" "

Game 7

Well.

Sadly, one of my predictions came true, and one did not. I said that the Pistons would need to figure out what to do when Bowen guarded Billups, and they did not. I also said that Duncan couldn't come up big, and he did. Sure he missed some short shots that you expect him to make, but he was strong on the offensive glass (I sound like Hubie) and from the free-throw line.

Larry Brown was outcoached in this game, in at least two ways. First, Popovich put Bowen on Billups and the Pistons never adjusted. Second, when Rasheed and McDyess picked up their fourth fouls in the third quarter, Brown stuck with his small lineup for too long. The Pistons played shaky, the Spurs got confident, and the momentum changed hands. The turning point in that sequence and the game was when, with the Pistons up seven, Billups threw a wild outlet pass that turned into a Duncan three-point play and McDyess' fourth. When the Pistons lead evaporated, Brown should have come back with one of the bigs and risked a fifth foul. I would have brought McDyess, who was on fire in the fourth quarter, but either would have done fine.

But it's over now -- Bowen and the Spurs played magnificent defense in the fourth quarter and didn't miss a three. They deserved to win this game, if not necessarily the series (Game 5 was stolen). If I were going to keep complaining, I'd complain about all the ticky-tack fouls called by the refs in the first half and all the bad shots Rip Hamilton took trying to do everything by himself. But except for those complaints, I'm not going to complain.

The Pistons are an amazing team that goes againt the conventional wisdom about teams with Hall-of-Famers always winning. In addition to missing superstars, they're also not a deep team, a combination which puts enormous pressure on all the starters and gives them a top six or seven players that have to play well every night for the team to win. And more often than not, they do.

I'll leave off for today with Ben Wallace, who played an amazing game. Somehow he only ended with two blocks and two steals, but was all over the court on every play, challenging shots, scrambling for loose balls, and playing like it was his last game. Luckily for us, it wasn't.

posted by Jeff Gray @ 9:58 PM