<div align="center">Pistons @ Wizards Date and Time : 29th of December, 7:00 PM(ET) TV:CSN/WDWB/WD20/NBALP </div> Matchups Center : Ben Wallace vs. Brendan Haywood Advantage: Detroit Power Forward : Rasheed Wallace vs. Antawn Jamison Advantage: Close Small Forward : Tayshaun Prince vs. Jared Jeffries Advantage: Detroit Shooting Guard : Richard Hamilton vs. Larry Hughes Advantage: Close Point Guard : Chauncey Billups vs. Gilbert Arenas Advantage: Wizards <font size="3">Key Matchup</font> Arenas VS. Billups Arenas season stats : PPG 22.2 RPG 4.10 APG 5.2 SPG 1.68 FG% .435 Billups season stats : PPG 16.6 RPG 4.10 APG 6.3 SPG 1.50 FG% .401 <font color="Red"><font size="4">Pistons Key's to the Game</font></font> *Get Chauncey the ball.If he can outplay Arenas, the Pistons should be able to pull away early. *Don't let Hughes get open shots. When's hot, he's hard to be stopped. *Inside dominance : Big Ben and especially Rasheed need to get the ball a lot in the post, so they can dominate Haywood and Jamison with their strenght. *Defend like last year! *Let Jamison shoot from the outside. Antawn has always been more of an inside player and when forced to shoot from long range, he isn't effective at all. <font color="Navy"><font size="4">Wizard Key's to the Game</font></font> *Isolate Arenas on Billups, and Hughes on Hamilton. The way referees are calling hand-checks etc. they could go to the stripe early. *Force Ben to come out and defend the pick and roll. Pass back to the inside player and you're sure of 2 points. *Get Jamison the ball early. When he can drive and do some post moves against Rasheed, the Wizards should be able to count on him for the win. *Learn Haywood to board like a man of his size! <font color="Green"><font size="4">Phuzer's Prediction</font></font> On paper, the Pistons should win this one. But the way Detroit's playing this season, and the surprising play of the Wizards, things could turn out different. The team that has it going early should be able to hold on because of the momentum and come away with the win. Though I'm a Pistons fan I expect a loss because of the weak outside defence we're playing all season long. Pistons - 84 Wizards - 89
Thanks for the nice preview!! Hopefully we can pull this one out, it would be nice to get a win against Detroit since I think we've lost our last 7 or so. Detroit maybe over looking us toward their matchup with Miami. Wiz by 6 By the way, I'm suprised noone has mentioned the whole Ex-Bullets thing yet. The Wallaces & Rip may be hyped up to smash us around a bit & show us what we missed out on.
Man..thanks for the preview, great ! I think we can win this game. Arenas vs. Billups is going to be an awesome matchup. Larry should do a great job on Rip. The game will be won by the Pistons through Sheed. He should be able to take care of Antawn on offense because..really..Antawn plays no D. I take the Wizards in a close on though... 90-87 P.S. I will get to previews again soon, I have been really busy this holiday season.
I didn't get predictions in, but the Wiz are doing good so far, 6 steals, pushing the ball, and they're up right now 39-29. lol at Rasheed after the foul call
Antawn...Jamison...is..not...the...same..player..as..last..year...WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH HIM? 4-12..8 points? That is pathetic for someone getting his kind of money...Gilbert and Larry are the only reason we are in this game.
Noooooooooooooooooooooo........ah man, that was horrible, Arenas slipped, Billups had a little push off, but it was nothing big, but that sucked a lot. Arenas had such a good game too, and Hughes came up big in crunch time, man that sucked, I almost cried after Billups made that, as soon as Gil fell I knew it was in. This is why they say defense wins championships, the Wiz had absolutely no defense in the second half, and the zone had many many holes.
This was a very good game. I am depressed that we couldn't win, but we can hang in there with the big boys of the Eastern conference. If we can just improve our team D then we will be a much better team. Arenas and Hughes kept us in this game all night, it was nice..woulda been sweeter if Jamison could of hit some more shots. I am not down on this loss, just knowing that this team here can hang in there with the big boy teams is awesome, now we need to learn how to keep leads against them.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting og15:</div><div class="quote_post">Noooooooooooooooooooooo........ah man, that was horrible, Arenas slipped, Billups had a little push off, but it was nothing big, but that sucked a lot. Arenas had such a good game too, and Hughes came up big in crunch time, man that sucked, I almost cried after Billups made that, as soon as Gil fell I knew it was in. This is why they say defense wins championships, the Wiz had absolutely no defense in the second half, and the zone had many many holes.</div> That was LArry Hughes that slipped, I believe. Arenas had a great game shooting 12-19 from the court (5-9 from 3 point land), Larry Hughes also had a great game shooting 11-20 from the court.
I'm pretty ure it was Gil that slipped because Gil was guarding Billups on the final play, and then when Billups drove he slipped and couldn't recover to challenge the shot, after that I knew it was going in. Add another game winner to Mr Big Shot's resume
Yeah i was at the game, it was tough to see them lose, but it was Washington's fault, Haywood was in foul trouble, and Jamison's tech hurt them. The substitution for Steve Blake was useless, and bad. But that's possibly the best wizards game in the last three years. The crowd at MCI was the best and livest it has ever been even with Jordan here, and ive been a season-tix holder for 5 yrs since i was 12. But atleast Orlando lost, and we got a couple games at home coming up still. Boston and Atlanta are easy wins. Boston can bring it though.
I think Blake was put in because Arenas was in foul trouble, also the funny thing about you mentioning Haywood is that when Haywood is in the game, the team is a good defensive team, and when he's out, they're terrible, the same situation was present last season. Haywood is a bigger presence than many people might give him credit for.
I've been saying that for the last two years. According to 82games.com the team is 16 points per 48 minutes better with him on the floor than with him off, that's 12th in the NBA. And they also hold opponents to 5% lower FG% when he's in the game. He's a huge factor on this team.
