Gonna be weird.

I'm over him leaving, looks like it was good for both sides.

Anybody that says they would have turned down the extra money that Chicago was offering is probably not being honest with us or himself. Especially since he has a huge family that comes from poverty. He's probably taking care of 60-100 people.

An added bonus is that he also got away from Saunders.

The guy helped bring us a ring, and that's always going to be what I remember.

I'd cheer.

I'd clap, no chear. He's a rival now, so he doesn't deserve any cheering. Opponents should not be cheered, ever. They should be applauded for accomplishments (in the same manner a player getting up from being hurt is), but not cheered. He should not be booed either. he's done enough here to deserve a pass on going to chicago IMO.

I'd ignore him. The significance of the game isn't found in Ben's return, IMO. It lies in the fact that Chicago is a big division and conference rival. I want us to mercilessly bludgeon them and send them home with their tails between their legs. We need to send a message that they can't compete with us when we're at our best.

Personally, I'm still a little bitter about Ben's almost single-handed effort in destroying our team chemistry last year. If there's a guy out there who can look me in the eye and say that Ben didn't play the biggest role in screwing us out of the championship that was most definitely ours for the taking, I'd like to meet him. All in all, it's over and done with.

It's Detroit vs. Chicago for me, though. Ben who?

If there's a guy out there who can look me in the eye and say that Ben didn't play the biggest role in screwing us out of the championship that was most definitely ours for the taking, I'd like to meet him.
Flip Saunders.

Flip had shitty rotations. Flip didn't push defense enough (although the team should have known better based on previous experience). Flip drove Ben into his madness. I'm not saying its all on Flip and I'm not saying he was worse than Big Ben. I'm just saying he hold equal responsibility in last years debacle.

Ben deserves a standing ovation when he's introduced, and i think that's what he'll get.

What he brought to this city and to us, as fans, was amazing. I got a chance to witness an NBA Championship parade and that's something I'll never forget. I was always a Piston's fan, before a Ben Wallace fan, but I acknowledge what's he's done for me as a fan. True, he's the enemy now, but as a Piston's fan he brought me so much enjoyment that I can't overlook that.

However, once he airballs a FT, he deserves another standing ovation :D

He'll definately get a mix of cheers and boos. I want to cheer him for the fact he made us what we are today. I want to boo because I agree with Atticus that he's the reason we didn't bring home a title last year and the fact that he signed with our historic rivals.

I'll do neither. Maybe both.

If you do a mix, it's best to cheer duing intro, then boo when he touches the ball. let him know you appreciate what he was, but dislike what he is now.

Cheer and play the gong when he misses a FT.

I will be there, and I will cheer, and Chauncey played much worse last year in the playoffs than Ben did.

Fuck Ben...he was the main reason the locker room was torn last year. I am glad to see the fellas have got past that and are playing together again. I will be there and I will enjoy watching my pistons bitchslap his bulls

Cheer and play the gong when he misses a FT.

Better than anything I thought of. I would cheer him during his intro.

I'd cheer him for being a huge part of why it became fun to be a piston fan again after so many years of crap.

I'll be there, I'm going to give him one standing O for all he did for his time in Detroit. After that he gets treated the same way PJ Brown and Nocioni do.

I'll probably cheer at 1st, then boo when the game actually starts.....but not because he left for the money. My life isn't crappy, so I don't have to take out my frustrations on sports players (see: Dwyane Wade thread) . All I care about is my Lakers and Pistons. If you don't roll with those teams, your ass is getting booed by me.

I boo or do nothing at all. There is no way that I cheer him...

Maybe I'm just an asshole?

Anyone that cheers a Chicago Bull should be lynched by his testicles.

Anyone that cheers a Chicago Bull should be lynched by his testicles.
I agree Bubbles.

I dont agree with all this but thought I'd post it anyway. It seems like some of these writers write this stuff and when Ben finally does slow down significantly in 2 maybe 3 years they can say, "told ya" Its going to happen to every NBA player but think this article is premature or maybe he has slowed some, but this article is a little harsh.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/6500404




Wallace is Not-So-Big Ben these days


The buzz around the league is that Ben Wallace is starting to lose the form that made him a four-time Defensive Player of the Year.

His dominating performance on Thursday when he registered 19 rebounds, 5 assists, 7 blocks and 2 steals in a big win over Cleveland was partially due to the rest he had over the All-Star break, and the fact that without Zydrunas Ilgauskas the Cavs were centerless.
Okay, but what about the similar numbers he posted during the Bulls' 105-90 shellacking of the visiting Wizards on Friday?


