12/26/25 9:30PM Pistons @ Jazz

[casimir]

14 hours ago, Deleterious said:

Straining to do some explaining.

 

Looking at the first sentence of his quote, if Bickerstaff was going with a lineup of guys that seemed more into the game than others, I'm fine with it.  I can't think back to that game, I don't know if it seemed like guys were mailing it in.  Maybe that was some of the issue, I don't know.  If that was the case, this team has some depth now.  So, if someone ain't there with effort, put someone else in.  I have no problem with that.

[NYLion]

11 hours ago, buddha said:

no, i dont think teams "get up" for the pistons.  and i dont think there is any evidence that they do.  its a throwaway excuse line from greg kelser.  the same man who would get irrationally excited when the pistons cut the lead to 28.

I think you're wrong on this and letting your natural pessimistic side take over your opinion here. Anytime you have a team, this deep into the season, that's near the top of the league the opposition is going to bring their A game. I don't think any teams are taking the Pistons lightly anymore. I don't think what happened in past years has any bearing on how opponents approach a game against a team in the here and now and in the here and now, the Pistons are one of the best teams in the league at least based on record.

Edited 22 hours ago by NYLion

[Deleterious]

1 hour ago, casimir said:

Looking at the first sentence of his quote, if Bickerstaff was going with a lineup of guys that seemed more into the game than others, I'm fine with it.  I can't think back to that game, I don't know if it seemed like guys were mailing it in.  Maybe that was some of the issue, I don't know.  If that was the case, this team has some depth now.  So, if someone ain't there with effort, put someone else in.  I have no problem with that.

It's fine to ride a hot unit in crunch time.  But when it's a tie game with the shot clock off, you better have your best defenders in the game.

 

[Sports_Freak]

48 minutes ago, NYLion said:

I think you're wrong on this and letting your natural pessimistic side take over your opinion here. Anytime you have a team, this deep into the season, that's near the top of the league the opposition is going to bring their A game. I don't think any teams are taking the Pistons lightly anymore. I don't think what happened in past years has any bearing on how opponents approach a game against a team in the here and now and in the here and now, the Pistons are one of the best teams in the league at least based on record.

It works the other way too. Too often, when playing a bottom feeder team, teams look past them and get bit in the butt. Its why they play the games on the court/field. If we just sat at a computer and fed stats into a computer program, the more talented team would win every time. But no computer can imitate the human emotion factor.

[Betrayer]

17 hours ago, Deleterious said:

Straining to do some explaining.

 

That's a lot of words to say, "I F***ed up. This is on me."

JB is a great coach when it comes to making bad teams very good, building a culture, and putting in an overall scheme. He's not good at lineup management or any sort of in-game strategy. He's what I thought Monty would be: An amped up version of Casey.

The in-game Xs and Os probably aren't fixable unless you get him a really good play-calling assistant coach. However, these lineup screw-ups seem like they should be correctable if he would just own it and realize his mistakes.

It's not rocket science. It's as simple as, "Defense is how we win and we're giving up too many points tonight, so let's play our best defenders instead of sitting them down the stretch."

[gehringer_2]

40 minutes ago, Betrayer said:

That's a lot of words to say, "I F***ed up. This is on me."

JB is a great coach when it comes to making bad teams very good, building a culture, and putting in an overall scheme. He's not good at lineup management or any sort of in-game strategy. He's what I thought Monty would be: An amped up version of Casey.

The in-game Xs and Os probably aren't fixable unless you get him a really good play-calling assistant coach. However, these lineup screw-ups seem like they should be correctable if he would just own it and realize his mistakes.

It's not rocket science. It's as simple as, "Defense is how we win and we're giving up too many points tonight, so let's play our best defenders instead of sitting them down the stretch."

It's not like JB doesn't sub defense/offense at the end of close games, that he missed the last one in this one could well have been a miscalculation or just a screw-up. But the situation with,. Thompson - since it was almost the whole half,  could have been something more - a reason he was sitting that went beyond the momentary game situation. Since neither Ausar nor JB is going to tell us what it was it's hard to guess if it was a good reason or not.

I suppose if you decide you need to make a point to your team that might cost you a game, you do it against a bad team in the other conference.