Hear me out, I know that home court is what we are shooting for, but that doesn't seem to be enough motivation for these guys right now, so let's remove that fallacy.

I don't want this to be another Darko debate, necessarily, but if that's what happens, then so be it.

I think that most here would agree that Joe D has some room for improvement with this roster, right? Of course, not all of us would agree which player/players should be moved/acquired, but I can't recall anybody recently saying "we should stand pat".

If we were to continue to go at a "Bulls-like" pace until the trade deadline passed, it would be nearly impossible for Joe D to make a major move of any kind. All you had to do is read here when things were going like gangbusters and you could hear the "don't mess with a good thing" posts pretty regularly. Joe would be crucified if he made a significant deal with a record breaking team (save all of your "Joe doesn't care what the media or fans think" comments please).

Now I'm not calling for wholesale changes, I'm not talking about starters here, strictly bench players. Now that we've lost a few games against teams that we should be beating, some flaws and weaknesses have really been exposed.

I guess that here is where I am going with this. Do you think losing now makes it more likely that Joe D makes a move before the deadline, to make us stronger for the playoff push, or do you think that nothing (except injury) that Joe sees in February will effect his willingness to make a deal?

Do you think losing now makes it more likely that Joe D makes a move before the deadline, to make us stronger for the playoff push, or do you think that nothing (except injury) that Joe sees in February will effect his willingness to make a deal?


In a word, Yes.

I also think loosing is good, because it might give the guys a kick in the ass, once in a while. They seemed to be getting "full" the last week or so. This is a good thing.

I really don't think we have any chips to trade outside of Milicic. Arroyo probably has little value, and that will only lessen when he cops an attitude when Hunter is taking his minutes. Delfino and Evans don't make enough to get back an upgrade and Dumars is not going to trade the starting five, McDyess or Davis.

I still think Dumars is hesitant to trade Milicic.

I never put weight into the absolute need for home court advantage - to blame our loss last year on it was ridiculous. To me that just takes the blame off the players, and the players lost that game. I actually think the lesser seed has the better home schedule in the finals. I say we gun to keep HC in the East and not worry about keeping up with SA/Dallas. I think it was LB's decision to play a seven man rotation was much more a factor in our losing game seven than playing in SA vs Detroit. We have ten games on Miami, and in reality probably shouldn't lose ten more games all season. Beating Miami on Sunday would really cement it in my opinion. Let's start playing our bench players and see what we got before the play-offs.

The way to look at it is losing exposes weakness. Eventually other teams will key on this weakness and possibly exploit it more. It's good this happened before the trade deadline, and not heading into May. Instead of the fear of tinkering with what's working, he can see what our weakness is and try and fix it before it's too late.

The problem is that there are ways to fix our weaknesses now though. Joe should be able to see our bakcup PG sucks, and Flip should see he needs to get Delfino in there more for Tay.

I agree with your premise, but I also think they should already know these weaknesses, especially since some of them were shown last year (not having a legit backup PG) by not winning it all.

All I know is I can't stand the way they are sleep-walking through games right now. It's like watching the NBA version of Dawn of the Dead.

I agree with CM. Dumars is a little hesitant to trade Darko. I guess he's just going to wait for a bit.

I agree with everything WTFCHRIS said.

Arroyo had a few flashy passes, some good nights but recently, he has had shitty games. Billups is logging in a lot of minutes.

Delfino should be used more, even if he was to backup Billups. I think Delfino could be more flexible. I even remember PAcers announcers say something along the lines of, "Delfino is the energy and bench player they need." I agree. Flip needs to use him more.