It wasn’t pretty all the time. It took a hot shooting 1st half and high scoring 4th quarter, too. At the end of the night, all that matters is the Detroit Pistons beat the Utah Jazz 120-116, in front of 18,000 home fans.
A night after the team experienced a “protest”, and after an afternoon where a lot of the rumors of a protest were squashed by the local media and reports of a Team President Joe Dumars statement before the game, it was hard to tell how this team would respond. You never know how players will respond, and while the individual players’ shortcomings were clearly evident (Monroe still needs to work on post D, CV needs to play defense period, Stuckey needs to work on mid-range game, etc), the team fought through and came out with a victory against the new look Utah Jazz.
Detroit took advantage of a Jazz team that was without All Star Point Guard Deron Williams and Hall of Fame Head Coach Jerry Sloan. Detroit suited up 9 players for last night’s game, as compared to Friday’s game they suited up only 6.
- The Pistons still need help in the post on defense – Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap combined for 43 points and 20 rebounds.
- Andrei Kirilenko, and his awful hairstyle, had a big game for the Jazz with 21 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists
- Utah shot 59.5% from the field – Detroit shot an even 50%
- Super rookie Greg Monroe – 12 points and 16 rebounds
- Austin Daye had a great 4th quarter and helped seal the victory with 4 three pointers on 5 attempts
- Rodney Stuckey finished with a team high 28 points and 8 assists BUT was a team worst -13 +/-
- Piston killer Devin Harris finished with 17 and 12 assists
- Will Bynum was the sparkplug off the bench with 11 points and 8 assists in 23 minutes
Yesterday’s game was a solid victory and the post game quotes said more about Friday’s #RoundballRevolution than we heard after the Philadelphia game:
Austin Daye
“I have no problems with Coach — he plays me a lot,” Daye said. “I should have been on time, and I got punished. It was embarrassing for me to do that. There’s no excuse for a second-year player to miss a bus because of a miscommunication. I don’t hold any grudge for sitting out last night. I apologized to Coach and told him it was the right decision.”
John Kuester
“There was cohesiveness that we haven’t had,” he said. “There was energy that we haven’t had on a consistent basis. I tip my hat off to these guys.”
Last night’s Detroit win was the first win without Tayshaun Prince, Richard Hamilton or Ben Wallace in the lineup since 2002. It’s time for this team to move on, and close out this season with a little momentum going toward the offseason and next season.
Never play Hamilton Prince or McGrady again. And maybe some day trade Villanueva, he is very very bad.
There was a shot of Prince on the Bench last night. He looked horribly uncomfortable and in pain. Personally I doubt if he can even play let alone if it would be worth it for him to play. At this point, not the worst that could happen as he isn’t going to be the future and its time to play younger players. Wonder if the trade fell through not because Pistons said no but because Dallas demanded he pass their physical which the Pistons knew he wouldn’t. My thoughts anyway.
Agree completely with Lucas. I do not need to see Prince, Hamilton or McGrady take to the court again in a Pistons jersey. Wasn’t too fond of Ben’s laughing on the bench at Kuester getting tossed but considering what he is going through with losing his brother, he gets a pass.
The New Generation of Pistons were exciting to watch last night. So what if they can’t play defense, they put up 120 points without Rip, Tay or T-Mac. Let them finish out the season, let the vets find a comfy chair on the bench.
agree here too, as long as you all agree stuckey CAN play pg. i think if we keep this lineup stucky will excel at pg. he wants to run and push the ball and this lineup allows for that as proved last night.
with that being said how about stuckey at the point? told you he should be there and not tmac. 28 points 8 assts and 5 reb. those are pretty damn good numbers. we played well without tmac prince wallace and rip. there too old. we need to play dajuan more he does have the skills but he needs the minutes, sorry jmax but you are out too, give dajaun your numbers. i like the starting lineup and the backups that came off the bench. played with energy and all that . im still excited about the games im going to, im a fan i root for whoever is out there. we will get it together one of these years then ill enjoy it that much more.
This kind of game is exactly what Prince hates about Stuckey. Racing up and down the court instead of the slow-em-down half court game. T-Mac gets along much better with Prince on the court than Stuckey does.
