Outcome will shape Pistons' legacy
BY KRISTA JAHNKE
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER
June 2, 2006
The item the Pistons must cross off their to-do list tonight would have seemed a simple enough task for this team three weeks ago.
Win a Game 6, on the road, in a do-or-die situation. For so long, the Pistons relished these challenges. They won those games.
Tonight's result will go a long way in answering a question that has bubbled to the surface since then. Just what, if anything, has changed?
If the Pistons win tonight in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals against a Miami team that has dominated them for most of this series, if they force a winner-take-all Game 7 at the Palace on Sunday, then a lot of perceptions from the past two weeks become obsolete.
This team's legacy is not yet written. Tonight will go a long way in determining just what kind of tone its story deserves.
"We feel good," Pistons coach Flip Saunders told reporters in Miami, "not just because we got the win, but because we feel we're starting to play how we played for most of the season. That's how we're going to have to play (tonight) in order to have a chance to beat Miami."
Granted, the team must continue to build on its play in Game 5 if it wants to make tonight interesting. The Pistons won Wednesday, 91-78, but their play did not magically transform back to where it was throughout the 64-win regular season.
While two players -- Tayshaun Prince and Antonio McDyess -- got into a good offensive groove, the rest of the Pistons remained ineffective on offense.
Prince scored 29 points, a career playoff high, and shot 11 for 17. McDyess was a godsend off the bench with 12 points on perfect shooting, including eight points in the fourth quarter.
Now, the goal tonight is to extend that to other key offensive contributors like Chauncey Billups and Rasheed Wallace, who were a combined 6 for 23 from the floor Wednesday. Wallace is still playing with a sprained right ankle.
"We still had a couple guys we haven't gotten going," Saunders said, "and that's going to be our main focus going down to Miami on Friday."
There were also defensive shifts in the right direction in Game 5. The biggest change came in the amount of energy exerted on that end. And it wasn't energy focused solely on the Heat's two dominating players, Shaquille O'Neal and Dwyane Wade, although some additional trapping of Wade limited him to a series-low 23 points.
But the Pistons used their zone and their trapping game, as well as an active, traditional help defense, to spread their attention across the floor to all of the Heat's role players. That distribution of focus caused the overall defensive intensity to swell.
"I think we were paying so much attention to Shaq or D. Wade and not leaving those guys," Pistons point guard Lindsey Hunter said of previous games. "But you saw (Wednesday) where Ben left them and went and made an unbelievable block on somebody else. We were helping and recovering. We were just playing pretty much high-school rules. You help and you recover, that's what you do."
But mostly, energy on Wednesday won the Pistons another chance to play.
They'll want to remember what that felt like -- the calmness they experienced before the game that led into a fury of intensity during it. That's the formula that the Pistons refer to when they speak of playing well with their "backs against the wall."
"It's very similar, I think, to Game 6 we had in Cleveland," Saunders said. "I think there was a calmness with me, and I think a calmness with our players, and I think we knew what was at hand, what we had to do. I told the players I felt comfortable because I felt the players were focused."
They must return to that state of mind tonight. The American Airlines Arena will be raucous. The Heat will be determined not to miss the chance to end this series on its home floor.
If the Pistons want to live to see a Game 7 on their home floor, they must trump those emotions with grit of their own.
"Right now we're approaching every game like a tournament," Ben Wallace said. "You lose and you go home. That's how we try and take it, just one game at a time, one possession at a time, try to get one stop at a time and execute on the offensive end. ... That's how we're going to approach every game from here on out."
They just hope "here on out" is more than a one-game affair.
View Profile
View Forum Posts
Private Message
View Blog Entries
View Articles
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Visit Homepage
Bookmarks