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Pistons blast onto scene with 31 point victory
By David Zizmor June 16, 2005 |
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The home team has won every game in the NBA Finals so far. Detroit has kept up the pace at the Palace of Auburn Hills with a 102-71 thrashing of the San Antonio Spurs Thursday night to tie the series at two games each. Game 5 will be this Sunday as San Antonio desperately tries to get back any kind of anger they had in the opening two games. They've certainly looked dead on their feet in the last two. A 102-71 final for the Spurs is an embarrassing score - a 31-point loss even more so. The Spurs really just didn't have their game at all - they only shot 37 percent from the floor and they couldn't get their game going against a Detroit team that was frisky, lively, and played one of their best defensive games of the postseason. Detroit had seven players in double figures and even the much-maligned Darko Milicic got two points in the closing seconds of the game. Detroit came out swinging, had a big first half and never looked back. Rasheed Wallace and Ben Wallace were just playing out of their minds. Ben had 11 points, 13 rebounds and three blocked shots, Rasheed added 14 points, eight boards, and two blocks. These guys were just a wall. Even though Tim Duncan had a relatively good-looking stat line of 16 points and 16 boards, he was only 5-of-17 from the floor. Ben and Rasheed did a fantastic job at keeping Duncan out of this game and even though Duncan's stats looked okay, he really wasn't effective at all. Manu Ginobili is probably the bigger story. Ginobili only had 12 points in this game. You'll recall in Game 3, he suffered a thigh bruise and wasn't really effective and the pattern continued in Game 4. There was a huge play in the second quarter - Tayshaun Prince just faked Ginobili out of his shoes and had a monster dunk in the middle. Ginobili is still hurting and even though San Antonio head coach Greg Popovich insisted his star guard is healthy, anyone who watched the game would know otherwise. The Spurs desperately needs to fix whatever is broken, but it's hard to tell what it is. Detroit is playing great ball, and part of that's because San Antonio isn't playing particularly tight defense. Because Ginoblil is hurt and they can't defend on the perimeter, that makes Rip Hamilton more effective. It made Lindsay Hunter even better - he scored 17 in Game 4, and it just makes it more difficult if the Spurs have to focus on stopping the perimeter game Ziz's footnotes: This will be a very interesting Game 5, and it could very much turn the entire series in favor of whoever wins. If Detroit wins, that gives them three in a row, and even with two games left in San Antonio they would definitely have the tremendous momentum. Scores and schedule: *-denotes if necessary June 9th San Antonio 84 Detroit 69 June 12th San Antonio 97 Detroit 76 June 14th Detroit 96 San Antonio 79 June 16th Detroit 102 San Antonio 71 June 19th San Antonio @ Detroit June 20th Detroit @ San Antonio June 23rd Detroit @ San Antonio* Dave Zizmor is covering the NBA Championship and will be co-hosting Sportstalk on 1430 KVVN San Jose and 1110 KLIB Sacramento. |
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