lovehoops01 wrote:-= original quote snipped =-
Actually, I thought the Pistons' bigs ability to tie up Dwight made it more difficult to run the offense the way the Magic wanted to (and resulted in more turnovers) and so that kept the team from scoring the way it wanted. They couldn't run the offense inside-out as much. They couldn't get up the court as quickly. And the Magic did get as many second-chance points because McDyess was stealing all of Dwight's offensive rebounds and Detroit was getting a lot of the offensive rebounds on its end of the court, too. McDyess just killed the Magic.
I think the Magic could have let the Pistons get away with scoring the way they did. The problem was the Magic were averaging nearly 20 ppg less against the Pistons than they had pretty much up until then.
Combine that with the fact that the Pistons were bigger at every position, and the Pistons pretty much just wore the Magic down -- maybe even not as much physically as mentally because every time they turned around McDyess was grabbing a rebound, Rasheed's long arms were there, Prince's long arms were there, Maxiell was knocking their legs out from under them. Especially at the big spots, there wasn't as much drop-off on the bench for the Pistons.
The way the game was officiated just contributed to that, too. There is one play that has been shown on TV at least 1,000 times for reasons that don't have anything to do with fouls or officiating where Rasheed has his arms wrapped all the way around the inside of Dwight's arm to keep him from moving it and also allowing Wallace to strip the ball out of Dwight's hand. There was no foul called on that play.
8 pts and 8 rebounds. Yeah, stats don't tell the whole story, but c'mon.
I'll grant that they played Dwight well defensively, but I don't see how having a bigger PF would have changed that. If anything, Lewis' ability to spread the floor made it easier on Dwight all season.
Rip Hamilton, meanwhile, lit up our SGs all series.
