MISS-FIRING PISTONS

When the pistons in your car are out of sync and they begin to misfire, you schedule an appointment with your favorite and trusted auto repair shop and ask for a tune-up. When your professional basketball team Pistons begins to misfire in the playoffs, all you can do is hang on and hope that sooner or later the shots start dropping. Not so last night, as the miss-firing Pistons must pack up their gear and head for their off-season retreats earlier than the past two years when they made back-to-back appearances in the NBA Finals.

I'm not a professional analyst but there's a couple of reasons for Detroit's playoff malaise:

1. It's a long season and the team was so focused on gaining homecourt advantage in the playoffs, that they forgot about how grueling the playoffs can be. Additionally, they completely disregarded the fact that Detroit IS a better team with their backs to the wall. So who needs homecourt advantage?
2. The Pistons never really developed their bench during the course of the regular season. You can't win in the playoffs without the energy and quick offense a solid bench can provide.
3. The Pistons have been distracted by the Tigers. Yup, that's the right, the Tigers. The Tiger's own the best record in the major league right now. That's certainly a distraction for the local boys.
4. Detroit lost their offense in the last two playoff series with Cleveland and the Heat. Game 6 stats are telling...Detroit heaved many more shots at the rim than the Heat - almost all of them "good looks". but they made only 33% of those attempts. The Pistons' accuracy also fell way off in the 3 point range, where their success rate was 29%. This percentage was just a tad above Big Ben's free-throw shooting percentage...not good. The Heat, on the other hand, lived up to their name: They were white hot - shooting 56% overall and 38% from behind the arc. They only took 70 shots. Most run and gun high school teams shoot more than 70 shots, in 16 less minutes and without the shot clock.
5. The major difference last night, however, was the play of Jason Williams and Rasheed Wallace. The guy with the black stockings showed up while Sheed never really engaged in the flow of the game, or the series, for that matter.

Count on Joe D re-tooling and tuning up these Pistons before the start of next season. They will look different, guaransheed. Seeya Ben.