The 4-7 #Pistons are back at The Palace to play the back end of their home-and-home against 7-5 Atlanta Hawks on Friday night. Both teams came out of the gate slow in their first meeting Wednesday night, and you could see that their schedules had something to do with it. Atlanta had a tough loss in Miami Tuesday and Detroit, who ho just came back from a long West coast road, trip played the Knicks Tuesday night got on a plane to take on the Hawks 24 hours later.
Detroit will try to redeem themselves at home for a game that could have easily been a win. It was clear that the Pistons ran out of gas in the fourth quarter. Some may consider this a scheduling loss, but the Pistons aren’t making any excuses.
- The good: Surprising to most, Rodney Stuckey has been the most consistent Piston. Stuckey who’s providing a spark off the bench for the Pistons, is knocking down his shots and keeping Detroit in games. Stuckey is averaging 17.8 points in the Pistons last four games. Even after the collapse in Atlanta, Basketball Odds at SportsBettingOnline.ag are on the Detroits’ favor.
- The bad: Former Hawk Josh Smith didn’t set Atlanta on fire in the Pistons Wednesday night loss, in fact Smith matched his second lowest point total for the season with just 11 against his former team. Could it have been his not so warm reception by the organization and its fans? Smith received a slightly warm response during the introductions, but only real applause he got on the night was after the first timeout of the game when a “Thanks Josh Smith” message was up on the big screen. The applause he got every time he missed a shot doesn’t count right?
Hometown boy Kentavious Caldwell-Pope also didn’t fare well going just 1 of 9 for four points. - The unknown: Chauncey Billups and Will Bynum are still listed as day-to-day.
Stat: Rodney Stuckey leads the Eastern Conference in bench scoring, ave raging 14.6 off the bench.
Andre Drummond is till leading the NBA in field goal percentage with 65.0%.
Fact: Charlie Villanueva needs four points to reach 6000 career points. Questions is, will he ever get any playing time to do it.
Head out to the Palace of Auburn Hills to see if Josh Smith can make some three’s against his former team. Tickets as low as $10 – Offer Code : gopistons
Tip off is at 7:30 pm and will be broadcast on Fox Sports . If you can’t catch the game on TV, catch it on the radio over at 97.1 the Ticket.
Pistons need to have the shooters like Gigi, KCP and Singler step up and start hitting their shots from 3 pt land.
Looks like Singler gets the start tonight at SF instead of a slumping JSmoove.
Go Pistons.
stuck and slingler played decent everyone else was horrible, missed assignments, no showing by the bigs, inability to guard their shooters, leaving the lane open, poor passing, horrible shot selection, so-called shooters that can’t shoot, josh smith who shoujld never be allowed to be called a “small forward” again, just pencil him as power forward forever and ever, he’s fine there but on the perimeter he is a disaster.
Without stuckey and singler playing some great basketball we would have lost by 50. didn’t look at the box score and I think I’m not gonna.
I DO NOT LIKE JOSH SMITH JENNINGS AND CHEEKS
Dropping both against ATL and the one against Portland isn’t ok. That’s 3 games behind expectation only 12 games in!
-A mix of experimenting on system and experimenting on roster every game – 11 games in that has to stop.
-Generally I like the quicker semi-tranistion offence. Also like Jennings getting more assists. But how to mix quick offence and off-ball movement at the 2/3 with impact inside? Mr Cheeks’ job to demonstrate.
-Glad to not sit here pissed off with Jennings and Smith wasting my time with poor shot selection.
-I’ve not liked the minutes given to singler – he hasn’t been worth them – but I see how him starting adds movement on the offence and how his defense has picked up. Still want to see a slight reduction on minutes and have JJ/Gigi play some.
-Are these guys really inspired?
Another loss. J. Smith missed practice/ slumping so he come off the bench (0 pt) and Singler made the most of his start leading the Pistons in scoring. BJ had 14 assists but did not score much. Good game for Stuck and another double/double for Dre and Moose. Jhorts got some playing time and made the most of it by scoring 7 with 5 RB. He was 1-1 from 3 pt land.
KCP is still going through some growing pains with his shooting but he had 4 steals. With Bynum and Chauncey hurt they might as well play the rookie and give him some valuable experience. Hopefully he can settle down and hit 33% of his shots from downtown.
Disappointing start to the season so far.