I feel like what happened yesterday in the Cavs/Pistons game is what Rasheed Wallace was thinking of when he made his guarantee. He knew that the Pistons were capable of doing that, and he knew that if they did, there wasn’t much that LeBron or anyone else could do about it. Why they waited until Game 7 to do it, I’m not sure… but they did, and it happened, and now it’s over. Both teams played hard, my man.

Before moving on, all credit to the Cavs. They played out of their minds… LeBron was great, Anderson Varejao was a revelation (I’ve been in a strip club with his brother, by the way), and I’m still a little confused about how a team plays that sort of defense against the Wizards, and then a whole different type of defense against the Pistons. Credit to the Cavs, but… that doesn’t reflect well on Flip Saunders or the Detroit offense.

Looking ahead to the series with the Heat, I’m not sure what to think. On paper, they’re better than the Cavs, and a lot of people are going to pick them to win. I can see that. The Pistons looked real vulnerable at times in this last series, and the Heat are well-rested. It’s a pick that makes a little sense.

But there are also reasons why this series might be a little easier for Detroit. They’ve played against Shaq and Dwyane Wade in the playoffs before… in this round, they’re not going to be surprised by anyone’s greatness. They know what to expect here. And as much as I love Dwyane Wade, he’s not quite as hard to guard as LeBron… he doesn’t see the court quite as well, and he’s less like a damn train when he’s going to the rim. Not to say it will be easy by any stretch, but it’s not quite the same.

And maybe Detroit needed this last series to wake them up. Maybe they needed to get punched in the mouth like that. They can say what they want, but every player in that locker room knows that how they played defense in Game 7 against Cleveland was different than how they played defense in Game 6 against Cleveland. And maybe since they finally took it to that next notch, it’ll be easier to keep it there.

But I still have all the same questions about them that I had when I made this post. None of those things have gone away or been answered because they beat the Cavaliers.

Well, yeah. As stated previously, the league has set the bar pretty low for the behavior that can earn a suspension. So if you ball your fist up and then use it to strike Michael Finley’s wang, you can probably expect a suspension. Jason Terry got a one game suspension for the junk-punch… grabbing his sack and yanking on it, though, I guess would’ve been fine.

I don’t think what Terry did was all that terrible, honestly… it’s not like he swung a haymaker. Yes, it was wrong, but I think it was a brief moment of weakness in reaction to guys diving at him and reaching for the ball. I don’t think any less of him for it… but at the same time, when you punch someone, no matter in what manner… the league isn’t going to just let it go.

I’m really not sure how much this hurts the Mavs. It may not show up until late in the game when fatigue and/or foul trouble show up. They can still trot out a line-up of Devin Harris, Jerry Stackhouse, Josh Howard, Dirk Nowitzki, and, depending on how small they want to go, Erick Dampier, Gana Diop, or Marquis Daniels. It does hurt their depth at the guard position. There will be times in the game where the Mavs have to go with a more traditional line-up and play the Spurs that way. Advantage, Spurs.

Pretty bad time for a starting point guard to get suspended. If it turns out that they really miss him, and they can’t win without him… then they’ve got to deal with an experience San Antonio team in a Game 7, at home, with all the momentum on their side. Bad, bad, time to get suspended.

Oh, and just because I like seeing it… here’s Michael Finley treating Erick Dampier like a pimp treat a ho.

I don’t want to make it seem like I’m giving the shaft to the Mavs/Spurs series… I’m watching it as intently as I’m watching anything else. But by the time the games are over, and I watch Inside the NBA afterwards, there’s just no time for blogging. Truth be told, though, while Pistons/LeBrons is getting more attention, this series is better basketball and more significant in terms of the whole NBA. So I did want to mention a few things…

Tim Duncan can still play at an MVP level. I’m not saying that he’s going to win any more MVP awards, of course, but when he wants to, when he has to… Tim Duncan can still dominate a game. Excluding players on my favorite teams, I’m not sure I’ve gotten any more enjoyment out of watching anybody than I have Tim Duncan. His game is as brilliant as anyone who’s currently playing. It may not be as flashy, and drop-steps into left-handed shots off the glass may not make as many SportsCenter highlights as a LeBron James dunk, but… they’re brilliant and beautiful in their own right.

He’s still the player he once was… he just can’t be that player as often. Certainly not for 82 games. He’s a little creaky, a little aged… but when it has to be there, it’s still there.

