Is All Hope Finally Lost?

When your team is doing horrible and the season is close to 70% through there is something someone never wants to admit; their team has no chance of making the playoffs. With a only 16 wins and 30 loses the Pistons are six and a half games out of 8^th place and nine games out of seventh place. They only have only 21 games to make up that deficit but with teams making late runs and their ineffectiveness to get healthy then that is not a likely to happen.

The New York Knicks, after struggling this whole year, have caught fire as of late. This is bad for the Pistons because the Pistons were hoping that they would be able to catch up with the Knicks and beat them out for that spot. But after the firing of their head coach, the Knicks have won five straight games and finally have some team chemistry. With the Knicks catching fire at the end of the season is a bad sign for the Pistons because there is a very slim chance that they will be able to catch the Boston Celtics who are in 7^th place and nine games ahead of the Pistons.

The Pistons have been finally getting healthy but the injury bug just does not want to leave them. After they got all of their original starters playing over twenty minutes a game, Rodney Stuckey got injured. Tayshaun Prince and Rodney Stuckey were the two consistent starters this whole year playing and starting all the games when the other starters were not even dressing. But this is not the case anymore. Rodney Stuckey has missed two straight games with a toe injury. He has been the leader of this team putting up career highs in points, rebounds and assists.

With their current three game losing streak, did the Pistons seal their fate to miss the playoffs for the second straight year or do they still have a miracle run in them? 

Finally Healthy

When the season started, the Pistons thought that will be in playoff contention. But something happened, the injury bug hit them and they had to start three players that would normally be bench players. This would have been cool if it was for a week or two but this lasted for forty games. Since the NBA season that is condensed this season, that is well over half. But the Pistons are only three games from a playoff spot out with seventeen more games to go.

So when their players got injured, why did the do so poorly? The most important thing about winning in the NBA is team chemistry. A team could have two of the top players in the game but if they do not play together then the team will struggle. The Knicks, for example have both Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire, both considered to be in the top 10 that is playing right now, on their team but have struggled. They continue to lose. No one knows exactly why but most people believe that it is because they have no team chemistry; they are not aware of their player’s tendencies.

What happened to the Pistons was that as their main players started getting hurt they lost the chemistry that was built up during the off season. They trained hard together to make up for that disappointing show of last year.

Now with only seventeen games to go in the regular season, the Pistons can finally get back to the playoffs after 3 long years of rebuilding a franchise. They finally have all of their key players playing minutes on a nightly bases and soon the will all be back to starting. But will that chemistry still be there that was built during the summer? Did they start the run to late or do they still have time to make the playoffs? We will soon find out.

The Clutch Gene

Down b two points with five seconds left, who do you trust to take the shot? For the Heat it is Dawayne Wade, for the Lakers it is Kobe Bryant, for the Hawks it is Joe Johnson, and for the Bulls it is Derrick Rose. These are the elite teams in the league and they all have one thing in common, they all have someone who can make the last shot. Kobe Bryant have not been that clutch this season hitting only 9 out of 32 shots in the final minute of the game but they will still put the ball in his hands when the game is on the line.

The Detroit Pistons does not have anyone who can take over a game anymore. They do not have anyone who is that good that he gives the opposing coaches and players nightmares. With a clutch player, a team will be able to improve this is because some of those close games that they lose would have been wins because their closer would have came up big for them.

The Detroit Pistons need a closer; this became evident when they were outscored 35-23 in the forth quarter by the Cleveland Cavilers. This caused them to lose the game 101-100. This was a heart breaking lose for the Pistons because they have won their las7 out of 9 and they were finally getting healthy. This was evident in the game against the Toronto Raptors because they lost to a team with a worse record then them by double digits.

If the Pistons had closer then the Cavilers would have never came back and the Pistons probably would not have lost that game against the Raptors. They would still be steadily moving up in the rankings for a playoff spot but now they are stuck moving backwards with the All Star Break quickly approaching. This will be the half way point of the season.

A Late Surge?

The Pistons have been fairly inconsistent this season with getting wins. They have only managed nine so far this season. They have only managed to muster 9 wins out of 31 this season. With injuries since the beginning of the season this was kind of expected by them. They lost their main shooting guard, point guard, and power forward before the worst week was over. They have rarely played since their injury and barely even dressed for any games. But things are starting to look up for the Pistons because they have won 5 out of the last 10 and have won the 5 of the last 7.

Their run started when Ben Gordan, their starting shooting guard, Will Bynum, their starting point guard came back. They are not playing their usual 30 – 35 minutes a game because the coaches want them to get back into rhythm, they are starting with 10-20 minutes a game and they are coming off of the bench so they can play at the important moments of the game.

Their power forward, Charlie Villanueva, have yet to come back and he is listed as day to day but for the last 9 games he have been listed as inactive. He is battling a sore right ankle now. He is expected to come back February 17, 2012 after missing over a month of action. This is good news for the Pistons because their rookie point guard is struggling even more than usual because he broke his nose.

