New York (11-19) at Detroit (11-19)

Game info: 7:30 pm EST Tue Dec 29, 2009
TV: MSG, FSD

By KATE HEDLIN, STATS Writer
Dec 28, 4:47 pm EST

When they opened the season, the Detroit Pistons probably didn’t envision it would be almost two months before they would get three of their top players on the floor together again.

Although the returns of Richard Hamilton(notes), Tayshaun Prince(notes) and Ben Gordon(notes) couldn’t stop Detroit from matching its losing streak of the season, the Pistons will try to avoid dropping their eighth straight game Tuesday night when they face the visiting New York Knicks.

The Pistons (11-19), who also lost seven straight from Nov. 15-27, has had just two eight-game slides since January 1995. The most recent was from Feb. 8-25.

To get back in the win column for the first time since Dec. 12, Detroit hopes its second game with a healthy lineup will go better than the first.

On Sunday, Hamilton, Prince and Gordon played together for the first time since the season opener on Oct. 28, but the Pistons lost 102-95 at Toronto. The three combined for 39 points, but Hamilton and Gordon were 10 of 35 from the floor while Prince was 4 of 8.

Hamilton had missed 26 of the previous 28 games with a sore hamstring while Prince had been out since Oct. 31 with a sore back. Gordon came off the bench for his first minutes since Dec. 6 after being sidelined by a sore left ankle.

Pistons rookie head coach John Kuester realizes it will take some time for them to get into a rhythm.

“It’s an adjustment for those guys,” he said. “It is going to take some time. All of our guys are getting acclimated to them again. But it was refreshing to watch them play and see how they can compete.”

The trio gave a slight boost to a struggling offense that hasn’t reached 100 points in the last seven games, and has shot 35.2 percent in the last three.

Detroit was able to take some positives away from Sunday’s game, which came four days after being held to 64 points in a home defeat to the Raptors. The Pistons had lost the previous four by double-digit margins and they came back from 19 points down at the half.

“We had our chances tonight,” Gordon said. “With all the injuries and guys coming back, I still thought we had a chance to win the game.”

While the Knicks (11-19) are dealing with their own offensive struggles, they have put together a stingy defense. They held a 10th straight opponent to fewer than 100 points on Sunday - the first time since a 19-game run from Feb. 18-March 26, 2001 - but lost 95-88 to San Antonio.

It was the third straight game New York was held below 90 points. Still, New York averages 100.7 points.

“I didn’t think it was a problem about scoring,” David Lee(notes), who matched a season-high 28 points and had 10 rebounds, told the Knicks’ official Web site. “We just didn’t get enough stops and they executed well.”

With the loss, New York finished with a 3-2 homestand during which Lee averaged 21.0 points and 14.6 rebounds. The Knicks, who are beginning a three-game road trip, are 4-9 away from home.

New York has won two of its last three visits to the Palace of Auburn Hills after losing 10 straight.

Lots of excitement for this one.

Probably a good move holding Bynum out with the ankles still bothering him and a full complement of guards available.
I hope at least one of them decides to move the ball and get others involved.

It's not as if we dont have Atkins to replace him as a backup, anyway

Helluva game thread...and I'm not being intellectually dishonest one fuckin bit.

Cajonas Jerebko!

We can't shoot from distance, we aren't posting up, and we aren't defending very well.

The result is on the scoreboard.

NY is just sitting a soft zone in the lane. Either we start making shots, or we dont win this game.

The Knicks are actually able to move the ball, because we have to play defense farther out than 10 feet, and it spreads the floor.

The alternative would be to play better defense and force some turnovers. But its hard to do that with a frontcourt of Wilcox and V.

Also, I dont like Jerebko at PF. At least Maxiell was a post up threat and added some extra muscle inside. Jonas is not a threat in the halfcourt unless he's hitting threes. Those offensive rebounds will not come as easy against power forwards.

Jonas is getting his ass beat on the glass.

could not be more disappointed in our defense. We're getting killed in the halfcourt by a very poor halfcourt offense.

Individually, we're doing a very poor job, and team-wise the help defense has not been there. The Knicks are getting anything they want. The only thing keeping this from being a 20-point game is their own awful shot selection.

These are things that have little to do with us not having a post big. We can still play good defense, but we're not.

Allowing a team of poor shooters like the knicks to shoot %50 is not getting the job done. We're only down 9, but the defense has been a lot worse than that.

