http://www.mlive.com/pistons/index.ssf/ ... on_ta.htmlRichard Hamilton-Ben Gordon tandem key as Pistons beat Grizzlies, 96-74, in opener
Ben Gordon and Richard Hamilton are high-scoring guards. When they're on top of their games on the same night, they can be a handful. The Memphis Grizzlies found this out the hard way. The Gordon-Hamilton tandem proved to be too much as the Pistons had little trouble putting away the Grizzlies, 96-74, in their season opener. "I'll give Detroit credit," said Zach Randolph, a Memphis forward from Michigan State. "Richard and Ben (Gordon) were on fire tonight and made tough shots." Hamilton, who left the game in the fourth quarter with a right ankle injury, led all scorers with 25 points, and Gordon scored 22 off the bench as his backup. Detroit has won six of its past eight season openers. The 22-point margin of victory was the second-largest in franchise history on an opening night. Although most of Gordon's points came with Hamilton on the bench and vice versa, Detroit's fourth-quarter surge that put the game away came with both players on the floor.Throughout the preseason, both players shrugged off the talk about there being potential problems with them playing together. "I don't think there's ever been a problem with that, especially in this locker room," Hamilton said. "That's media talk. We're UConn guys. We know how to win. Coach (Jim) Calhoun does an excellent job of training us for situations like this. We just try to go out there and feed off each other on the floor."
Said Gordon: "You look at Rip and myself, a lot of our offense comes off of catch-and-shoot stuff. We don't need to have the basketball in our hands to be effective. A game like tonight is a perfect example, you get a guy like myself and Rip running off screens, we can be effective without having the ball in our hands." Much of the focus leading to the game was on Detroit's offense, but the Pistons surprisingly were effective defensively. Ben Wallace, a four-time Defensive Player of the Year, set the tone with a team-high nine rebounds and drew a couple early fouls on Randolph. After picking up early fouls of his own, Detroit's Charlie Villanueva returned to the lineup and had three blocked shots. One block forced a shot clock violation. "We did a great job (defensively)," Pistons coach John Kuester said. "The team was really focused."Gordon said defense will be a big part of this year's team. "That was the most impressive thing about tonight's victory, the way we played on the defensive end. We need to keep that up. We need to be a team that when we're not scoring we can get stops."
The Pistons did not look like a team on the verge of a strong game defensively in the first quarter. After trailing 20-18, Detroit scored the final six points of the quarter, which included a 15-foot buzzer beater by Gordon with 1.9 seconds to play that gave Detroit a 24-20 lead. The Pistons started to pull away in the second quarter primarily behind the red-hot shooting of Hamilton. After missing five of his first six shots in the first, Hamilton bounced back with a 12-point, 6-for-7 shooting performance in the second that propelled Detroit to a double-digit lead at the half. The Pistons maintained their double-digit lead in the third and increased it to 25 in the fourth. "One game doesn't make a season, as we all know," Kuester said. "It is the right type of way to win. We had a good offensive flow and defensively we were getting stops. That's the thing that was so impressive tonight."