Wallace vs. the Wiz
MIN FGM-A FTM-A REBS A ST TO BS PTS
42 4-9 0-2 12 1 1 2 5 8

For sure, Big Ben corralled six offensive rebounds, had numerous deflections on defense, set effective screens, stymied Washington's post-up game (such as it is), and did a good job of protecting the basket. However, there were several mitigating circumstances, and he was also guilty of committing several downright flubs.


Ben Wallace had five blocks but couldn't keep Gilbert Arenas from scoring 36 points.

One of his offensive rebounds occurred when a teammate missed a shot and the loose ball bounced directly into his hands while his feet were on the floor. Two others resulted when missed shots hit the floorboards, and rolled in his direction like easy ground balls hit right at an infielder. Also, he was literally unopposed when he captured two of his defensive rebounds.
In all, Wallace set 16 screens. Although he was clearly moving on seven of them, the refs didn't seem to notice.
He reacted in a surprisingly passive fashion whenever the Wiz made him defend high screen/rolls.
Brendan Haywood posted Wallace once and was pressed into shooting an airball. Etan Thomas took Wallace into the pivot twice with Big Ben slapping away and stealing a dribble, and then deflecting an entry pass. But Haywood and Thomas are among the most ineffective post-up scorers in the league.
Haywood and Thomas did manage, however, to repeatedly out-muscle Wallace and push him toward the baseline and out of the rebounding scrum. In the third quarter, Caron Butler likewise moved Wallace under the basket and out of the play.
Wallace didn't start showing some life on defense until the Bulls had pulled away midway through the fourth quarter.
Twice Wallace was caught with his head turned and lost track of his man. He finally located Thomas and Haywood after they'd already received the ball near the foul line. Thomas made his uncontested jumper, while Haywood missed his.
Wallace overran the only perimeter closeout he was called upon to execute, but Butler missed an open triple.
Haywood was quicker off the floor and beat Wallace on two occasions to rebounds when Big Ben had the inside position.
Not to mention a 3-foot jumper that Wallace unleashed that nearly cracked the backboard. Nor a backhanded layup that he missed because he can't shoot with his left hand. Nor the right-handed layup he botched. Nor his misdribble he committed when he posted and tried to turn-and-face.

No, these misadventures on offense can't be held against him because Wallace isn't paid to score.


There was an overall lack of intensity in his performance against the Wiz that was entirely significant. At age 32, the constant pounding that the 6-9, 250-pound Wallace has given and taken against bigger, heavier and sometimes even stronger centers over the course of his 11-year career is beginning to take its toll. No more can he play with all-out intensity all of the time. (Which is precisely why Detroit made little effort to re-sign him.) And especially in the playoffs, picking his spots to go at it (as he did against Washington) will be fatal to the Bulls' chances of extending their season.

And if Wallace's play versus the Wiz was a step back from his performance against the Cavs, what's next? What will happen when his five-day vacation becomes a distant memory and the season begins to grind away again? Or when he has to guard a center with the know-how and the skills to repeatedly put the ball in the hole? (Like Webber, or Shaq, or Ilgauskas, or Duncan, or Curry, or Howard, and so on.)

Even in the prime of his career, Wallace was infamous among his peers for playing much more tentatively on the road than at home. Perhaps that's a considerable factor in the Bulls' 10-18 record away from the United Center.

So, then, how does Wallace's defense rate these days? If he used to be a 9 on a scale of 10, he's now a 7½. Thus far, Wallace is playing slightly more than 34 minutes per game, which is a rate to which Scott Skiles should strictly adhere. Too many more 42-minute ball games will only hasten Wallace's decrepitude — and Not-So-Big Ben might only be operating as a 6 by the Ides of April.

Ah, but the Bulls are in hot pursuit of at least a finals appearance — and in the wonderful, wacky world of the NBA, the future doesn't exist and now is forever.

Charley Rosen is FOXSports.com's NBA analyst and author of 13 books about hoops, the current one being "The pivotal season — How the 1971-72 L.A. Lakers changed the NBA."

Ben has slowed down...he is no where near the player today that he was on 04

what a clown charlie rose is. nice breakdown.

"ben got a rebound, but his feet were on the ground?"

um, what?

"jordan won the championship, but rarely displayed the athleticism that made him 'air jordan'".

fuck charlie rose. he's never been much of an analyst, and this clown piece dropped him off the map for me.

who the fuck uses "decripitude" and "ides" in an nba piece?

