Ultimate Game Breakdown: Pistons 88 Clippers 87 in Los Angeles Jan. 4 2009

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
DETROIT PISTONS QUALITY
Antonio McDyess, PF 0.833
Kwame Brown, C 0.695
Rodney Stuckey, PG 0.656
Tayshaun Prince, SF 0.643
Allen Iverson, SG 0.602
Amir Johnson, PF 0.530
Jason Maxiell, PF 0.459
Arron Afflalo, SG 0.257

LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS QUALITY
Eric Gordon, SG 0.786
Marcus Camby, C 0.783
DeAndre Jordan, C 0.575
Steve Novak, SF 0.526
Mardy Collins, PG 0.476
Brian Skinner, PF 0.331
Al Thornton, SF 0.261

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.300 and more
Superstar 1.025 1.299
Star 0.825 1.024
Very Good 0.675 0.824
Major Role Player 0.550 0.674
Role Player 0.475 0.549
Minor Role Player 0.425 0.474
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 0.424
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending and less 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
DETROIT PISTONS QUANTITY
Rodney Stuckey, PG 28.20
Tayshaun Prince, SF 26.35
Allen Iverson, SG 25.30
Antonio McDyess, PF 19.15
Kwame Brown, C 13.20
Amir Johnson, PF 12.20
Jason Maxiell, PF 7.35
Arron Afflalo, SG 6.95

LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS QUANTITY
Eric Gordon, SG 34.60
Marcus Camby, C 32.90
Mardy Collins, PG 20.00
Steve Novak, SF 15.25
Al Thornton, SF 10.45
DeAndre Jordan, C 10.35
Brian Skinner, PF 5.95

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME













DETROIT PISTONS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Antonio McDyess
Very Good during minutes on the court: Kwame Brown
Very Good during minutes on the court: Rodney Stuckey
Very Good during minutes on the court: Tayshaun Prince
Very Good during minutes on the court: Allen Iverson








LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Marcus Camby
Star during minutes on the court: Eric Gordon

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME













DETROIT PISTONS POWER PERFORMERS
Very Big Game: Rodney Stuckey
Big Game: Tayshaun Prince
Big Game: Allen Iverson
Big Game: Antonio McDyess








LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS POWER PERFORMERS
Huge Game: Eric Gordon
Huge Game: Marcus Camby
Big Game: Mardy Collins

USER GUIDE FOR ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN: PLAYER REPORTS (Last updated December 8 2008)

This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future.

In many cases there will be no comments at all. Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks".

With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone, including me, can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

Only players who played at least 7 minutes are included in these reports. Any player who plays for only one half of one quarter (6 minutes) or less is not included since he didn't play for long enough to be fairly compared with the other players.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court, without regard to playing time.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

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How a Good, Smart Coach and a Playoff-Experienced Team Will Quickly Defeat the Nuggets in the Playoffs This Spring

The Nuggets will very, very likely be defeated in their first playoff series this year, regardless of how many regular season games they win and regardless of whether they have the home court advantage or not. The theme of this article has become sort of an annual tradition, because the Nuggets have been very quickly defeated in the playoffs for five straight years and this will most likely be the sixth straight year. Every year I explain what the Nuggets would have to do to win a playoff series, and/or why what they are doing will not work in the playoffs and, sure enough, every year, they don't change anything and every year they go up in flames.

The Nuggets are the big surprise of the NBA so far this year in terms of number of wins. Up and coming sportscasters at ESPN and so forth all forecast that the Nuggets would win a lot fewer than 50 games this year after the Marcus Camby giveaway and the failure to figure out Allen Iverson. They were all wrong, as was yours truly. The Nuggets are on track to win 48-55 regular season games.

While defeating the Nuggets may not be quite as easy this year as it has been in the most recent five years, it should not be all that difficult either. I would say that, at the most, it will be a moderately difficult thing to in 4-6 games defeat the Nuggets in the playoffs this year, which, however, for any quality coach or experienced playoff team translates into easy. While coaches such as Rick Adelman (Rockets), Byron Scott (Hornets), Greg Popovich (Spurs), and Jerry Sloan (Jazz) will most likely have no difficulty at all defeating George Karl and the Nuggets this year, it is plausible that Nate McMillan (Trailblazers) or Terry Porter (Suns) will have a more difficult task in front of them.

