The Pistons have fired Flip Saunders after three seasons in which he led the team to the Eastern Conference finals. No replacement has been named, but a press conference announcing Michael Curry as the new coach is expected sometime this week.
(”No Comment”)
Great move. I think we all know that the only reason the Pistons haven’t won the NBA title in the past three seasons is Saunders’ coaching (can hardly wait for Piston players and Joe Dumars’ “it wasn’t his fault he got fired” quotes).
And now we have an NBA Finals. It’s Boston vs. LA. The Celtics sat in the final musical chair before the NBA took the needle off the record with their 89-81 victory in Game 6 last night. (A second road win! How quaint.) The Pistons bowed out gracefully in three straight Eastern Conference finals in Buffalo Billsian fashion. Although I don’t know if the Bills had anyone throw a temper quite like Rasheed Wallace:
Wallace picked up his fifth foul with 9:04 left in the game, and rather than pick up his 7th technical, he decided to channel that frustration away from the refs and toward the camera man. If you can’t hear that audio too well — it was a little dampened — it sounded something like “get that stuck camera out of my face.” Well if it was stuck, Mr. Wallace, how can he really get it out of the way? If he does pull the camera out, does the camera man become King of England? Read more…
Occasionally, Brooks pulls a few strings for us writers around here. When he does, we get the privilege of “speaking” with a real live athlete. It’s nice because it gets us out of our mother’s basements for a little bit. On the docket for today, Rasheed Wallace:
Last night’s huge come-from-behind victory was keyed by an equally huge third quarter performance by Rasheed Wallace. In that decisive third, Sheed had 10 points and 3 rebounds as the Pistons turned a 10 point deficit in to an 8 point lead. I was lucky enough to imagine talking to him about the game.
The last time we heard from them, the Detroit Pistons were surprising the NBA world by losing to the (previously) lowly Philadelphia 76ers. It was assumed that the Sixers game one win was an abberation, but after a twenty point victory on their home court, suddenly Philadelphia is looking a lot scarier. And not in the usual battery-throwing Philadelphia way.
Join me tonight at 7pm EST for the SbB evening liveblog to see if the Pistons can dig themselves out of their 2-1 hole. If not, at least Detroit fans can be happy that Matt Millen didn’t draft another receiver in the first round.