You meant Charley Rosen. Charlie Rose is someone quite different.

I like the fact that Rosen attempts to look at what players do when they don't have the ball. Sometimes he draws some nifty conclusions, but I think he misinterpreted Ben's deliberate nose for the ball as happenstance. Ben doesn't just happen to be where most of the rebounds are. Rosen did call out some aspects of Ben's performance that I've bitched about in the past (road vs. home). But I suspect that, like most of his articles, 90% of it was written before he saw Ben play that game. He watches, looks for justification to fit the article he was planning to write, and fills in the Mad Lib. It's hard to be too critical of 5 blocks and 12 rebounds, but he does his best.

My take on Rosen's is that he's a bitter old man who feels he ought to have amounted to more in basketball than hanging onto Phil Jackson's jock So, he goes out of his way to show knowledge where it may not necessarily exist. Having just used the word "happenstance" in a sentence, I'm not going to criticize his word choice. :)

1pm can't come soon enough for me...

Well, I agree with Chauncey Billups (quoted from the Detroit News):

The Pistons players will be highly disappointed if Wallace isn't cheered upon his introduction.

"I wouldn't boo Ben," Chauncey Billups said. "He was with this franchise all that time (six seasons). I wouldn't even second-guess it -- I'd give him a standing ovation. He won a championship with this team. He was the face of this franchise for a lot of years and he made a decision (to leave) based on his family. It wasn't about the Pistons, it was his family. No way I would even think about booing him if I was a fan."

If I were attending the game, I'd stand up and cheer when Ben Wallace was introduced. Shoot, I might do it watching the game from home.

I can understand why people would boo Grant Hill on his return. But I can't fathom why ANYONE would boo Ben Wallace. All the Pistons starters (players???) would have made the same decision he made. If you want to boo anyone, boo Joe Dumars and Bill Davidson for not re-signing him.

Will Big Ben have a bad hair day?

We find out in 3 hours. :)

yea, i dont have too much against charlie rose. maybe that he gets a boner over anyone with an iq. but hes not a clown.

chauncy is right. and i'll throw in that c-webb really should make it all good with all parties involved. we really did land on our feet.

however, carlisle turned into a villain and we fired him, so all bets are off.

I'd give Ben polite applause in his introduction, and then during the game boo him (but not anything special, usual opponent boo)

CWebb hits a three!

So everyone else has to try...

LMAO- anybody notice sheed brought a headband over to ben during warmups? sheed is such a clown, he must be hilarious to have as a teammate like him.

Crowd is a little quiet. I'm sure the ice storm and a 1 pm start having something to do with it.

Lazy-ass pass by Sheed gets Ben the gong-less dunk.

Who was Sheed passing to?? Ben?? WTF?

Ok. End of the first quarter and despite our uninspired play we are only down by two. Our defense sucked. Our passing was mediocre. Sheed was worthless which is surprising because I thought that he'd be up for this game. Oh well, we have three more quarters to fix things.

this is why chicago worries me a bit come playoff time. Unlike most of the other East, they care about playing good D. Their scoring has problems, but that can be overcome with disciplined D, as it was for us back in 03-04.

ABC announcer: "Do you want a LeBron jersey signed by LeBron... or DWade?"

No, they don't ride Wade's jock at all... not at all.

Delfino is being hated on.

that 2nd thomas block on delfino was CLEARLY goaltending. he layed the ball off the backboard and thomas blocked it!

anyway, if we played with the hunger and intensity the bulls are playing with we would be OK. but that rarely happens with us; we just expect our talent and experience will prevail.

we have to cut that crap out and play with the hunger we had back on our way to winning the title. the bulls have that now because they're trying to get there. we lost it long ago and haven't played to our potential since. :(

i'm not a 'hater' by any means, but that stupid wade commercial is old and irritating.

OK we get it- he's generous with his money. good for him. he should be. but do you really need to show it off and try to make yourself look like a good samaritan by donating to a youth basketball team and their coach in a commercial? talk about advertising your good deeds...

sometimes i forget it's a car commercial and i think it's a commercial supporting wade's nomination as a living saint or something. give me a break...

I'm glad Lindsey has somewhat recalled how to shoot.

Ben must have got off the juice. His arms look like Tays.

the wade commercial with the angel/devil thing where dunks is one of my favorite b-ball commercials ever.

pistons are a 2nd half team. them being down early isnt surprising.

53 points at the half for Chicago. That's way too much, we'll need dynamite defensive to hold them under 90 for the game.