Jonas has 1 rebound, and he has zero points in our halfcourt offense. He can't play power forward better than Maxiell. Let him back up Tayshaun, please. I want to go back to at least being a quality rebounding team. I don't know why we went away from that by going small again.

Ben Wallace is the only Piston with more than 3 rebounds. Against a soft ass team like the Knicks, thats pathetic.

i guess this "new" teams needs some time to get used to each other, but i agree the D is shitty and there is no excuse for that

Well, the D was poor before, but we made up for it by out rebounding the shit out of the other team. Now we've torpedoed that by benching Kwame and Maxiell, who although shitty all-around players, at least played D and rebounded.

Maybe those moves made sense when we didnt have enough scorers, but thats not an issue anymore. The little offensive boost JJ and Wilcox give us is outweighed by the fact neither one does anything down low om either end.

And sadly, both Kwame and Maxiell are better post players than JJ and Wilcox.

offensively, the only guy not really doing his job was rip.

You're 1-10, asshole. Make some fucking shots. We pay you $11 million to make open shots.

Jerebko at PF next to Ben is a big fail. Start CV or continue to get waxed Kuester.

offensively, the only guy not really doing his job was rip.
on defense no one is doing their job. And Rip is cold but, you don't stop shooting if you are a shooter.

i guess this "new" teams needs some time to get used to each other, but i agree the D is shitty and there is no excuse for that
Jerebko sucks as a PF and it gives us no one on one options in the paint with him and Ben together.

Nice lil stretch

This is starting to sting a lil bit. I thought we would've taken this game over by now.

well, we havent played any defense the entire game, so I'm not sure why you'd think that.

I don't know how Chris Wilcox got all these minutes all of a sudden. He's the worst defensive big I've ever seen. He can't rebound, block shots or defend the post, and yet he played damn near the entire 3rd quarter.

Between Wilcox and Jerebko, most highschool teams would have been able to get points at the rim on us. They have a COMBINED 17 blocks on the season. That's 17 blocks for two 6'10" guys in 60 combined games.

Maxiell has done more in 5 minutes than JJ and Wilcox did the entire game.

All of a sudden, we're getting scores and the ball is moving, because we actually have someone that can score with his back to the basket.

Lee is gonna make a ton of $ this summer

after 3+ quarters of Maxiell sitting on the bench, we're now running plays for him. I love this team. We have absolutely no clue what we want to do out there.

Maxiell should be starting immediately. I don't care that Jerebko is a fan favorite. He's a 6'10" player that plays like he's 6'2." Maxiell is a 6'5" player that plays 6'10."

If we want to win games, Jerebko will be on the bench as of Thursday. He's not better than Tayshaun Prince at the 3 or Maxiell at the 4. Enough of this bullshit.

And put Kwame the fuck back in. I don't need to see Wilcox getting toasted anymore.

I hope they put Darko in.

This game is going to spawn a whole lot of trade talk, but that's taking away from the main problem. We are not getting stops, and we're not getting rebounds.

The skeleton crew that we started the season with would wipe the floor with this rotation, and they were way more limited offensively.

I really hope I dont see any postgame quotes about making more shots. I'll start to lose faith in this team if we do.

we got out-rebounded 44-33 by the Knicks, the 3rd worst rebounding team in the NBA, and gave up %51 shooting to a team that shoots %44.

I don't like our roster at all.

Just a point shy of getting 105-87'ed.

Joy.

I don't like our roster at all.


The roster is fine. They are getting killed in areas they were killing other teams earlier this year. That's all on the coach not playing the right combinations.

We were a tough team defensively and on the glass with our gutted roster in november. Now we're not tough and we rebound like shit. Both of these things happened when we over-reacted to Kwame and Maxiell having a bad stretch when we didnt have any offensive guards to make open shots.

Now, we have those guards, but we are using the same shit knee-jerk frontcourt that we were using when chucky atkins and Austin Daye were getting huge minutes.

We won games by going big, forcing teams to score form the perimeter and crashing the glass. Now we've taken those advantages away, and we're throwing the 5 best offensive players we have out there instead of simply putting guys out there that compliment each other.

Wilcox makes sense with Bynum, Atkins and Summers on the floor. He makes zero sense with Gordon, and Tayshaun.

Jerebko makes sense at SF alongside Ben and Max/V. He makes zero sense at PF alongside big ben.

Kwame playing with Jerebko, Maxiell and Austin makes no sense. But alongside V, Tayshaun, Gordon and Stuckey? he makes a ton of sense.