Unlike a regular season game where defensive aggressiveness, enthusiasm, and just plain luck can win you some games, you can not, perhaps unfortunately, win a best of seven series with those elements, particularly when there is a large mismatch in the skill levels between the coaches and/or a large mismatch in the playoff experience levels of the players involved. The Nuggets may be playoff bound, but they are that with the worst playoff coaches and with very playoff-inexperienced players.

The team that defeats them will use some combination of the following methods, techniques, and approaches to sending the Nuggets home for the 2009 off season.

SPECIFICALLY HOW THE NUGGETS WILL BE DEFEATED QUICKLY IN THE PLAYOFFS
1. The Nuggets’ opponent will finally realize that this is not really Carmelo Anthony’s team anymore, if it ever was, and that Carmelo Anthony is not the player who can or will beat you in more than one or two games in a 4-6 games playoff series. Carmelo Anthony has rebounding duties now and, although in a surprise development he has a three point shot for a change, his garden variety jump shooting is nothing much to worry about anymore as a result of his agreeing to being downsized in the offense.

Yes it's true, George Karl and the Nuggets have shot themselves in the foot by telling Carmelo Anthony to "not worry about scoring" anymore. They decided that they can do without having available to them a player who can dominate scoring to one extent to another. Karl believes in what you might call the Indirect Scoring Theory of basketball, which states that a good offense in general and good scoring in particular emerges indirectly from other factors, which are thought of in this theory as more fundamental, things such as, you guessed it, aggressive man to man defending and hustling for loose balls. However, unfortunately, there isn't in real life an automatic connection between those kinds of things and the number of points scored, at least not to the extent needed to win playoff games against quality offensive teams.

The opponent will realize that Chauncey Billups and to a lesser extent Nene are the only players on the Nuggets who can possibly endanger their winning the playoff series. With the downsizing of Carmelo Anthony having made the shortage worse, the Nuggets do not have any where near enough experienced playoff warriors to pose a real threat to win a playoff series against any reasonably well managed or reasonably playoff-experienced team.

2. Billups, for all practical purposes, is the offensive Coach of the Nuggets, and arguably the Coach of the team as a whole. As such, he deserves to get a whole lot of defensive extra attention. All other Nuggets are afraid of the wrath of George Karl were they to show any real initiative with respect to being a playmaker. So once again, the opponent must and will double and hassle Billups all game every game.

3. With Nene you want to get him into foul trouble, pure and simple. What you do is simple: go at him early and often offensively. Don’t try to foul him as much as you try to get him to foul you. The Nuggets are still a high turnover team, and that includes Nene. Do not be overly concerned that Nene has such a high field goal percentage. He hardly tries any midrange jumpers, and he will turn it over often enough to keep the damage from all his point blank layups and dunks within reason.

4. The four best offensive players on the Nuggets are all relatively high turnover rate players: Carmelo Anthony, Nene, and J.R. Smith. A good opponent will make sure it goes after these players and forces as many turnovers by them as possible. Offensive fouls are a particular kind of turnover, and all three of these Nuggets have “style problems” with the refs and are therefore vulnerable to being called for offensive fouls at a higher than typical rate. In recent years, Carmelo Anthony has been hammered in the playoffs with a large number of offensive foul calls against him.

5. Generally, the coaches of the Nuggets’ opponent will most of the time correctly choose the defensive matchups that are best for them, and make the correct decision between zone and man to man defending. Meanwhile, the Nuggets’ coaching staff will be over relying on man to man defending. The Nuggets in at least two or three playoff games will have to reduce the minutes of two or more of their aggressive man to man defenders as a result of foul trouble, particularly if the Nuggets play teams such as the Spurs and the Jazz who are highly trained at drawing fouls and who are experts at “playing the referees” in general, whereas the Nuggets, being newcomers to the game of milking the referees, are mere amateurs.

6. J.R. Smith is extremely dangerous, but much more in theory than in reality, and only in the regular season most likely. In practice the Nuggets have made Smith much less dangerous than he could be. But the Nuggets’ opponent will, at the first sign that J.R. Smith may go on a tear of hitting a bunch of threes and of impressive drives to the hoop, do whatever is necessary to force him to lose his confidence, including hard fouling, double covering, going for steals and getting a couple of them off of him, and running a much larger number of offensive plays than otherwise through whoever he is covering. Good coaches know that to cool down a streaky offensive player, you can make him work harder and attempt to break down his overall confidence by beating him when he is on defense.