We have played really poorly IMO. Sheed shot 2-10, had two horrible turnovers that lead to 4 points, and doesn't want to rebound or defend his guy. We had their starting backcourt sitting on the bench for most of the half and are still getting whipped. Come F%$king on!!!!!!!

the bulls are playing very good D. credit them. but we're forcing bad shots up particularly around the paint area. if you're going to pump fake or go weak at the hoop, you're going to get swatted or you're going to draw a lot of rim. we've done PLENTY of that.

our shots around the hoop lately have not really been shots- they've been attempts to not get blocked. we're just floating it up there hoping not to get blocked. that's silly- you either attack the rim and take the foul or you move the ball to the open man.

we're passing up too many good shots and ending up taking very difficult, low percentage shots.

we need j-max or somebody who will attack the rim with vigor.

It's because their interior D is stronger that's forcing up these weak interior shots. See when Rip tried a wacky clutch move because Ben was coming up against him. Sheed had some other lame attempt inside becasue someoen (I think PJ) was right in his grill.

I'd *love* to see Mad Max charge in there.

another thing, with the pick and rolls with ben and one of their guards......why aren't we fighting over the top of the pick? we KNOW their shooters are going to take those shots, so fight over the screen and get up on them FCOL!

is ben really that great an offensive weapon that we have to be scared of stepping above the screen, because he's going to get it and drive and finish on us? please- that might happen once. we need to fight over the screens on the screen and rolls and DEFEND.

we're waiting for things to go our way instead of MAKING them go our way. the bulls want this game more than us and if we don't wake up, we're going to lose and perhaps in embarassing fashion. (10points or more on our home floor)

i hope we step up and start playing to our ability.

Good to see Tay brought his vagina today.

that 2nd thomas block on delfino was CLEARLY goaltending. he layed the ball off the backboard and thomas blocked it!


He should have gone for the dunk anyways. We don't need a 2nd Tayshaun in there going soft with everything.

yes, their very good interior D is part of it. but when you're going at a shot blocker, you go RIGHT AT THEM and hard. if you go weak or try to double clutch you'll get swatted.

if you try to be cute out there and you're scared of getting blocked, and you try double pumping and avoiding the contact, you're SURE to get blocked or put up a shot with almost no chance of going in. right now we're not shooting at the basket; we're flipping it up in the direction of the basket, hoping it goes in.

go strong or don't go at all. sure you'll get blocked now and then. but you'll draw contact more times and get to the line.

yeah prince looks like he has no energy. if you barely make the first FT and it rolls in, you KNOW you have to get your legs into the 2nd one. but no- he draws front rim and shoots it WAY short.

come on baby- drink some gatorade or something. his energy (and the whole team except for a couple of guys) looks lazy out there.

During ABC's report of the half-time when Lisa Saulters was talking about what Flip was saying, anyone notice what wasn't said?

We are getting pwned.

I'm glad our new focus on offense is working. It would be completely stupid to expend energy on BOTH ends of the floor...

Then again, it would also be nice to have somebody other than Sheed that could play interior defense.

Seriously, ANYBODY.

This is goddamn depressing. This is what WE used to do against our opponents.

Take notes Pistons, maybe you can remember what it's like to be a defensive team before Flip turned you all into pussies.

FUCK YEAH MAD MAX.

MAX just fucked Ben up!

Too bad he comes down and misses the layup.

Too bad he comes down and misses the layup.

Yeah well it was a Chicago goaltend so he didn't really miss anything.

BTW that flop by Gordon really pissed me off.

wow nothing is dropping for us....pathetic

we should put ben wallace + freethrows in.

ben's looking like he's worth the money right now, no? and our 30 million dollar paper weight looks to be the overpaid one. who could have seen that coming?

(me, for those not paying attention last offseason).

this game sucks. chicago's interior D is so much better than ours, i dont know if we beat them in the playoffs. probably not, actually. im looking for some monster d from us, where we hold them to no field goals for like 10 minutes. god we need it.

Max is a fuckin man among boys.

get momentum, and the crowd, and we an charge back into this game. that tech by ben might help. thanks ben.

what hubie doesnt know is that there is no such thing as a bad foul on ben wallace. this has been an amzing stretch, that i'm pretty sure i sparked.

lol Skiles is dumb, no timeout? thanks, from 14 down to 4, sweet

this stretch has not all been maxiell. but it shows that he NEEDS to get minutes. he brings immediate intensity and energy, as well as hustle plays- blocks, draws charges, plus his energy has been contagious.

give him a bone and post up him on the other end though!

wtf was that prince?!??!

