[quote=“SteveZeAuthor”]
Not a Pistons fan, DB. Just want to see my rival team go down in flaming glory. 
:p[/quote]
A Clippers fan in Taiwan…where does the other Clippers fan live? 
C’mon DB…we discussed this way back…my team is the JailBlazers, remember? 
:lovestruck: 
This Pistons team is nothing like that 76ers team, sans Larry Brown. I think the Pistons have shown just how much fight they have in them. I wouldn’t take them lightly, especially at home, if I were a Laker player or fan.
True…but bringing in 2 all-stars to man up a 4 all-star starting 5 is what I see as trying to buy a ring. The fact that the Mailman and GP took paycuts to play for L.A. doesn’t change that. And yes, all those other teams were “Buy-A-Ring” teams as well, except maybe Sac town.
Not looking good so far, Laker fans…
54-40 Pistons…3rd Quarter
man, that was a spanking. :s
Oh, but the little bunnies turn out to be a convoy of semis rolling thru an LA Puddle with “their Pistons a’ pumpin’ and their hubcaps all gleam”*.
SPE—LASH
*Another oft forgotten Roger of Rock n Roll, Roger Taylor from I’m In Love With My Car
Lakers lost by half of Malone’s age.
If Detroit can pull out another win Sunday, I don’t see the Lakers coming back from the brink to win the series. Maybe they did against San Antonio, but this team is showing it isn’t intimidated by the Laker aura. 
the great thing is momentum turns on a dime in the nba. lakers have played like complete crap this whole series, but are only down 2-1. if they can wake up in time on sunday, they can grab the momentum when it counts.
I’ve always thought GP was a punk so it’s a joy to see him get his ass handed to him by Billups, who is looking like the series MVP so far. 
Prince is playing out of his mind, he was all over Kobe today.
A Pistons’ win is good for the NBA. The East needs to balance the strength of the West, otherwise the “real” NBA Finals are the Western Conference Finals and that sucks.
Think bigger. Try this entire season. They have been sickeningly inconsistent and have been able to luckily get by purely on their talent level a lot of times this past year. Especially for the supposed “Best Team Ever On Paper.” A Pistons victory on Sunday, and as Chick used to say…the jello’s jigglin’, the butter’s getting hard, and this one is in the fridge.
Can anyone give Chick’s exact quote? I know I mangled it…I can’t remember it for the life of me. 
Great line, though.
Think bigger. Try this entire season. They have been sickeningly inconsistent and have been able to luckily get by purely on their talent level a lot of times this past year. Especially for the supposed “Best Team Ever On Paper.” A Pistons victory on Sunday, and as Chick used to say…the jello’s jigglin’, the butter’s getting hard, and this one is in the fridge.
[/quote]
that doesn’t make sense. they got by on talent? uh, what else are you supposed to get by on? spunk? if they’ve gotten this far in the playoffs this season without any consistency or passion, then wouldn’t they prove that they’re the most talented teamed ever assembled? 
[quote]
Can anyone give Chick’s exact quote? I know I mangled it…I can’t remember it for the life of me. Great line, though. [/quote]
he would move the refridgerator comment to the beginning. and chick covered enough lakers games to know that you can’t ever count them out until the final buzzer of the final game sounds.
Piston’s are playing good team hoops. Fantastic energy and good ol’ fashioned D-fense That’s how the game should be played. People like Kobe, Carter, McGrady, Iverson are great for the NBA but bad for The Game. :fume: :raspberry: 
We need more guys like “The Big Fundamental”, J-Kidd, 'Melo. 
Any one else play hoops regularly?
Think no fire, no emotion, no killer instinct, no real will to dominate or even win a lot of times…just rely on the all-star lineup to go through the motions. The Pistons want it more, frankly, at this point in the Finals.
When they lose, will you still think the same way? I think it’s fair to say that if they lose the finals series, many will consider them the biggest disappointment ever, given the insanely high expectations. Even if they pull this series out, this isn’t one of the best teams assembled on the court. For being as loaded as they are, they didn’t/don’t dominate like the great Bulls (90’s), Celtics (80’s), and Lakers(80’s) teams of their respective times. I gotta say for putting such a team together, they don’t quite live up to their billing.