This happened in the first quarter of the win against the New Orleans Hornets. He have been wearing the facemask to protect his nose from taking any more damage but it is difficult for most NBA players to wear this because it is uncomfortable and it is very hard to see out of.

The Pistons Season is looking up and they could make a run for the playoffs because they are getting healthy at the perfect time of the year.

A Struggling Rookie Leading a Struggling Team

Mistakes are one thing a fan can count on from their team. The always happen and can never be avoided. Some teams do not worry about these because their point guard will make plays to keep them in the game. But what if your point guard is the one making the mistakes?

This is the harsh reality for the Detroit Pistons. Brandon Knight, the rookie out of Kentucky, has to start this year because of injuries. The ideal situation for most point guards is they come off of the bench for a year then they start. Being a top 10 draft choice, many people though he could dominate in the NBA like he did in college, but this is not the case.

He has struggled to find chemistry with his teammate, score, assist the ball, and rebound. The only thing he has not struggled with is dishing dimes to the other team. With 2.7 turnovers per game he is the 8^th in the league with the most turnovers, according to ESPN. This is unacceptable for any person especially the “leader” of your team. The point guard is the oil that makes the machine run smoothly.

Being led by a rookie is difficult, especially if that rookie is only leading your team because of injuries. Everyone knows that the coach did not trust him to start in the first place so they know he is not ready. They realize the season is over and want to get their stats up so everyone becomes a “Star” player and put up early bad shots.

The affects of having a rookie starting point guard who was not your first choice can be detrimental to a team’s season. Everyone loses hope and if and when the player gets back then their not be a season to try and salvage. With Knight at starting point guard the Pistons have managed to win just 5 games out of 21. This is not a good total by any means.

The Lose of a Leader

During a season a team has to go through multiple obstacles. It may be fatigue, inexperience, or injuries. The team who wins the championship is able to overcome all of these because of the leadership. But if a team loses its leader the season and the next one is over until the find a new one that the team respects.

When the Pistons went younger, they forgot about one thing and that is their leader n the team. When they traded Chauncey Billups, they lost the leader that held the team together. We had no start players, just players who played their role. With players who all could be stars on another team, a great leader and that is what they had.

That is a big burden for anyone to take over and that showed when the traded Chauncey Billups away for Allen Iverson. They traded a leader for a disruptive force in the locker room. The thought they were getting a point guard but they got someone who wanted to play shooting guard and because Rip Hamilton was starting this created tension. Rip Hamilton wanted to start at shooting guard but they had to give their star, diva, player Allen Iverson the starting job. This messed up their chemistry and they finished the season with a dismal 39-43 record. The won 20 fewer games then the previous season. They just barely snuck in the playoffs and were swept in the first round.

The tension that the trade created could not have been predicted but the way the team was dismantled after a sixth straight trip to the Conference finals was demoralizing to the organization. The players realized that no one had any job security. Trade your leader for a washed up ball hog, send the wrong message to the players. After the next season, the team realized how important Billups was because they had won 12 fewer games. Billups was the one who held the team together, and after he left so did the “Dream Team” Rip Hamilton currently plays along side Derrick Rose in Chicago, Chauncey Billups plays in lob city with Blake Griffin and CP3, Rasheed Wallace plays for the surging Celtics and Prince is trying to become the leader that the team needs.

From First to Worst

This has been a very frustrating season, to say the least. The Detroit Pistons, once one of the power houses of the NBA, now is at the bottom of the league. For six straight years, 2003-2008, the Pistons went to the Eastern Conference. In 2004 and 2005 they made it to the championship. But they only won the one in 2004 against the Lakers. So how did they go from one of the best teams in the league to one of the worst in just two seasons?

There are many things that this can be blamed on but the one it mostly can be blame on is age. The age of starters. The starters were the same since the 20004 and most of them were no rookies when they got her, they were in their prime. Normally when a player hits his prime in basketball is when he is 24 or 25. But the pieces we had were already a year or two in their prime. So after five seasons of trying to get another ring, they got to ol and slow to compete with the other younger teams.

When most teams get into the offseason, they add players that would be able to help them down the line. They want to sure up their future with young stars like John Wall, Derrick Rose, Kevin Durant, Brandon Roy, or Blake Griffin. These players were drafted because the teams wanted to prepare for the future. The Pistons did not do this, they added fillers so they could try and win another championship. So when some of their starters left, they could not use any of the players drafted because they were just role players.

Now only two people from that team that went to the Eastern Conference Championship six years in a row is still there. One was Tayshaun Prince who never was a big part of the offence; he did what needed to be done to win. If that meant only taking five shots in a game he did it but he always gave 100% every game. The other one is Ben Wallace who is a mockery of his former self. Once considered one of the best Centers in the league now can barely get 5 rebounds in a game. Because of this the Pistons are seeing more players like this because they are losing so much now.