NICE CBILL! Holy shit I bet he wished he could have that pass back

this stretch has not all been maxiell. but it shows that he NEEDS to get minutes. he brings immediate intensity and energy, as well as hustle plays- blocks, draws charges, plus his energy has been contagious.

give him a bone and post up him on the other end though!

this stretch has been all about me.

bulls have been allowed to travel and carry the ball far too often today.

It's so sad that it's strange to me to see somebody challenging shots on our team. I fuckin love Maxiell.

Also, Tayshaun grew some tits to go with his vagina on that play.

This big run by Detroit has all happened with Sheed on the bench. I think that says alot as to how he's played today.

we should put ben wallace + freethrows in.

ben's looking like he's worth the money right now, no? and our 30 million dollar paper weight looks to be the overpaid one. who could have seen that coming?

(me, for those not paying attention last offseason).

this game sucks. chicago's interior D is so much better than ours, i dont know if we beat them in the playoffs. probably not, actually. im looking for some monster d from us, where we hold them to no field goals for like 10 minutes. god we need it.

Lovely post.

I thought Delfi was gonna have another good game but early foul troub takes him out of rythym (sp?).

Gordon is filthy

maxiell coming out strong in the 4th. too bad chauncy just made the ultimate rookie mistake.

no mistakes in the 4th quarter chauncy. this is a contract year.

maxiell is everywhere baby! huge swat on hinrich! i don't care who loses minutes, we NEED to play this kid 15-20 minutes a night.

Maxiell needs to go pin Skiles down and put a headband on him.

if lindsey heats up this game is over... and the alpacalypes may be upon us.

Hunter needs to stop doing his best Carlos Arroyo impression and pass the fucking ball to the screen players.

And the one time he does pass he clocks Dice right in the head. oye....

Wow, the defense REALLY picked up.

At one point Chi was on pace for scoring 100+ on us. Now, if we keep it up we might even be able to keep them to the 90 magic number defensively.

i like lindsey. so juiced up he almost took dyess's head off with those fireball's hes throwing out there.

this is the best our bench has played since 2004. without a doubt.

The ankle injury has kept RASHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED Wallace from playing his normal phenominal game.

ok, here comes the starters, lets finish this.

Sheed and Tay were playing pussy-like. Nice to see Mad Max and to a lesser extent Delfino get it going.

"We needed that" Hubie on a 3pter by the Bulls

"Bulls with numbers" Tirico. Deng coming down the court with 3 pistons waiting for him at the other end.

Just make an attempt to hide your bias.



And the Bulls are lucky Sheeds ankle is hurt.

Sheed would've been T'd for PJ Brown's reaction to that over the back call.

larry hughes preparing for his pregame penticure would be a good way of describing his game to a non-nba fan.

I was thinking about the T's earlier when Heinrich was bitching about a call on him. It seems like it went back to the way it was last year...cept for Sheed.

I take our D over their D come playoff time. We'll step it up and so will every other team.

their inside d is great. ours is porous. interior d is everything, espcially in the playoffs. if this game was in chicago, we'd have lost by 15. good thing we should have HC. but the buls are going to be a huge pain in our ass in the playoffs.

oh chuancy. scared of ben, and tay blows important fts. christ.

Tayshaun chokes.

wow lame, look for Gordon to hit a 3 now ~~

Hm, I wonder where we'll go.

CWEBB!

I have a feeling that the Bulls will make a triple...

Holy shit Tay , NICE ROTATION!

Thank god I was wrong.

Great comeback by the boys. This will prolly work on the Bulls psychy a lil bit. I mean they had us down but couldn't finish us off.

For everyone bitching about Prince, he had a pretty damn good game. His blocks provideed a lot of energy for the team. He had 8 boards and shot just under 50%. He blew the two free throws but that second one was just weird how it popped out. I'm glad we one and we really need to play Max more.

I'm going to say that was the game of the season so far. Just based on how exhausted I am after watching it. It was nice of the refs to let them play it out too.

Webber out-rebounded Ben Wallace. Hilarious.

why?

and both outrebounded your boyfriends nazr and flip. if we dont luck into webber this is a go nowhere team. and ben's impact far exceeded his numbers. but seeing how you know everything, im sure you already knew that.

I do know this: Ben has not ever been able to handle Webber, and he still can't.

Webber=700K

Ben=$16 million.

As for Nazr and Murray, I could care less. Scoreboard son. Your team lost, mine won.

