Posted by BRIGGS:

and has played darn well. just think about this for one second the pistons have rasheed wallace, ben wallace, antonio Mcdyess, Derrick Coleman--they cornered the market on all vet top tier 4s who can play 5. by the way carlos delfino is good. you can tell right away, he jammed right over raef lafrentz and i bet it is on sportscenter. he does remind you of ginobli but hes bigger

PG: EVEN
Detroit has a more competant PG, as good as Marbury is he is not someone that is going to win you a championship

Posted by MS:

Andrew if you compared the Match-ups on paper last year, you would have thought that it should be a very even series with the lakers winning...

But if you look into the match-ups the Pistons were perfect for the Lakers. They had a point guard who is quick and really scoring the ball in the Playoffs and Gary Payton just played awful last year so the Pistons had a clear advantage.

Obviously Kobe is the best talent in the NBA, but Detriot had the advantage of their best scorer constantly running around, using screens to get open so much of Kobe's energy was going to be concentrated...

When you move over to the small foward devon george is just awful, he can't hit an open jump shot, rick fox is so slow defensively that they had no chance...Prince is an underated player because while his game seems limited he can still score.....and he is one of the better defenders in the league, who can focus on Kobe, giving Hamilton a jump shooter fresher legs

Rasheed is one of the better defenders at this position and in a complementary role he is at his best. Aside from one game against the Rockets Malone was very lackluster, and slowed by injury so the Pistons again have another advantage...

Where the Pistons matchup with the Lakers other teams just don't. Sure Yao is a great player but the pistons had so much depth to throw at O'Neal. Shaq can not be stopped but he can be slowed...Wallace is all defense first team, and doesn't allow second chance points...Then you bring Cambell of the bench that is very familiar with O'Neals game, and Corliss to throw fouls his way....

So if you really looked at match-ups Detriot has clear advantage at three positions and a much better bench. Unless you think Walton and Rush are real everyday game changers...But when two players have to do everything and one of those has to chase Hamilton around. You could have argued for a great series with the Lakers barely winning....

If your going to say its hindsight, fine, but if your familiar with the NBA you should have known the Lakers were in for a tough series and San Antonio was their real championship. The team was highly unmotivated coming in, and was not clicking


And on to Marbury...he makes dumb decisions and is not a mature ball player, who many times has whats best for steph at heart... The wanting to be the man complex never works. Had he stayed with the Wolves, the hiearchy of the west would have been a lot different, but he wanted to be the man, just like Kobe does now, and just like T-Mac did in Toronto...And it never really works...Smart players make smart decisions...and Steph thinks there is no one on the talent level with him, so he doesn't often learn...If it has to take Isiah Thomas, and Wilkens to teach him thats fine, but you need to be realistic....No one is jumping on the Pistons bandwagon, you just need to really look at the teams...If all of the ?'s are answer there is no question we can compete with anyone in the conference, but those are big ifs.

Detriot has team guys, who can defend, NY has me guys, Steph, Craw, TT
so if we can change the culture, we have a chance