Thursday, January 3, 2008

Pistons

The Detroit Pistons, extending their win streak to 10 games with a 106-93 road win Wednesday over the Washington Wizards, are looking more and more like the team that won it all in 2004.

The balance is there offensively, but most importantly, they seem more recommitted to defense, taking pride in it again.

Pistons coach Flip Saunders seems to be one key believer in the defense, in his third season in Detroit. The first two years there, it seemed the majority of adjustments he made were offensive ones. Now I think their focus is to just go out there and shut people down defensively.

The second unit's improvement is helping make this possible. Jarvis Hayes and Jason Maxiell are two players in particular who are showing how they can affect the game without scoring. On defense, Hayes can cover a lot of 2s and 3s, while Maxiell's physical enough for 4s and 5s. And they can often affect a game with scoring too -- but it helps that in this win, Maxiell had 15 points and Hayes 12 in facing his old team.


Check out the rest of the article here.

GO PISTONS!!!!

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