Betrayer

Securing the defensive board has been a real problem for this team since the all star break.

Of course he took out Ausar, that should help

I’m not sure if Atlanta can keep up this scoring pace, but I’m 100 percent sure we cannot. Time to play some D. Hopefully that’s why JB took that timeout.

Has ATL missed a shot yet? Draining threes like we’re playing against Steph x5 out there.

Crunch time is typically defined as the last 5 minutes of the 4th. I'm not a big fan of the idea for a few reasons... The first reason is that's he's far less useful as an off-ball player. He's a backup PG. More importantly, the second reason is that you have a major advantage - especially on defense - that you're throwing away. You have a 6'6"+ PG and he can be the smallest guy in your lineup. As hard as Daniss works on defense, he was on the struggle bus trying to contain Reaves in the 2nd half due to the size difference. On that last shot by Reaves you can see Daniss has great position, loads up, and jumps as high as he can to block the shot, but doesn't even bother it in any way. Thirdly, we all know JB would choose Ausar as the guy to bench to make this happen, and that's just an idiotic choice in the last 5 minutes of a game for so many reasons that we've all discussed a million times. For the record, I wasn't a fan of Schroeder sharing minutes with Cade last year for all of these same reasons. So, if we're taking Duncan's minutes when he's having an off night or if we're talking about 1 possession on offense, then sure. Otherwise, no thanks, I'm not getting smaller or taking Ausar off the court in the last 5 minutes of a game.

I hate that JB doesn't do the smart thing and just foul when he's up 3 (or even put his best defenders in most of the time), but JD did a nice job of staying down on Luka's pump fakes and crowding him without fouling.

I'm not sure it's the competition so much as the lack of consistency that defines every second or third string player. If those guys were consistent they'd be starters or stars. He's getting the same shots he's been getting all along - open threes and open 12 footers. He's just hitting them again like he was earlier in the season. I'm just hoping he's on the upswing and not the downswing again when we roll into the playoffs.

Great win against a team we should have lost to without Cade and Stew. Say what you will about the Laker being frauds as contenders - they certainly are - but they're still a playoff team that should have beaten us without Cade. Clutch performance by Jenkins, who seems to have found his groove again now that he's starting. I only hope it continues when Cade comes back and he goes back to being a backup. The Jenkins we've seen these last few games would be huge off the bench in the playoffs.

In just 24 minutes.

To be fair, nobody was expecting them to lose to Washington or Golden State without Curry. Same with Milwaukee and Indy. Those are in fact lottery teams. It's the games against LA, ATL, MIN x2, OKC, TOR, ORL, and CHA that will be a struggle. The majority of their remaining games are against playoff teams.

That's rough. This was one of the 5 games they had a good chance to win.

The worst part about the 65 game rule is that due to disqualifications Jalen Duren could very well make an All-NBA team. Get ready for that contract to put a chokehold on this franchise.

I'd be very happy with the Pistons going 7-7 in this stretch, but I'm not super confident about that without their MVP level player. On the other hand, Boston not only has their MVP level player who got them to the #2 seed, but they've just added another MVP level player. Two very different situations and I think this has the potential to come down to the wire.

I don't know. There's 14 games left and if you look a bit deeper into how these teams have been playing more recently, I feel like it's actually a tough schedule. Washington, Golden State, Philly, Milwaukee, and Indy - All bad. There we agree. That's 5 probable wins, but the other 9 games... LA is 9-1 in their last 10 and they're on a tear. ATL has won 10 in a row and is the hottest team in the NBA. NO is 6-4, playing much better with no pick to tank for. MIN is a handful and we play them twice. OKC - just call this an automatic loss. TOR just beat us when we actually had Cade. ORL has found their groove and are 7-3 recently. CHA is playing well and are also 7-3 recently. That's a tough road without Cade and with BOS breathing down our necks.

Collapsed season. This was seriously painful news to hear this morning. If he's back for Round 1 you can probably expect him to be on a minutes restriction and have some conditioning issues. Only possible good thing I can imagine coming out of this is we slip to 2nd place, manage to get through Round 1 while Cade is working himself back into shape, and get to face the Knicks in Round 2 with a healthy Cade (and Stew) for our revenge. That's the best "Glass Half Full" I can come up with. As for the rest of the season, I'm guessing JB starts Jenkins in Cade's place. I'd actually consider just letting Ausar initiate the offense. We've seen him be the lead initiator before when Cade was out and it worked decently well. Ausar guards the other teams PG every night anyway, so less cross matching is needed. You can put another spacer in there to help spread the court for Ausar + Duren pick and rolls. I'd slide Green into the starting lineup at the SF. Javonte is our only legitimate 3-and-D player, shooting 37% from beyond the arc this year and whopping 50% from the corners.

Gotta admire his commitment to defense though.

If you're proposing moving one of the bad teams (like SAC) to these new cities, I'm cool with that idea. Just not 2 more teams to water down the league even more.

I'm sure it'll all go through, because there's money involved, but I truly hope it does not. The last thing this league needs is more bad teams.

Toronto beat us at our own game. Crushed on the offensive glass and beaten on points off turnovers. JD struggled to control the defensive boards and help at the same time and nobody else was strong enough to keep Poeltl off the glass on the rotation. Ausar looked a step slow coming back from injury and was on a minutes restriction. Seems like it would've been a great game to go bigger and have Reed share some minutes with Duren to control the glass. But no, why not run with a bunch of guards instead and hope to suddenly become the type of team that shoots their way back into games? Right, JB? Right?!

In case you were wondering if they're in tank mode or not, you have your answer.

Good to see them stomping the teams they should stomp again. Please save some of this hot shooting for the games we really need it in. Huerter with another solid game. He's no world beater, but I'd rather see him play than Lavert.

A lot of garbage basketball in there, but hey, if it pushes Kobe further down in the record books I'm ok with it.

But what about CLE catching NYK? If we stay at #1 then I need the Knicks at #4. Give me that sweet, sweet revenge.

I just want to make sure that wherever we land, we're lined up to get NYK in the 2nd round for some revenge. After that we can (and probably will) lose in the ECF to Boston or Cleveland. I think that'd be a pretty successful season of development and improvement from a team that was slated to be the 4-6 seed. Then in the offseason hopefully they can address the need for 3-and-D players and/or maybe another perimeter creator.

I'd love to agree with you that it's odd, but this is what he does in crunch time too. He comes out and says Stew is the best defensive big in the league but then doesn't play him as a closer, even for just one possession when you need a stop. Same with Ausar, who's a top 5 defender in the entire NBA, and winds up sitting most nights in crunch time because JB opts for poor offense instead of dominant defense. He's been saying one thing and doing another with his lineups for a long time now. Since we're talking about defense, here are some fun numbers. Over the past 10 games Pistons have had a 104 defensive rating with Ausar on the court (best in the league) and a 119 defensive rating when he's off the court (near the bottom of the league). There's a reason the sudden turnaround started right about the time he got back from the blood clot last year. This is going to be a tough stretch of games while he's out with the ankle injury.