  Team N4S is quick!

Key Points:

• Exciting game, yes – but you just can’t keep squandering double digit leads (14) and expect to keep winning games.
• One word……..Turnovers. Thirteen to be exact. It was the ones late in the game that helped Portland go on a run and take this game away from Detroit.
• Travis Outlaw hit the game winner for the Blazers with 8 seconds on the clock. He’s burned the Pistons before so I wasn’t surprised when he hit that shot.
• No Rip, no Sheed and foul trouble for Amir.
• Say what you will about Kwame Brown but he looked as good as we need him to be. Thirty minutes with 9 points on 4-for-5 shooting with 4 boards, a steal and 2 blocked shots.
• 13 boards for Dyess, who is stunned the Pistons lost this one. “I can’t believe we lost, I am still in disbelief, stunned, the way we played, how well we played on defense — but we just let it slip away.” Via The Detroit News
• Forget the fan call-in voting that had Rodney Stuckey as the Player of The Game. Tayshaun Prince led the Pistons with 26 points looking so sharp early. Tayshaun played 44 minutes going 13-for-21 with 8 boards, an assist, a steal and a block. Player of the game in my book and solid play from Prince since he was put back in his SF position.

Photo/Getty Images

• Tayshaun Prince Highlights.
• Tayshaun was hot, Allen was not (6-for-19). If I’m the coach, I put the ball in Tay’s hands for the last shot.
• 32 points in the paint for Detroit to 38 for Portland.
• Aldridge looked great again for Portland, dropping 26 on the Pistons and making it look easy.
• Just three Pistons in double figures.
• Was the game a little too late for you? FSN did a fine job with the quarter by quarter break down of the game.
• Maybe it was nerves……. He started off just fine and it looked like it was going to be another great night for Stuck, but maybe it was all the family and friends in the crowd that led to Rodney’s (sub par for him) game. Thirteen points on 4-for-12 shooting with 6 turnovers.

Photo/Getty Images

• When you win the war of the boards 40-28 and have 2 double digit leads in a game you should win, right?
• More Maxiell please! Is it me or is Curry not utilizing the Baby Eater?
• The Pistons need to make their late game free throws. Detroit was 9-for-16 on the night at the stripe.
• I know we lost, but I’m still impressed with how Detroit has played without Rip and Sheed. And Dyess for that matter. I would think Rip and Sheed would be back by now! Right?
• Is it me or do you have the feeling something is brewing in the front office?
• Ben from BlazersEdge got a glimpse of the Carolina AF1 Sheed’s.
• It’s always nice to hear from Pistons fans at road games, Jennifer Peal was at the game last night and had something nice to report. ” I was at the game tonight and ran into none other than the man himself, George Blaha. He was the nicest most kind person i’ve truly ever met. He signed my t-shirt along with Special K and I also got a picture with him, which I am sending your way. As if that wasn’t great enough, as I am sitting in my seat chatting with fellow pistons fans around me (there were many by the way), I come to find out I am sitting next to Rodney Stuckey’s Jr. High school teacher. She had driven all the way from Seattle to come to Portland to see him play.  And Blazers fans just “loved” my ball don’t lie shirt.”

• Another Pistons fan, Nicolas King, a Detroiter now living in Portland wasn’t at the game but he did work at the hotel that the Pistons were staying: I’ve run into a few players, McDyess, Stuckey, Tay, even MR BLAHA!! and they are very nice and polite. I thanked McDyess about bringing the energy back to the stones and for just coming back, I told Blaha about how i remember lambs lowdown and Kenny’s Key’s to winning he was loving it, I asked Mr Kelser if he wore any powder blue yet from the Sheed MSU-UNC bet and he said Sheed hadn’t provided him the gear, the list goes on. Another tidbit, I saw Sheed a few times, and we are an art themed hotel so we have to pick our favorite artist for our name tag, naturally i picked “Rasheed Wallace” as mine, I’ve been dying for him to see it here but he’s just too intimidating when he walks by, but nonetheless my Name Tag is Sheedtastic. Rasheed came to the front desk and asked me for another key to the room, so I made one and then showed him my name tag and explained how I had his name on my name tag for my favorite artist, he smiled and thanked me, as that happened the front door man asked me in front of him how long was I reading need4sheed today and Sheed started to crackup.

• Classic….leave them in the comments, West Coast trips always have me up late, but I just finished watching the replay of this one.
• PistonsNationBlog gathered Pistons bloggers to ask the question “Rip or Iverson to the Bench?”, I bet you can guess my answer.

FSN did took us behind the scenes of the bet.

Sheed was so proud of his school’s victory he broke out his North Carolina Sheed Air Force 1’s at practice.

Note Sheed’s trademark ripped cut up sweats. Let me tell you from personal experience, I have seen Rasheed out and about and he was sporting a similar pair of ripped sweats, but when I saw him he was wearing his old Trail Blazers pair. He’s no tailor, but you gotta love Sheed for his originality.