Good playoff coaches will be aware that as a result of Smith being considered the “black sheep” by the Nuggets personality police, that he is vulnerable to losing his confidence, and is also vulnerable to having his minutes cut way back in the playoffs by Personality Police Chief George Karl. Smith’s personality problem is not that he has a bad personality as the Nuggets falsely believe, but that he has an immature personality. But George Karl and those who blindly support him have created the impression in J.R.’s mind that there is something wrong with his personality, that he is lacking something mentally that other players have, that he should and must have.

So Mr. Karl has made the impact of Smith’s immature personality as bad as possible for the Nuggets, by refusing to start him regardless of how well he plays, by recklessly and publicly criticizing him for minor things, by leaving him in toss up games late in the 4th quarter, which is the one context that J.R.’s immature personality can harm your team, and by, amazingly, refusing to even talk off court to the young shooting guard were he to want to discuss something.

As a result of being immature to begin with, and as a result of George Karl recklessly and severely making J.R. much more vulnerable to losing his confidence in high pressure games than he already was, J.R. Smith has been largely or completely a non-factor so far in almost all playoff games. Smith’s turnover rate has continued to be high even as his offensive and defensive game has become more mature and polished overall. There is no reason to believe that Smith’s big confidence vulnerability will not continue for most playoff games this year. However, if somehow Smith is showing signs that he might break out of the box that the Nuggets have put him in, it should be easy to put him back in that box by aggressively defending, fouling, and running plays at the extremely talented but immature shooting guard.

7. More broadly, Karl is well known for having a total breakdown of communication and relations with at least one of his players, usually tactlessly and publicly, during every playoff series he has ever been in. If the player who Karl has the falling out with is not Smith, it will be someone else. So the opponent will be doing everything possible to make any developing rift between Karl and one of the Nuggets worse, so as to literally and perhaps completely remove that Nugget from the playoffs.

8. The Nuggets’ opponent will have patience on offense and will not try to run into a brick wall by trying to pick up the pace against a team that relies heavily on very aggressive and energetic defending in general, and especially on aggressive and energetic man to man defending in the paint in particular. The opponent will keep the pace measured and use plenty of the 24 second clock. This will wear out the Nuggets extremely energetic defenders as the game wears on. Stunts and shortcuts on offense will not work well against a team that uses stunts on defense.

9. Stay calm, cool, and collected; do not allow the Nuggets, anyone on the Nuggets, or the referees to get under your skin. Tune them and their crowd out completely and don’t worry about them and their rose colored glasses. Go about your business with laser like focus. Certain teams have lost a game to the Nuggets in the regular season so far due simply to losing their cool.
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10. The opponent will make sure that their best and hottest jump shooters have plenty of playing time and that, unlike J.R. Smith and Linas Kleiza, they have plenty of confidence. The one automatic, easy way to beat the Nuggets is to simply make your jump shots, or make the free throws if the Nuggets insist on fouling you as they often do now days. The Nuggets are saying to you: "Ok, we are going to run around all over and try to confuse your offense, we are going to run at you all night, we are going to goal tend from time to time, we are going to foul over and over and over, and we are especially going to man to man defend you aggressively and well." To which your response is simply: "Fine, have fun; we'll make our passes, our assists, and our shots, and all of your extra effort and aggressiveness will not amount to a whole lot of benefit for you." I repeat for emphasis that you must not forget to make your free throws, because the Nuggets have actually won at least a couple of regular season games simply because their opponent could not make enough free throws.

11. The opponent will overweight three point shooting even more so than is ordinarily the case in the playoffs. Do not expect you can beat the Nuggets without bothering with a three point game anymore. You can’t do that anymore both because the Nuggets are more aggressively defending the paint than in recent years and because the Nuggets themselves now have a three point game for the first time in many years, although it is too early to say whether they will still have a good three point game in the playoffs.

12. The opponent will pass, pass, and pass some more, and get as many assists as they possibly can. The opponent will maintain its playmaking identity, meaning that the top two playmaking guards will be responsible for making at least 11-12 assists per game. Beating the Nuggets’ style of defending with effective playmaking is the easiest and most sure way of defeating them. The Nuggets amazing defensive enthusiasm and aggressiveness will melt in proportion to how well you beat them with effective passing and assisting.

