It was a tough way to put an end to the Pistons’ seven game winning streak. Iverson was once again put in the spot to take the last shot, but this time AI’s last-second shot didn’t go down and the Pistons lost to the Portland Trail Blazers 84-83.
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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
i love yoouh rodney stuckey
That Baby Eater tee shirt has me cracking up. I agree with the poster in their comments who said they need to make it into a onesie size so little baby Piston’s fans can be dressed in it. LOL!
That one was a real back-breaker, to be shooting the way we were in the first quarter and not win makes that one especially hard / I hope Iverson can shake this shooting drought
natalie are u talking some sort of trade? (why rip and sheed aren’t back yet) what do u have in mind?
^^^
Maybe, I just don’t know why it’s taking Rip this long…in fact I don’t even remember it being serious when he did it. I’m just thinking out loud. Maybe Rip is on his way out?
And Sheed….you know he’s not going to be here next season so that’s a possibility too.
Those Portland fan stories were wicked awesome, that was some funny stuff.
Did Michael Curry yell at Tayshuan in the forth or was he yelling at the refs?
I don’t understand why AI was in the game in the forth let alone taking the last shot. He was horrible on the offensive side with horrible decision making, and he was SO bad on defense I literally had my jaw hanging open after several plays when he got torched by Steve Blake or Sergio Rodriguez. I mean seriously, he did not even try to close out or stay with his man. Arron Afflalo was playing so much better. I guess Michael Curry isn’t holding true to his statement that the best player will play.
And in regards to who should come off the bench I say AI, for the simple reason Rip needs a point guard (Rodney Stuckey) to help him get shots, AI gets his own shots. Although Tay and Rip don’t always get along on offense, they kind of step on each others toes sometimes.
Max definatley needs more time.
Lamarcus Aldridge is a beast.
So is Dyess.
You know I hear all these guys in trade rumors David Lee, Marcus Camby, Tyson Chandler, and a bunch more and I think, Joe D you couldn’t of gone after a big, rather than another scoring guard. Oh well.
And have all the games these past few weeks been so bad with passing? It seems like only three or four guys on the whole team get the ball passed to them on a consistent basis, and everyone else has to get the ball by themselves. Maxiell, Amir, Dyess.
Sorry for the long post, just got back in town and I’m making up for lost time.
Tough loss…Hopefully they just put it behind them and can get it goin again vs. DEN and Utah(another team that seems to have our number). Well if we come out of this road trip 2-2 then i consider it fair and won’t be upset with that, but if we end up losing these next two then…well…idk it will be tougher for us. The worst part about it is we could have moved up in the standings past ATL last night with that win. It’s only a matter of time before we really get going again, but in the mean time we will have to grind these tough games out.
pshhh… iverson??????? he was cold all game… and your gonna give him the game shot…. cmon?
the guy is a legend the only other one to take the shot is tay but still iverson has made a career making those types of shots. hamilton goes to the bench becuase he has just not adjusted at all. to me hamilton is pouting and complaining while iverson has adjusted to his new role.
also the pistons have been on fire since hamilton has gone done and that is not a coincidence or luck its team chemistry and hamilton is the problem, hes on his way out or to the bench.
other than turnovers, did we play a good game? this is progress, people. get our big and our small back and we’re in good shape.
nat, i noticed how u moved AI down the charicature line, hehe.
So I was at the game last night as well. My roommate and I, both Detroit area natives, decided that if we were only going to see them once this year, then we’d go all out. We bought second row courtside seats, and were sitting in between the free throw line and baseline directly across from the Pistons bench.
I was dressed up as Walter Herrmann with wig, full warmups, jersey, and shorts and got a lot of laughs from the Trailblazers fans and even some props after Herrmann hit that three directly in front of us.
Rip Hamilton definitely pointed and laughed at me from across the way.
Note on Stuckey: Sitting that close you could see that Stuckey was wincing ever since shortly into the second quarter. During timeouts he was constantly stretching and rotating his back as well as stretching his calves. Couldn’t figure out what it was exactly but he definitely seemed to be playing through some pain.
Portland did a fantastic job at recognizing where our points were coming from (penetration from iverson and stuckey) and shut them down very well through double teams…
Stuckey had some high school classmates sitting next to us, and Stuckey came over remembered them and chatted them up for a while. He even told them that next year when the Pistons are in Portland, to let him know, and he’d get them some tickets. Rodney’s mother was also in the stands.
I am not giving the Pistons any credit. And if there is a trade for Hamilton the player better be really good that they acquire. And I cant see a trade for Rasheed Wallace. Not only is he a decent player but he brings the whole team up by joking around and being funny.
Common guys! VOTE FOR SHEED!
http://www.nba.com/2009/news/01/08/010809allstarreturns/index.html
HE NEEDS THE ALL STAR VOTES!! He is less than 2000 votes from being second!!!
COMMON PEOPLE! VOTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! 😀
lol therz only room for one center in the all star game line up. so therz no way sheed will make it.
Inconsistency results to loss in this game.
” I’m the coach, I put the ball in Tay’s hands for the last shot.”
THANK YOU, Natalie. That was frustrating; I couldn’t believe Curry went with A.I. In a normal game, yes, maybe…but he was struggling with his shot all night. Although, some of the blame CAN be placed with A.I. since he took a contested shot with, I may be wrong, but around 3-4 seconds left on the clock.
Anyone else worried about what happens when Rip and Sheed come back? I curse myself as a Pistons fan for saying this but I was kind of glad Sheed wasn’t on the floor last night; Kwame and Amir (aside from the foul trouble) played some nice D 🙂
To be fair, Iverson has hit some big shots for us during this stretch. If Chauncey were on the team and missed the last shot, would you be complaining? AI got a good makeable shot at the end. It just didn’t go in.
The loss can be put on Stuckey’s rash of bad turnovers. They weren’t the intercepted-pass-go-back-and-play defense variety. They were the there-go-the-blazers-on-a-fastbreak variety which killed us. Still, Stuckey is a second year player so you expect games like these. It’s all part of the growing process.
If there is one coaching decision I would nitpick, it was the decision not to change up our offense when we started turning the ball over. They had adjusted to our offense, trapping the ballhandler who took the hand-off at the top of the key. How many turnovers and stifled offensive possessions does it take to realize that may you should run a different offensive set?
Natalie, I just read your comment. A torn groin is a very serious injury, one that I’ve suffered myself. It’s probably not career threatening, but by serious I mean he would be useless if he tried to play through it. The only way to heal it is to rest it, so once I heard the MRI came back showing he had a torn groin, I knew he’d be out awhile. The main thing it really affects is your ability to run, which is what Rip’s whole game is predicated on. So don’t take him being out for this length of time to mean he’s being traded. After all, if teams did want to trade for him, they’d want him to be health and want him to be able to contribute to their team winning. Rip sitting on the bench isn’t going to assure any interested team.