Not recently, but yes normally I hit the courts every weekend or every other weekend.
i would think the fact that malone missed half the season due to injury and is now a liability in the playoffs might have something to do with the dissappointing season. he will never play professional basketball again after this season because of his injury.
what confuses me is that the people most likely to point out what a dissappointment this team is are the same ones who point out how washed up malone and especially payton are. how does adding 2 washed up players to a roster that didn’t even make it to the finals last year make it the “most talented team ever assembled”. i, frankly, have never considered this year’s lakers that overwelming.
it’s the laker haters who love to build them up “4 hall of famers, why couldn’t you win more than 60 games?” and then pull them down “ha ha, payton and malone suck and you guys are gonna lose!”
question, do you REALLY think payton and malone are STILL all-star caliber players?
you’re judging the lakers with a standard you would never apply to any other team in the nba. i could drag up the awful play of detroit at many points throughout the playoffs when they went through the motions. yet because they had 3 good games against the lakers, they’re the embodiment of a champion? i don’t think so.
and like i refered to in my previous post, there are only 2 all stars on the lakers right now. the same 2 who have been there for the past 8 years.
For good reason…does any other team have 4 shoo-in future Hall of Famers on their roster? Each of whom can still play at a high level?
Most of your fellow fans didn’t help, either, with all of their excessive amounts of smack talk… Speaking of which…what did ever happen to the “broom” that the Lakers were supposed to break out in this series? Maybe you should ask your fellow fans. 
I really hope you all get a nice dose of humble pie within a week’s time.
I suppose that when Detroit wins this series, you’re gonna be one of those fans that will say they didn’t deserve it and the Lakers were robbed? 
Dominant defensive teams don’t always have a pretty offense, in many team sports and not just basketball. It’s not awful play, it’s simply Detroit playing to their strength which is what they are doing with the Lakers. And the Lakers have no answer for it thus far.
Kinda reminds me of my Rammies. An offensive juggernaut, but the lack of a tangible D strategy to match a team with a damn good defense while being on the biggest stage of all cost them a championship in 2001.
Take the Baltimore Ravens of 2000 for example, too. Horrid offense (when Trent Dilfer is running the show, you damn well better have a good D). The offense was anemic, but their defense was top notch and it carried them all the way through to a title.
Maybe you’d be better served asking other Laker fans. They were the loudest ones in this regard all year. 
like i said, malone missed half the season and is currently playing with an injury which is severe enough that he should not be playing. payton has not been playing effectively all eason. what’s this high level of play you’re refering to?
um, have you seen the detroit fans? no smack talk out of them, no siree.
robbed? no, they played like crap this whole series. if they can’t start playing better, they don’t deserve to win.
san antonio played better defense than detroit in a harder division. have you been watching the games at all? lakers aren’t even playing defense and detroit still ends up missing tons of easy open shots and layups.
[quote]
Maybe you’d be better served asking other Laker fans. They were the loudest ones in this regard all year. [/quote]
no, the loudest people all year have been the laker haters who’ve delighted in every loss, every setback.
So an injury determines that Malone is a washed up has been? And Payton’s reduced role in the offense dominated by Shaq and Kobe has more to do with his “funk” this year than anything. The point is each guy is still capable of being as dominant as they are known for. But Malone and Payton came in understanding this wasn’t their show (well, maybe not Payton… )
After all the supposed talk of a sweep and how the Lakers were supposed to destroy and bury Detroit, as well as every sportswriter/columnist jumping on the bandwagon yet again, I don’t blame them for laying it on thick with a lead in the series.
[quote=“Flipper”]
robbed? no, they played like crap this whole series. if they can’t start playing better, they don’t deserve to win.[/quote]
Fair enough.
Apparently you’re not a big fan of stats either. East or West, if you manage to be #1 in defense that is saying something. How you quantify a “better” defense in a “harder” division is beyond me. It’s not all in the win/loss column. And I guess when the opposite team beat you by 20, that means they missed a “ton” of shots. So then L.A. must have missed about 12 “tons” of shots.
I understand your frustration, but the plain fact is that the L.A. fanbase was the biggest hype machine for the team all year. And not in a good way, either. Like I said, humble pie. Only because these kind of fans have it coming to them.