Dirk Nowitzki has grown. I’ve also enjoyed watching Dirk Nowitzki in this series. For so long, I thought he was a crazy-talented, big, softie who needed to change his tampon, and was incapable of even formulating a thought about playing defense. Now I think he’s a crazy-talented veteran leader who’s willing to take the big shots without fear, who also still kinda refuses to play defense. Now, he’s still not an ice-water-in-his-veins killer like Jordan or anything, but… he doesn’t have to be. He’s grown, and that’s enough. It’s good to see.

I’m not yet embracing small ball. Bill Simmons wrote (very well) about it yesterday… this is where the game is heading. Just put five guys on the floor who all have some combination of run/shoot/penetrate/kick skills, let them play off each other, and hey, getting an open shot is almost a formality, unless the other team who somehow find five guys who are just as athletic and defend intelligently. That’s a pretty tall order, especially considering that most teams are still built in the traditional mold. Teams are saying, “Hey, true post players are hard to come by, so… fuck it, we’ll do things another way. And in the process, we’ll see if we can turn your post players into a liability.”

Now, we may be getting ahead of ourselves a little bit… neither Phoneix nor Dallas have won their series yet. The conference finals could still be Spurs/Clippers, two of the post post teams in the league. But the trend is still emerging… and more and more teams are going to adopt it, because it’s easier to build a team that way, and… I dunno, it might be just as, if not more, effective. We need a little more time to tell on that one. Like I said before, I might be getting ahead of myself here. I just don’t want to see post play go the way of David Stern’s mustache all together.

And one other quick thing on this series… anyone catch Michael Finley claiming that Jason Terry punched him last night? It was on the loose ball that led to the second jump ball. Terry and Finley were scrambling for it, and Finley got out of the pile, pissed off, motioning that Terry had punched him. Bruce Bowen and Tim Duncan had to talk him out of punching Terry in the mouth.

They make themselves easy to guard. The Pistons offense right now bears no resemblance to their offense from 2004 or 2005. It’s a fairly typical NBA offense. In the past, the Pistons had been the best in the league at getting into their sets, executing them to perfection, and somewhere along the way, ending up with a great look. Now, it’s a lot of individual play. That’s not the same as saying it’s selfish… it’s just pretty standard NBA fare. It seems like they’ll decide, “Okay, we’ll have Chauncey go to the basket,” or “We’ll feed Rasheed in the post,” and we’ll just let guys create off of that.

The end result is that they take a lot of shots that Larry Brown would’ve never tolerated. Just once in Game Five did they run a set where they moved the ball, made the extra pass, and got themselves a wide open dunk. In 2004 and 2005, it happened regularly. It was a more disciplined, efficient team then. Now, they settle for a lot of contested looks. You can get away with that in the regular season, because their talent dictates that they can, and in the regular season, no one’s really trying that hard. When the intensity’s turned up, though, things are different. And the effect of all of this is that unless they’re hitting shots from the outside, they’re a very average offensive team.

2) They’re not getting easy baskets. I can’t remember one fast break lay-up that the Pistons got… it may have happened, but if it did, it was a rare occasion. They’re not creating turnovers, blocking shots, and creating run-outs. And credit Cleveland for this, too… they’re taking good care of the ball. Eric Snow’s an underrated player, and they rarely make any risky passes. If they turn the ball over, it’s usually because LeBron hit someone with a pass who wasn’t ready for it.

And Kenny Smith made this point last night… the effort isn’t the same on defense as it used to be, because the Pistons think their path to victory is now through offense. Defense isn’t the same calling card it used to be. No one took a shot in the paint against the Pistons in the last couple of years without a swarm of arms in their face… and it seems pretty commonplace for the Cavs to just non-chalantly hit a little put-back shot here and there. That never used to happen.

So, to sum up… they’re not as good offensively as they once were (though they think they are), nor are they as good defensively. That’s usually not a good route to take… most of the time when an NBA GM calls me up and asks for advice and says, “Hey, should we get worse on both offense and defense,” I usually say no. Flip Saunders and I have a philosophical disagreement on that one.

The Pistons are not playing like the disciplined, defensive, intelligent group that earned them the reputation they’ve enjoyed up until now. But now, they’re playing like any old NBA team that’s coached by an average, run-of-the-mill head coach. Things run a lot smoother and easier with Flip. Sometimes, this is what smoother and easier gets you. Let’s call New York, offer to pay half of the $40 million, buy Larry Brown out, and pretend like the whole thing never happened.

And before wrapping up this post, let me apologize to Cavs fans for not crediting your team. I don’t intend to slight anyone, it’s just not how I watch Detroit games. I’m a Pistons fan, I watch them… no slight intended to the Cavs, they’re just not the subject of this post… this frustrated and emotional post. I’m going to go kick a dog.