And HOW THE FUCK DOES BEN WALLACE ONLY PLAY 22 MINUTES WHEN THE OTHER TEAM'S CENTER WAS FUCKING DESTROYING US TO THE TUNE OF 30/10?

If we play the right rotation, we can be a quality basketball team. But we have to stop this NBA live shit of throwing out 5 guys that all want to score and dont rebound or play D.

They are what we said they would be... why get silly bout it?

because it doesn't have to be like this. They are beating themselves now. They have the roster to be a 50-win team, although injuries have killed any chance of that, they can still be a damn good team if they just use their roster correctly.

What bugs me more is that some idiots are going to put this on Rip or Gordon or V, or some other stupid shit, because god forbid anybody says anything negative about Jerebko. Apparently he has to start, consequences be dammed. He got pummeled like a $2 whore against Al Harrington and Jared Jeffries. Come the fuck on.

You cannot tell me that we dont a roster capable of rebounding or playing D. That's the reason we're losing, not offense.

What bugs me more is that some idiots are going to put this on Rip or Gordon or V, or some other stupid shit, because god forbid anybody says anything negative about Jerebko. Apparently he has to start, consequences be dammed. He got pummeled like a $2 whore against Al Harrington and Jared Jeffries. Come the fuck on.


Pummeled by Harrington and Jeffries? Were we watching the same game? We lost because no one could contain David Lee or guard the 3 point line. Jeffries was a pest on D, but this is not Jerebko's fault. Jonas was not a stand-out, but to single him out is ridiculous. He's one of the few that has shown a pulse lately.

It doesn't help that Rip is a black-hole on offense. People complain about Rodney taking 17 shots a game with no one else in the lineup, but it's no problem when Rip bricks till his heart is content (nearly all from 20+ feet out) with everyone back. At least when Rodney misses shots (drives) there's a chance for a put-back with the collapsed D. Continuously chucking from the perimeter puts your defense in a bad spot.

As for Ben Wallace not playing a lot... To be fair, he was getting torched by Lee when he was in (same as against Bosh and West recently). I'm sure the word has come down to go easy on his minutes. He has already fallen off noticeably since the beginning of the year. At this pace, he won't be able to play by the all-star break.

I do agree that Kuester cannot afford to go to small-ball. They were winning before because Jonas is a very good rebounder/defender at the 3. At the 4, he's a bit undersized, and seems to be more foul prone Now, they're subbing guys that hustle/rebound for Rip and Tayshaun, who do not. Obviously these areas are going to take a hit.

At this point, Rip needs to go. He's the 3rd best SG on this team at the moment, and he acts like he thinks he's Kobe Bryant. The guys who feel "entitled" need to be removed, and the roster rebalanced so that Kuester doesn't feel forced into weird lineups just to keep the prima-donnas happy.

Rips' been back for all of 2 games. He deserves more slack than that.

The guy thrives on coming off screens. It's hard to do that when only one guy on the floor knows how to set one.

I think people are over-reacting to the situation.

Yes, we were busting our asses with a shitty team not so long ago and everyone was ok with things.

Now, we get back 3 serious offensive cogs and people assume the team is just gonna click overnight?

WTF?

You guys watch enough/know enough about the game to know that if you insert one serious offensive weapon into a line-up it takes time to work shit out.

We added 2 and a half (lol). How the fuck is it gonna happen in 2 games?

Blah, blah, blah, the lack of effort on D, blah, blah, blah someone's fault, blah, blah, blah someone's injured blah, blah, blah

It's a process. Once Nova and Bynum are healthy and the team can play full-strength for a week or 2 we might actually see where we're at.

As for a lack of effort from certain dudes on D - what do you expect? The guys that just came back aren't in top shape and will not be going all out on both ends yet (do they ever?).

And the guys that were playing before the trio returned have now had their minutes/roles adjusted as the Coach searches for combinations that work with his offensive guys.

Surely we're all smart enough to see that, right?

Why the big hissy fit?

Jonas Jerebko is not suited to play power forward on this team. You can give him another 50 games, it won't matter. Same with Wilcox playing center. They physically cannot perform the task.

Last night they played poorly as a team, but they also lost a ton of individual matchups, things that had nothing to do with dealing with a new rotation. We were out-muscled all night by a knicks team that is pretty small themselves. I don't care if we had 12 new players, that's a sign that you arent putting good enough rotations out there.

Or it's a sign the Knicks looked at the schedule and thought "Fuck - we could win this if we make an effort"

They made the effort - we struggled to fit in pieces and we missed shots.

So we lost.

Time for the next game... let's see how the Coach and players respond.