13. The opponent will try like heck to pass especially to anyone who can slip in behind the defense baseline and get the easy layup or dunk. This will cause the Nuggets to lose some of their aggressiveness even more quickly than will passing in general. Make sure your fastest, most elusive offensive players get plenty of playing time. The Nuggets can not foul or aggressively defend who they can not keep up with.

14. The opponent will not allow the Nuggets to rack up a huge advantage in free throw shooting. The Nuggets have been winning regular season games in part by becoming one of the best teams in the League at drawing fouls. Players on the opponent will be told to defend as well as possible, but to be careful about fouling, especially in the 1st half. The only exceptions to the try to go light on the fouling rule will be Chauncey Billups, Nene, and perhaps J.R. Smith, as previously discussed. Otherwise, see if previously unknown players such as Chris Andersen and Dahntay Jones can actually put the ball in the bucket instead of being bailed out by the refs all the time.

15. The opponent will not make the mistake of losing track of players that no one ever heard of before such as Chris Andersen and Renaldo Balkman, who have been far, far better than anyone would have expected in the regular season so far. Players such as these can not defeat you as long as you don’t ignore them and lose track of them half the time. Just respect them, put decent defenders on them, and go at them offensively repeatedly, and they will be generally out of the way as a potential playoff series problem.

16. The opponent will win one or more playoff games due to good offensive rebounding. Following the loss of Marcus Camby, the Nuggets have become vulnerable to extra aggressive offensive rebounding.

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Fast Break: The Correct Pistons Starting Lineup

My time is limited at the moment. Meanwhile, the Pistons are out there making fools of themselves losing to the Bobcats, and Coach Michael Curry is suddenly starting to appear like he is losing the battle to get the Iverson mess under control. And the Pistons now have to play again with no rest on a back to back road game at Indiana! So this is an emergency fast break post that I will be explaining in detail (very, very great detail as you regular readers know) in the coming days and weeks.

RULES FOR MAKING SURE IVERSON DOES NOT HURT YOUR TEAM
1. If you don't realize that Iverson plays both guard positions at once regardless of his designated position you will lose out.
2. If you make a summary judgment in advance that Iverson can not be an effective point guard you will lose out.
3. If you are afraid to limit Iverson's minutes or afraid to make him come off the bench if you have to do that, you will lose out.

There are other rules you need to discover and follow to reduce the damage from the Larry Brown caused Iverson combo guard mess but those three are the most important to start with.

Now here is the correct starting lineup for the Detroit Pistons:

PG Rodney Stuckey
SG Richard Hamilton
SF Tayshaun Prince
PF Amir Johnson
C Rasheed Wallace

You bring in Iverson for Hamilton at 8-9 minutes into the game. You want either Stuckey, Iverson, or even Bynum in the game at all times when Hamilton is in the game, since Hamilton can not run the point worth a damn.

If you are going to run Prince at the point, for god's sake, don't ever do it with Hamilton and AI in the game at the same time. In that scheme you have a G-F (Prince)at the point, you have a combo guard designated at SG (Iverson) who doesn't trust or feel comfortable with the designated PG, and you have another SG (Hamilton) who needs a pure PG to excel. You have created total and complete chaos and you have ruined both the offense and the defense at the same time!

In fact, the three player combination of Prince/Iverson/Hamilton is not even among the top 50 three-player combinations for the Pistons.

Generally, Prince at the point is a very bad idea except for a few plays here and there to confuse the defense.

It sounds more complicated than it is, but I admit it's kind of complicated, and, once again, I don't have time at the moment to explain further. Much more later.

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The Detroit Pistons Real Player Ratings: Rodney Stuckey and Tayshaun Prince are the Pistons' MVPs So Far

The Quest is proud to announce to you that the second major improvement to Real Player Ratings (RPR) in less than half a year is now fully up and running. We are now certain that RPR is the best overall rating system in existence, and that it is now roughly as good as it will ever or can ever be.

We recently developed a statistically valid way to rate the defending of players, that is, what they do to prevent scores other than rebounding, blocks, steals, and fouls, which were always included. Although the technique used had to be indirect and inexact, it validly awards the better defenders with bigger RPR bonuses. It has been validated by comparing results obtained with the defensive ratings shown on three different "advanced basketball statistics" web sites. Our results were shown to be extremely highly correlated with the results shown on the other sites.

Point Guard Rodney Stuckey is so far the most valuable Piston in the 2008-09 regular season.

