<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Auburn Hills, Mich. - On the whole, I would've rather been somewhere more exciting, but the Greater Detroit Society of Philately was closed Sunday night. So was the Oakland County Fellowship of Bottle Cap Collecting. This is meant in the kindest possible way, but to watch the Detroit Pistons play basketball is the amusement equivalent of an evening before a junkyard crusher. And right now, the Milwaukee Bucks are the '74 AMC Pacer. The roof and the windshield, along with a couple of tires, have collapsed. It's only a matter of time now. The optimum descriptive term, one would take it, is "grinding." Pistons coach Flip Saunders used it several times after the 92-74 defensive pulverization of the Bucks, who have about as much of a chance in this series as Lindsey Hunter does to make a playoff jumper. That is not to say that the Bucks played neither hard nor semi-well in limited stretches during Game 1 at the Palace of Auburn Hills. They did, but truth be told, this series is Pistons vs. Pistons. As long as Detroit maintains its interest against the mind-numbing realization that it still has anywhere between 15 and 27 games left before desensitizing the NBA-watching part of country on the way to a second title in three years, there isn't much the Bucks can do except assume the position. You could measure the difference between these teams in many ways - the NBA's best against a playoff qualifier with a losing record would be the most superficial - but the most telling would be a post-game quote from Bucks coach Terry Stotts. "One of Detroit's strengths," he said, "is it's hard to concentrate on one guy." Could the Bucks be any more the anti-Pistons in that regard? The sum of Detroit's game plan was pretty much like Darth Vader sending the entire force of The Empire against one Luke Skywalker and a bunch of Jar Jar Binkses. The Pistons ran two or three defenders at all times against Michael Redd, who got off but 15 shots in 36 minutes and made just four. Naturally, this frustrated Redd to no end, but what are you going to do if you are the Pistons? Redd was the only reason the Bucks were reasonably competitive against Detroit during the regular season, so why not give generous leeway to the other four? Seriously, is anybody else on that 36% shooting team going to make a shot against that defense? It's easy to say that Redd, who had one assist, should've passed the ball more, but to whom? It would also help if he didn't take the ball into the teeth of Detroit's defense, but the Pistons' gaping jaws cover a discouraging swath. That cannot be a happy Game 2 thought for Redd. "I expect them to come even harder," he said.</div> Source
