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.