Jason Maxiell?
Jason Maxiell, the new Piston, is one of those players for me that seemed to play at the college level for ten years, like Sherman Douglas and Calbert Cheaney. I'm sure you have your own.
Maxiell is a 6'7" bruiser, just an absolute monster. Maybe he can do some of what Ben Wallace does as Wallace, ages, though the Free Press compares him to Darvin Ham, who of course is a critical part of the Pistons' team. I don't like the pick. Maxiell can't backup Hamilton, he can only maybe back up Prince, and he can definitely take fourth big man minutes away from Darko. The Pistons need immediate specialized help -- outside shooting from a backup swingman -- and they didn't get it. The second round picks are a high schooler who won't make the team and a swingman Alex Acker, who fits backup 3 profile but has character problems. He actually seems like a reasonable risk at the last pick to me.
In non-Piston news:
--The Raptors' pick of Charlie Villanueva is perplexing -- they've taken Chris Bosh and Araujo the last two years and Villanueva is a head case who would have come out after high school but doesn't try. I really like the player they got at 16, though, Joey Graham, but throw in Jalen Rose and Morris Peterson and it seems like you have a logjam of mediocre 3s. They are going to be the worst team in the East.
--The Clippers' first-round pick, Yaroslav Korolev, is 18, Russian, has a blond crew cut, and might weight 190 pounds. I'm sure he's skilled, but he looks about as NBA-ready as the starting second basewoman on your daughter's high-school soccer team.
--Who do you think is happier? Deron Williams, who got picked third but has to move to Salt Lake City, or Chris Paul, picked one spot later but moving to New Orleans? The Jazz, by the way, gave up a ton to get Williams' spot: the sixth and 27th picks this year, plus a conditional first-rounder next year, which I can assure you will be a high pick. Williams also looked much thinner at the draft than he did at the NCAA tournament. Either he's got a parasite or he's been working hard to harden up his round college PG body.
--I loved Isiah as a player, but I'm thrilled I'm not a Knicks fan. Or a CBA fan, for that matter. I have to agree with the Sports Guy on Channing Frye: Loren Woods, though Frye is beefier.
--I'm also pleased not to be a Sixers fan. One pick, and it's a small HS point guard who is years away?
--The Pacers got the consensus sixth best player in the draft (Danny Granger) at 17, and they get Artest back next year. Watch out.
NBA Draft
Mock drafts across the 'net have the Pistons getting anyone from Ryan Gomes to Julius Hodge to Turkish sharpshooter Ersan Ilyasova to Francisco Garcia to HS PG Monta Ellis (please, no). The Pistons need someone to come in and backup Hamilton and Prince next year, someone who can score 8 ppg and play reasonable defense right away.
The obvious pick is a polished senior, someone who won't need to be taught how to hold the ball and where to put his feet. But all the pre-draft scuttlebutt has toolsy young Euros sliding down the draft board. Given that, it might make more sense for the Pistons to draft a young player who might have gone higher if Milicic and Tskitishvili weren't so fresh in everyone's mind. I have no idea if that's Ilyasova or Vasquez or Ukic, but the Pistons shouldn't lock themselves into getting one kind of player with one kind of resume.
This should be one of the most entertaining drafts in any sport in a long time. The NFL draft is predictable and slow. Baseball America correctly called the first 18 picks in this year's MLB draft. But no one has any idea what's happening in the NBA this year. Milwaukee hasn't committed to anyone with the first pick, Atlanta hasn't committed to one of two players at two, there could be a pile of trades, etc.
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.
Did Anyone Else...
...get unreasonably pumped up in the Game 5 pregame when they showed Ben Wallace walking into the Palace with a Tiger hat on his head and a championship belt slung over his shoulder?
Game 7 Preview
1. Chauncey Billups has been killing the Spurs. Bruce Bowen, who has played amazing defense on Rip Hamilton all series, will guard him at least part of the time tonight. When Popovich put Bowen on Billups at the end of Game 5, the Pistons weren't ready for it, setting up Horry's heroics. Larry Brown, make your money tonight. Get the Pistons ready to hurt the Spurs if Bowen matches up with Billups.
2. I'm stealing this point from Abe, but there's a problem with all the commentators who are predicting a huge night from Tim Duncan...it's not going to happen. He hasn't been able to get comfortable against the Pistons' big and quick front line, and he won't tonight, either.
3. It's scary to root for a team that's only seven players deep. The Pistons have no backups for Prince or Hamilton should they get injured or in foul trouble. We got a taste of what life would be like without Prince, when he tweaked his ankle in Game 6. They just need to hold out one more game, though. One more game. Look for the starters, barring fouls, to all play 42+ minutes. Swingman reinforcements are on the way next year, in the persons of Carlos Delfino and maybe Ryan Gomes or Julius Hodge.
4. But I don't care about next year right now. I don't care at all if Larry Brown comes back, either. I wish him well, but if his legacy is two titles then gone, or even two Finals then gone, I can handle that.
