Everyone, including the Pistons themselves, seems to think they’re the better team, and they just haven’t “turned it on” so to speak, or something. Well, I guess they waited too long.
They got outplayed in every game of that series. A few calls go differently and the Cavs could’ve swept.
As one of the announcers said, looks like the end of one dynasty and the possible beginning of another. I just hope my Cavs don’t get blown out in the finals. But, hey. LeBron is only 22. He just might be here for a cupple more years. 
Bleh. That was possibly the worst game I’ve ever seen the Pistons play. The Cavs wanted it more and deserved it.
Sorry, but looking at the rosters, the Pistons are still the better team.
Good game from the Cavs, however.
So may I assume that the cagers from The Mistake by the Lake have defeated the dribblers representing the Motor City, and have thus been hurtled willy-nilly further into the playdowns?
You would be correct, good sir.
As great as King James was in Game 5, I think a lot of the blame for the Pistons collapse has to go to Flip Saunders. I watched that guy gag it up in the playoffs year after year after year with the T-Wolves and now he’s doing it again in Detroit. Flip is a barely adequate regular season coach who has absolutely no ability to motivate or inspire a team when it matters. The Pistons were a mess tonight. Sheed got tossed and would have disqualified himself for a Game 7 even if it had gotten that far. I just don’t think “Skip” (as Jack Nicholson once kept calling him during a Wolves-Lakers playoff series) has any leadership ability or any ability to take a team by the throat. The chaos and frustration on the part of the Pistons tonight was exactly what I used to see from the Wolves every year. Flip Saunders sucks, man. I don’t know what the Pistons were thinking by hiring him.
I give much praise to LBJ, though. Game 5 was Jordan-esque. A joy to watch. I hope he does well against the Spurs but it’s hard for me to see the cavs winning that series.
The Pistons had just got burned by Larry Brown. The league didn’t like the defense that the Pistons were playing, so we had to refocus on offense. Flip was supposed to be an offensive coach.
Now I’d just like to go back to defense. A buddy o fmine and I talked about this about a week ago. I said I was upset because we weren’t getting the offense we were promised, but Flip hadn’t LOST his job. My buddy wanted Jeff Van Gundy. I’ve changed my tune. I’m just not impressed with Flip. I want a Van Gundy. I want to score 85 points a game and win by 10 on average.
Screw this offense shit.
The Cavs get so little respect. A lot of people still say Detroit is the better team even after the Cavs beat them 4 times in a row. Well, what were they waiting for? Was being two wins away from the championship just not motivating enough, so they phoned in their performance? And it’s not a one game playoff like football, so you couldn’t even say “9/10 times they’d win, but this was that flukey time” - the Cavs beat Detroit solidly 4 times in a row, and barely lost to them before that.
You can’t even say it was the reffing, because even though there were some bad calls in the Cavs’ favor, the overwhelming majority of bad calls/non-calls, especially early in the series, went in Detroit’s favor.
Yeah, the Pistons weren’t on their game. Because the Cavs play some damn good defense. Mike Brown couldn’t draw up an offensive play that would look good in little league, but the man can coach defense.
Already people are predicting the Cavs get swept, just like they did with Detroit. If the Cavs win the championship people will probably say the Spurs were the better team.
I don’t know what they can do to get some respect.
Yes. That’s all completely correct. The Pistons are still the better team, looking at the rosters. If you were to say that I could run one of those teams, I’d take the Pistons 10 times out of 10. Well, everything’s correct except the Cavs defense. I didn’t see great defense from the Cavs. I saw some solid defense, but Lebron is a bad defender, and Ilgauskas is a subpar defender. Larry Hughes has always played good defense, and I was impressed with what I saw from Daniel Gibson.
The Cavs played a great series and deserved to win. The Pistons played like ass and deserved to lose.
The Spurs will win the Finals in 5 or 6 games.
My prediction: Billups, at 31 years old, gets signed by another team for WAY more money than the Pistons would give him.
If only there were a better way to determine which teams were better than looking at the roster and taking a guess.
Perhaps even a direct competition in which the teams would attempt to use their talents to defeat the other. They could even do this multiple times to ensure that the result wasn’t a one-off fluke.
If only…
As far as LeBron being a bad defender - how did Prince do compared to his average level of play?