Highest scoring game of the year. about 3 or 4 times as many fast break points as we usually get, we had 22 fast break points (usually we get around 6 fast break points).
Kuester is going around high fiving the new guys, and explaining that it doesn’t matter that you won in 2004 it’s what you do today. I don’t think Kuester likes anyone from that 2004 team. He probably believes that he is being unfairly thrown to the wolves, that he’s a good NBA coach put on board an already mutinous ship, where the players have been running coaches out of town for years and Joe Dumars stands behind the players instead of behind the coach, because Joe wants so desperately to be liked
yes we NEED to be a run n gun team right now, u know y. cuase we are soft and can not play any D. the only way to overcome that (other than actually playing D) is to run alot get fastbreak points and get more shots up, more shots equal more points. even if you cant play defense all you gotta do is. . . . . score more points. that is how you win this game after all right? the D will hopefully come along later, if we can master the run n gun then get some D to go along with it we would b a dangerous team. we do have the offensive firepower but we gotta get those shots. stuckey at the point with will as a backup will work great IF we keep the yooung lineup.
sounds exactly like how Golden State runs their offense, lol
Golden State = Run and Gun + Small ball
Stuckey at PG
Would love to hear Natalie about Stuck at the 1 !! : )
He can do great there..& this team don’t need him as a pure 2
give him a shot at running the team w/o the veterans around
I want to see that before any crasy signing this summer
Agree with everyone. We should start playing the next generation pistons (stuck, will, bg, cv, daye, jj, monroe, summers) for the remainder of the season in order for them to build chemistry on the court.
We won one game last night- so what? Look at the season. Q still sucks and should get canned immediately! One victory is hardly worth all this hoopla.
get over it, he’s not a bad coach!
No matter how god he could be, thoses veteran would run him out of town
What more do you need to see coach Q ain’t the problem for the Pistons?
well at least the idea is getting ground through more & more fans
we already had this argue couple weeks back
look at this article from DBB, not very different from what I told you back then 😉
http://www.detroitbadboys.com/
Hey, I can’t help it if I’m right! Seems like we have 2 teams. An up tempo group of players and a slower, more deliberate half court group. Why not split the players up like that, depending on the opponent, rather than shuffling them around like a deck of cards? Why hardly ever put Ben Wallace in during the 4th quarter, when so many games were lost after great come backs because all we needed were a couple of stops? Why did Darrell Walker get into a fight with Q? I’m not going to mention the mishandling of players personalities, because I think that the Chuck Daly ego management skill is a rare talent. Why is our win- loss record so abysmal?
Q sucks! I’m not saying he’ll never get better, I’m sure he will! And I’m sure he’s an incredibly nice person. I just don’t feel like puttering around while he learns his new job.
“What more do you need to see coach Q ain’t the problem for the Pistons?”
Come on now, he’s terrible. Look at his rotations all year, nothing has been consistant. The team has underperformed. And his record as a college coach was horrible.
The win vs the Jazz was nice, but tonight we lost to the Bucks. Q stinks.
im not good with the standings and all…but is it very unlikely for us to make the playoffs :S
Nat I think you forgot to mention how long since we last beat the Jazz, was it like a century? Who cares if its a different Jazz team, we just beat them!
it was danny that wrote the blog not nat. take that boney
yeah my bad.
Congrats to the youngsters. I know it’s hard to gauge how successful they will be given that it was only one game but it’s nice to see them playing. Run and gun might just be what suits the Pistons for now. But interior D, if not overall D, needs to be upgraded right away in the off-season.
It was an exciting game to watch for a change. Everyone put their best effort on the floor and that’s all you can ask for.
“Build momentum for the offseason and next season.”
Momentum is a fools’ errand in professional sports. There are 5 months between the final buzzer of the regular season and tip-off of the next season. That is very naive, and something I would expect my 10 year old Pistons hat-and-jersey wearing son to say.
I personally would prefer a higher draft pick, and the worse the team does this season, the more likelihood that changes can happen once the team is sold. If the Pistons start winning games at the end, then we look for excuses (we already have CV in charge of excuse deployment, don’t we?) why this team shouldn’t be blown up if they can do it.