Butler hits a tough falling shot to begin….Steve Buckhantz and Phil Chenier relate that Tapscott wants to get the star forwards (Butler/Jamison) off first…..but why?
Seems like those two should be able to get going at any time…it’s the scoring from the rest of the team which has been the concern.
Caron Butler is trying to do too much…..make, miss, gets caught in the air and has to pass to Blatche with one second on the shot clock — bad decision.
In anticipation of tonight’s match-up between the Wizards and Pistons, the third on the season, Jessie from the Pistons Nation agreed to answer a couple questions I had about his team. Read on….
1) The Pistons have gone 9-9 since Iverson has taken the court…..meanwhile, Mr. Big Shot and the Nuggets are 16-4….care to offer any hindsight on the trade?
Did you like it in the first place?
Would you do it differently?
Prior to trading Chauncey, did you seriously think that Detroit had championship material?
Hey…..did you guys know that the Wizards beat the Pistons [game blog on Bullets Forever]? In the midst of yesterday’s trade frenzy, I was unable to get down any thoughts on the game.
Once again, the Wiz had to claw their way back. In the first meeting with Detroit, they had to fight back just to be down 10, 31-21, at the end of the first quarter (the Wiz had been down 17 at the 3:30 mark). So, after putting themselves in a 29-14 hole after one quarter on Tuesday, you’ll have to excuse me if I wasn’t exactly confident in the ability to get a win.
But the team kept fighting, and that’s the main reason why people are saying that the Wizards are a much better team than their 4-15 record.
The Washington Post’s Ivan Carter especially noted Darius Songaila’s bucket to put the Wiz up 6 with 2:08 in the 4th as the turning point. I guess timeouts work because it wasn’t 20 seconds prior that the Pistons got three chances at the hoop, converting on the third, capping a quick 8-2 run in 2:15 to bring the Pistons within two points. But Tapscott halted play, Wes Unseld Jr. drew it up, and D-Song came to the rescue.
Not an ideal moment to have the camera pan on Nick Young…..Comcast shows a clip of Young talking about being “prepared” to guard Richard Hamilton. Then, Steve Buckhantz even brags about how Young did come prepared to play.
But alas, the camera catches Young, not with his ears burning, but his mouth open and yawning. What makes the scene weird is Young sitting right next to a 12-year old girl in a Pistons uniform. If I had to guess, I bet they talked extensively about Nickelodeon and unicorns……play it cool, hotshot.
Flickr tells me that the above picture is none other than Walter Herrmann….and I have to believe it. Something tells me that old school Walter Herrmann would totally have a hair-doo like Guile from Street Fighter only to go with the ‘Fabio’ look we’re graced with today.
So a guy with a pony-tail goes off on the Wizards and everyone becomes a drama queen. I mean just look at the picture….the guy is about to dunk with a ball on f-ing fire! It’s no wonder that Herrmann was hitting trey balls and finger rolls on the Wiz. For all we know, he could be the Argentinian Chuck Norris.
Plus, the dude has been through a TON in his life that not many can imagine. In July 2003, Herrmann lost his mother, younger sister, and girlfriend all in the same car crash. Exactly a year later, he had one of the best games of his career, 38 points and 11 rebounds, in leading Argentina in the South American Championships. After the game, he found out that his father had died of a heart-attack.
If the Wizards would’ve shot better that 37% against New Jersey, they would have won, right? Yea…..who knows. When it comes to winning and basketball, no two areas are preached more about than defense and rebounding, no matter what pulpit the message is coming from. So against the Pistons, for game blog purposes, I’m going to ignore the offense and concentrate on defense and rebounding. Not all boards are attainable, and you can play great defense and not stop a bulk of an opponent’s shots from going in. That being said, I’m going to attempt to selectively focus on the particularly great or horrendous occurrences in those areas. Q1
10:48: Ron Thompson mentioned that transition D would be key in the pregame show…here, Billups brings it down the middle in off a Wizards turnover (Etan had great position in the lane, just lost the ball). Amir Johnson comes to screen Antonio Daniels just inside the three point line. Jamison is laying back a little to protect the basket, but there’s just too much space, AJ needs to be closer to help on Chauncey. Billups takes one dribble off the screen and gets an easy jumper on the left elbow. Johnson’s screen was semi-illegal….but this is the NBA. 4-0 Detroit.
