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Thanks for seeing that as clearly as I did. Man, this has got me on a rant today.
You got a lot of guys on your bench who are ready to eat their own guts and ask for seconds to get some playing time. There have always been times when a starter just isn't getting it done, and Flip never responded to those situations. How hard is it really to look at your starters and say "this guy is shitting up the court tonight. Let's swap him out and give someone else a chance to spark"?
The essence of greatness in sports is competition. None of these guys lacks a spirit of competition, or else they wouldn't be in the league. If your starters are good enough to fuck up all comers, it isn't all that important to play your bench. But that isn't how it is for most teams and the Detroit Pistons are no different. If your starters aren't getting it done (for whatever reason you like), the substitution should be automatic. We ain't in the business of protecting a motherfucker's feelings. We in the business of winning championships.
If you pull up the same bullshit 3-point attempt twice with 18 seconds on the shot clock, you should be coming the fuck out of the game for a bit to get your head together. That don't take no Masters Degree in Sports Management. Ain't no fucking decision to be made here. You could program a goddamn Apple ][ computer to make that substitution with 6 lines of BASIC. You don't want to make that decision because it's too early in the game to make substitutions? Great, you're conditioning your team to make slow starts. You don't want to make that decision because you're already ahead by 12? Great, you're conditioning your team to give up big leads and not feel bad about it. You don't want to make that decision because you just hit the stretch, and you're scared to sub when things are getting heated? Fuck you, you're too timid for this game, go enjoy a nice glass of warm milk and an oatmeal cookie to go with your offseason.
My problem with Flip Saunders always was the same as everyone else's - that he wasn't dynamic enough to adjust or respond in the short term. But when you think about that, all anyone is asking him to do is to A. notice when you got a guy who doesn't have any game, and B. put in someone else. All he needed to do was to watch the same game the rest of us were watching. As far as I could tell, that twitchy motherfucker was watching reruns of Scrubs during the game, maybe filling out his expense reports or whatever. If a coach doesn't find himself saying "fuck this, I've seen enough" every now and again, not only is he not a good coach, he is probably one of those shitheads who always needs to interrupt a movie to have someone else explain to them what's going on.
I know this team has serious problems that aren't going away just because a coach got replaced. But I also know that getting rid of this coach was a massive step in the right direction. Man, am I glad that fucktard got sacked.
Lock the thread.