5. No one has any idea what is going to happen tonight, least of all me, a pessimistic Pistons loyalist who proclaimed the Pistons done after Game 2. The pundits at ESPN and CNNSI are evenly split, though I take some solace in the fact that the Spurs backers seem to be making the shakiest of shaky predictions. Lots of history is cited about road teams in Game 7 -- that's ancient news, though, and any predictive power it has over tonight's action is remote and coincidental. I'm reminded of a much more recent historical precedent: last year's Finals. Don't 2005's Games 3-6 remind you of 2004's 1-4? Three Pistons wins coupled with an overtime loss on the back of an outrageous individual performance? We all know how Game 5 ended last year, with Abe and I sipping mossy old scotch in a Days Inn in Manitoba, literally jumping for joy. Miracles are rare, by their nature. There weren't two for the Lakers last year in the Finals, and I get the feeling that their won't be two Horry-borne miracles this year. It's just a feeling, but it's all I have and it feels pretty good. Go Pistons.
A brief interruption...
... in our regularly-scheduled pre-game frothing to announce that, in case you hadn't noticed, the Tigers are over .500, and actually, only 4.5 games out of the wildcard spot.
Let's discuss a few things
There are a few things that need to be said.
1. The stat of the day has to be Chauncey Billups's astounding 47-for-49 in the fourth quarter of playoff games this year. To say he's a cool customer is really understating it.
2. Ben now has two unbelievable tip-ins in this series, where he's reached from behind the rim, while going the other direction, to tap one up and in.
3. Duncan has a strange free throw pre-shot routine. He gets in shooting position, then appears to pause for a random amount of time (between 1 and 5 seconds), then quickly releases. It's like he's trying to trick some kind of invisible boogeyman who's been interfering with his shots.
4. I really think that if Rasheed could be could be prescribed some kind anti-insanity, concentration-enabling drug cocktail, he could be one of the best power forwards of all time. His basketball skills, athleticism, and intuition are amazing. The only problem is that he's totally nuts.
5. Rip Hamilton quietly had his best game of the series. He didn't force as many shots as in previous games. Perhaps he's finally getting settled into the rhythm of bodying up Bruce Bowen for 48 minutes a night.
6. Where was Robert Horry tonight? That's the funny thing about that guy. The Spurs could have used him. Nazr Mohammed is undersized and overmatched.
7. At the end of the game, we finally saw the Pistons big men cut off and deny Ginobili and Parker driving into the lane. Ben's last block, when he swatted Manu on the way down with two hands, was an intelligent play. If you watch a replay (and I did, many times), you can see he reads Manu's drive from the top of the key, and takes a perfect angle to cut him off at the rim. He gets there at just the right time and proceeds to block out the sun, forcing Manu into a feeble double-clutch.
8. Last year, when the Pistons won it all, I came surprisingly close to shedding a tear of joy. When I heard Larry Brown in the huddle with 3o seconds left, saying to his team, "by the way, I love you guys," I just, well, I just was quite touched by the moment. What a team.
9. Screw the Sports Guy.
10. Wooooooooohoooooooooo!!!!!!!! Bring on Game 7.
Game 6
I love Tayshaun.
I love Chauncey.
I love Ben.
I love the Pistons.
Great game. Great.
Game 5: This is how a Heart Breaks
I was hoping that by this morning I'd be able to bring myself to discuss the game. I was also hoping it was a bad dream, and I'd wake up to find out that Tayshaun actually got a piece of Horry's shot, and it fell harmlessly short of the rim.
I was wrong about both things.
No
How did they let Horry take that shot? How? It ripped my heart out.
Pinehurst 1, Golfers 0
I don't know a lot about golf -- Josh is the resident UTB expert, and Abe is a close second -- but I'm sure enjoying watching the US Open. The course, Pinehurst #2, is simply too hard for these players. As of this writing, the leader is +1, even for the day. Tiger Woods is also even for the day, and it seems like he's on a huge run. It must be frustrating for the pros, but it's fun to watch these players get humbled relative to how they normally play, if not relative to one another today.
A Name You Should Know
Chris Shelton spent all of last season with the Tigers after coming over from Pittsburgh in the Rule V draft. By rule, he had to spend all of 2004 in the majors, or he'd be returned to his original team. Well, he wasn't ready to be a big leaguer. He got Darko at-bats, and hit about as well as Darko might in a Tiger uniform. This year, he started in AAA where he belonged. He mashed, and when the Tigers grew frustrated with Carlos Pena, Shelton came up to take his job. Sure he's got a baby face, but Shelton hit his second homer today to tie the game against the Giants at the death, against a pitcher who struck out the Tigers' side with the bases loaded in the ninth the other day. He's hitting, he's young, he's ours, and maybe he'll be part of the next meaningful Tiger team. That's even more interesting Tiger news than the signing of some injury-prone expensive free agent.