DETROIT PISTONS
REAL PLAYER RATINGS
[QUALITY OF PLAYERS]
2008-09 Regular Season
As of Jan. 13, 2009

Rodney Stuckey 0.816
Allen Iverson 0.798
Amir Johnson 0.773
Rasheed Wallace 0.772
Tayshaun Prince 0.744
Antonio McDyess 0.706
Kwame Brown 0.642
Richard Hamilton 0.637
Jason Maxiell 0.548
Arron Afflalo 0.376

Perfect Player? Is there Such a Thing? 1.000 and more
Historic Super Star 0.950 and more
Super Star 0.850 0.949
A Star Player; An Extremely Good Starter 0.775 0.849
A Great Player; A Solid Starter 0.700 0.774
Major Role Player 0.650 0.699
Role Player 0.600 0.649
Minor Role Player 0.550 0.599
Very Minor Role Player 0.500 0.549
Poor Player at This Time 0.450 0.499
Very Poor Player at This Time 0.350 0.449
Extremely Poor Player at This Time / Disaster and less 0.349

Real Player Production (RPP) is the sum of all the good things minus the sum of all the bad things a player has done since the season began. There is no methodology as of yet for adjusting RPP for defending. Therefore, you should, in order to fairly evaluate the following ratings, remember that the better defenders have done more for the team relative to the lessor defenders than the ratings are showing.

DETROIT PISTONS
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION
[QUANTITY OF PLAYERS]
2008-09 Regular Season
Through Jan. 13, 2009

Tayshaun Prince 864.50
Allen Iverson 764.10
Rodney Stuckey 660.25
Rasheed Wallace 644.45
Richard Hamilton 541.85
Jason Maxiell 301.60
Amir Johnson 286.50
Antonio McDyess 260.15
Arron Afflalo 225.20
Kwame Brown 193.10

CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE USER GUIDE FOR REAL PLAYER RATINGS BY TEAM, last updated Jan. 13, 2009

Congratulations and respect are due to RODNEY STUCKEY who has been leading the Pistons in quality basketball so far this season.



Congratulations and respect are due to TAYSHAUN PRINCE who leads the Pistons in terms of total contributions so far this season.



OTHER PISTONS STARS OF 2008-09
ALLEN IVERSON


AMIR JOHNSON


RASHEED WALLACE


CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE USER GUIDE FOR REAL PLAYER RATINGS BY TEAM, last updated Jan. 13, 2009

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You Don't Win Cheap Against the Pistons, and the Nuggets Get Beat by Their Own Player!

There was no Rip Hamilton and no Rasheed Wallace for the Pistons, and no Melo Anthony for the Nuggets, and the Nuggets were home, so the set-up was more than fair for the Nuggets and the "smart money" was on another cheap Nuggets win.

But the Pistons crushed the Nuggets with offensive rebounding and nerves of steel free throw shooting of Arron Afflalo. Denver finally lost a game despite, yet again, it's opponent missing an abnormal number of free throws. But Afflalo made 8 straight free throws in the final 2:53 to prevent Denver from winning cheap for a change.

The final score was Pistons 93 Nuggets 90 for this game in Denver on Jan. 9, 2009. This game will be forever remembered here at Quest as "The Turning of the Tide Game".

We saw great games from Tayshaun, Allen Iverson, Dice, Jason Maxiell, and from Coach Michael Curry at the Lexus controls with 9 players for 9 minutes or more; an absolutely fantastic game for the whole Detroit City crew, Coach and General Manager included. Congrats all around to all Pistons crews.

Offensive Rebounding of the Detroit City Crew:
Maxiell 4
McDyess 3
Afflalo 2
Brown 2
Prince 1
Johnson 1
Bynum 1
Pistons Combined: 14

All Nuggets Combined: 7

So Denver, I think you were missing someone who had you had him rebounding like hell you would have easily won this game:





















Laugh out loud at the Demver announcer claiming that Denver "gave this game away" Yeah, how true; they gave it away last July when they gave Camby away.

Well Denver, since you hated Camby and thought his style was weak, and so you gave him away for nothing, and so Camby wasn't around to win this one for you, who was the rebounding leader of this game?






















Antonio McDyess! Damn, Denver, that's supposed to be your player!

You were beaten by your own player!

Denver, I think you need to turn over a new leaf and be a little more loyal to, strategic with, and consistent with your expensive, important players.

Pistons fans: keep keeping the faith; we are going to power into the playoffs with everything set up nicely.

I love this game.

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