10:23: Next time down, Amir Johnson gets called for an illegal screen…..laid his butt into DeShawn.
I meant to get this post up before last night’s loss against the Pistons…..oh well….here’s to remembering last year’s Wizards history against the Pistons.
Wizards vs. Pistons in DC – January 2, 2008 Richard Hamilton had a rare flirtation with a triple-double (20 points, 9 assists, 7 rebounds). The Pistons won 106-93…the big statistical difference was that Detroit went 11-22 from long distance.
In other news: The Wizards tried to establish themselves inside early. Andray Blatche committed a flagrant foul on Jarvis Hayes in the 2nd. Overall, Blatche was listless.
In anticipation of tonight’s game between the Washington Wizards and the Detroit Pistons, I present a quick Q&A with Matt from the excellent Pistons blog, Detroit Bad Boys.
1) Over the summer, Joe Dumars said that no one was ‘untouchable’ and then did not make any major moves. How satisfied were you with what the Pistons did in the off-season coming into this year?
At first I was disappointed, but once it became apparent that Amir Johnson was going to start and Rodney Stuckey was expected to average 25-30 minutes, I got excited. Not a lot of team can undergo a youth movement while staying in contention, but I think the Pistons have a chance to pull it off. I’ve been dying to see Johnson get a fair shake the last two years and Stuckey looked like a future All-Star at times in the playoffs, so if all the pieces come together, it’ll be like the Pistons added two impact players to their rotation without giving anything up.
When Gilbert Arenas’ blog dropped the last week, I was all set to write a post on the past tumultuous relationship between him and Kwame Brown. However, I became distracted by Gilbert’s absurd lack of social responsibility. [Side Bar: I do realize that Gilbert's blog (or at least the one that some dude transcribes for him) spawning other bloggers to write blog posts (in some cases multiple) about his blog post could be considered absurd as well....and I'm comfortable with that possibility.]
What Arenas said about Brown and his migration to Motown seemed to be words of encouragement for the 26-year old, seven-year NBA vet.
I like that deal for Detroit and for Kwame. He’s in a quieter city now, he’s 26-years old, he’s on a veteran team, he’s growing up. In the past in D.C. and L.A. it was a case of him being a big kid in a big city, now he can settle his career down. You know that Sheed and McDyess and those other bigs will help him develop and this should be the best time of his career because in Detroit, the bigs get touches in the offense.
Don’t think that the Kwame Brown that was in Memphis is the real Kwame Brown. When you get traded, so much emotion goes into it and leaving a No. 1 team to come into a team with a bad record halfway through the season is a tough adjustment.
The Pistons have been tied to several potential blockbuster moves this summer, whether it be for Carmelo Anthony, Josh Smith, Tracy McGrady or Ron Artest. [side note: The 17th pick of the '04 NBA draft which was shipped from Detroit, via Milwaukee and Denver, to Atlanta in the Rasheed Wallace trade was used by the Hawks to select Josh Smith.] But nothing has come to fruition since Joe Dumars built “big splash” expectations by deeming everyone available (with perhaps Jason Maxiell and Rodney Stuckey as the lone exceptions).
So now, after being on the latter end of “win or go home” in the Eastern Conference Finals for the past three years, this is Joe D’s answer. A guy in Kwame Brown who once, at the age of 24, destroyed a stranger’s cake, getting it all over the man, before ducking into a limo like a hoe, has been anointed to push the Detroit Pistons over the top.
Good luck with that one Motor City. Will Kwame finally find his way under consummate vet, Antonio McDyess? Or will his attitude travel the path of Rasheed Wallace? How will any of these guys affect Walter Sharpe? In any case, $8 million over two-years is not exactly a low-risk move.
Q1