Yeah, I know Ben's impact exceeds his numbers, blah blah blah. They haven't made much of an impact this year, and they didn't make much of an impact tonight with webber backing him down at will. Your Bulls aren't much better than they were last year. 5th-best team in a mediocre conference.

The Pistons had a better record than Chicago even before they got Webber.

For everyone bitching about Prince, he had a pretty damn good game. His blocks provideed a lot of energy for the team. He had 8 boards and shot just under 50%. He blew the two free throws but that second one was just weird how it popped out. I'm glad we one and we really need to play Max more.
Still, ya gotta admit, that gratuitous beaver shot of Tayshaun at the end wasn't exactly pretty.

I do know this: Ben has not ever been able to handle Webber, and he still can't.

Webber=700K

Ben=$16 million.

As for Nazr and Murray, I could care less. Scoreboard son. Your team lost, mine won.

Yeah, I know Ben's impact exceeds his numbers, blah blah blah. They haven't made much of an impact this year, and they didn't make much of an impact tonight with webber backing him down at will. Your Bulls aren't much better than they were last year. 5th-best team in a mediocre conference.

The Pistons had a better record than Chicago even before they got Webber.

my team? lol. i'd defend myself, but no one is better at the "im always right, everyone else is always wrong" game than you.

for someone so consistently wrong, you've got some balls talking down to everyone the way you do.

my team? lol. i'd defend myself, but no one is better at the "im always right, everyone else is always wrong" game than you.

for someone so consistently wrong, you've got some balls talking down to everyone the way you do.


I don't talk down to everyone. Just the Ben Wallace fanboys who clearly root against the Pistons because they had the nerve not to pay him $16 million a year.

I don't even blame Ben for taking the cash. It's much more fun taking it out on all the new bull fans he's created anyhow.

Good luck in the playoffs, if you guys can get past the 2nd round.

I don't talk down to everyone.

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL.

what a clown charlie rose is. nice breakdown.

"ben got a rebound, but his feet were on the ground?"

um, what?

"jordan won the championship, but rarely displayed the athleticism that made him 'air jordan'".

fuck charlie rose. he's never been much of an analyst, and this clown piece dropped him off the map for me.

who the fuck uses "decripitude" and "ides" in an nba piece?

The same fucker who uses "somnambulant".

2neThdeTPc0

Blakely


More from Ben's return to The Palace
There was so much happening with tonight's game, there was no way I was going to get it all (or even most of it) in the papers. So here are a few items that, I'm sad to say, my Booth readers won't be seeing in their papers tomorrow.

*

Rasheed Wallace wasn't exactly thrilled with Flip Saunders' decision to sit him for a good chunk of the second half on Sunday. The reason Saunders kept him on the bench was because Rasheed was ineffective after he tweaked his left ankle early in the first quarter. He tried to play through it, but other than a stretch when he strung together a couple of jumpers, Wallace was clearly not himself.

But Wallace, despite what some national pundits might think, understands how Saunders operates and didn't make a big deal about spending most of the second half as a spectator.

"That's how it goes sometimes when you get injured," Wallace said. "Everybody think they can go back in when they're hurt. But it depends on how you out there moving. I guess he (Saunders) didn't like how I was out there doing my movements and stuff. But I ain't tripping, though."

I touched on it a little bit in my game story, but I didn't spend nearly enough time writing about Jason Maxiell's impact on the game, and how he's kept himself ready for moments like Sunday night.

It wasn't just his teammates and Saunders who noticed, either.

"I thought Maxiell changed the game when he got in there," said Bulls coach Scott Skiles. "We couldn't match up with him."

And the game-winning basket by Chris Webber was even more impressive when you consider he was close to not being able to play because of that left eye injury. He had some complications with the medication he was on, and was throwing up before tonight's game.

Webber said he didn't think he was going to play.

"But Arnie (Kander, Detroit's strength and conditioning coach) and the medical staff worked their magic," Webber said.

He had a great line when asked about the winning basket, despite not being able to see Chauncey's missed shot all that clearly.

"That's the end of a game," Webber said. "You gotta close one eye, or open both; whatever you gotta do, you better get it done. I was fortunate with that. I was very happy with that."

I'll have more tomorrow, including my take on Flip Saunders and all the Minnesota Gopher rumors, in the Booth Newspapers and on mlive.com tomorrow.

Max is a beast and showed it today. See ESPN's daily dime for some more press love. They said he is the potential starter over Delfino regardless of what team.

Like that shit. (especially since I can't find it)

Yeah, link it up. I can't find it anywhere.