The 17-25 #Pistons will host the 16-25 New Orleans Pelicans Friday night at the Palace of Auburn Hills. The struggling Pistons will try to make things right on their home court against the Pelican’s team that’s won the last three against Detroit.
The good: It’s getting even more difficult to pick out the positives for this Pistons team. Besides the budding All-Star the team has in Andre Drummond, the only real thing to look forward to is a Pistons deal before the trade deadline. And even that we can have concerns with.
The bad: Detroit continually loses games they should win, they can’t seem to hold on to late game leads, and they are utterly awful on their home court. Detroit has given up 110.8 points per game on 49.1 percent shooting, including 40.2 from beyond the arc while dropping 9 of 11.
To top it off, I personally don’t trust Joe Dumars to make a legitimately sound deal. We may want to see things change, but are truly scared to be in a worse position after a deal is done.
The unknown: Can Detroit win this one against a short handed Pelicans team with Ryan Anderson and Jrue Holiday out? Anderson was a big reason why the Pistons lost the last one to New Orleans.
Injuries: Pistons: None
Pelicans: Ryan Anderson, Jrue Holiday and Jason Smith are out.
Stat: Greg Monroe scored a season-high 28 points at New Orleans (12/11).
Stat: New Orleans won the opener and swept the season series last season and has won three straight as well as five straight games
at New Orleans Arena against Detroit.
Sad Fact: The Pistons are 7-of-14 a
Tip off is at 7:30 pm and will be broadcast on Fox Sports Detroit . If you can’t catch the game on TV, catch it on the radio over at 97.1 The Ticket.
At this point citing or mentioning Greg Monroe’s stats or game history or game potential seems pointless. Monroe is not a part of the future at this point. Sitting Greg for Josh Smith against the Buck makes me feel like their’s either a potential move in place or at least a proposed trade. Likely a dumb one. Part of me almost wishes they would just ride the season out, resign Moose and use that amnesty on Josh Smith (never gonna happen though). I’m now convinced that the Championship Core was luck for Dumars. I have no more faith in his ability to build a team.
I like some of where you’re coming from, but you’re grossly misinformed. We have no amnesty provision. The final real chance we had to use it was last year on Charlie’s contract. At this point Josh is probably here to stay. Glad you finally see the light that Dumars had an incredible run of dumb luck in his first few years (he didn’t even WANT Ben Wallace). But Joe losing his job isn’t enough of a silver lining to make this any less of a catastrophe. If we don’t make a major deadline move or two, this franchise is going to be stuck in hell for a very, very long time. Like it or not, you need to trade Monroe before he hits restricted free agency, and you need to trade Stuckey before he hits unrestricted free agency. If not it’s IMPOSSIBLE to imagine a 2014-2015 season that’s any better than this one. $10 mil in cap space isn’t going to fix this.
Otis…very well said. Sad but so true.
@Otis-I was wrong on how the amnesty clause works. I just looked it up. Very, highly, grossly misinformed indeed. I also understand the need to trade Monroe and truly believe Stuckey needs to go. I wished they would have traded him instead of Aaron Afflalo back with the Iverson/Chauncy trade. I think this may be a problem though due to his injuries and Mo Cheeks seems to really like Stuckey, which makes the kind of sense that doesn’t. Plus Dumars has a bad track record of rewarding players who overachieve in contract years with more than appropriate extensions that are not lived up to (Maxiel, Stuckey part 1, Rip). Run on sentences…You know I love ’em. My point with Monroe was I wish the Pistons weren’t in the position to need to trade him just to attempt to salvage the season. I prefer to Monroe to Josh Smith any day. Should have clarified it better. I know Josh Smith’s contract=cap hell for years to come.
mf U can not amnesty josh. The CBA had an agreement any contract signed before the new CBA (december 2011) could be amnestied so basically Charlie or stuckey could be amnestied. new contracts (after 2011) can not be amnestied.
EDT I realize that now. My last comment states my mistake.
Hey Natalie, any chance I could submit a guest article? I’m a writer and editor, and I have somewhat of a following over at PistonPowered. I don’t know how much good it could do, but I think the points I made above are crucial and I’d love some sort of forum outside of a comments section to explain to the masses just how important this trade deadline is. If this team isn’t making deals by the deadline I honestly don’t know how much passion I’ll ever have for this team again. If not that’s cool too, but I thought I’d at least ask! 🙂
didnt mean to pile on MF, I dont think anyone understands the new CBA completely
Missed this game. Had tacos with my friend Bill instead. Not only are tacos awesome, but I feel strangely relieved I didn’t have to watch the team collapse in the 4th quarter again.
I didn’t mean to imply you were. Sorry about that. I really didn’t understand the amnesty part of CBA. I read up on it and it made sense. Someone explained it to me wrong. I think you’re right…most don’t understand how it works
You’ll just bash Greg Monroe if u write a column here Otis
Huge 20/20 game by Dre. Unfortunately, Cheeks went with a small lineup (Smith,Singler, KCP, BJ, and Stuckey) for the last shot of the game because of Dre`s FT shooting issues. Eric Gordon had the ball with 19 seconds on the clock while the other Pelicans spread the floor. Gordon got past KCP and layed it up over JSmoove. No other Piston helped out. Way too easy. No Dre to attmept to block the most important shot of the game.
edt, that’s not what I’d do. And you have my word, if we didn’t have a younger, better center on the roster, I would not complain about paying Monroe whatever stupid salary he’s about to get. Unfortunately you can’t build around two centers. Nobody has ever done it, and it’s especially ridiculous in today’s NBA.