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| 1-0 | 1-0 | |
| Amway Arena | ||
| 7:00 PM | ||
| Probable starters: | ||
| Chauncey Billups | PG | Jameer Nelson |
| Richard Hamilton | SG | Keith Bogans |
| Tayshaun Prince | SF | Hedo Turkoglu |
| Antonio McDyess | PF | Rashard Lewis |
| Rasheed Wallace | C | Dwight Howard |
25 words or fewer:The Pistons beat the Magic 8 times last season. That's really all you need to know.
Know your enemy: The Pistons, playing without Richard Hamilton, went into Miami last night and spanked the Heat. Tayshaun Prince dropped a career-high 34 points to lead Detroit. More importantly, they kept Shaquille O'Neal in check.
Useless information: Detroit coach Flip Saunders said that Richard Hamilton is expected to be available tonight, but if he isn't, rookie Arron Afflalo will start in his stead.
Bullet points:
- Just how did the Pistons render Shaq useless? As Basketbawful notes, "the Pistons used double-teams and zones to limit his touches. They also took advantage of the Diesel's lack of mobility and lateral quickness on defense to get him into foul trouble." The first part of that statement kinda worries me because they can do the same thing to Dwight Howard. Then again, Dwight dominated the game Wednesday while only taking 9 shots, so he's proven he doesn't need the ball to be effective. Additionally, given that Dwight has great lateral quickness, he shouldn't get into too much foul trouble.
- Hamilton's "family emergency", according to Natalie from Need4Sheed, was the birth of his child (via Detroit Bad Boys).
- Tim Povtak and John Denton have similar stories on how motivated the Magic are for tonight's game. Stan Van Gundy drew a huge "8" on the whiteboard in our locker-room, indicating the number of times the Pistons beat us last season.
- The Sentinel has two more articles about the Orlando Magic TV debacle. This one is from David "The Weekend Watchdog" Darling, and this one is from Iliana Limon.
- I'm not convinced we can win this game if one of our guys doesn't score 30 points. We know how much Chauncey Billups loves to play against us -- he averaged 26 points on 63% shooting in four regular-season games against us last year; we also know how poorly the 5'10" Jameer Nelson matches up with the 6'6" Billups. Rashard, Hedo, Dwight... we need your O tonight.
- I didn't meant for that last bit to rhyme.
Feel free to discuss the game in here. I'll have a recap up after its conclusion. If you're one of the many people Bright House has screwed over, well, there's always NBA Audio League Pass.