Bad feelings in the captain’s chair last night, all about this recognition of something I’d denied a few times already this year, this biased mind clinging onto hope for a higher peak yet undiscovered, though realistic the entire time about how much extra juice could actually be injected into the bloodstream from the addition of Chris Webber, the Pistons have lost something along the way, and while I wasn’t made to be more optimistic by anything I saw this season, there wasn’t much of a doubt that they’d handle whatever came at them in the East and struggle in the finals. The best that most teams in this league can hope for is a realistic outlook like that.
The fear hadn’t crept in to stay until last night. It was hard to watch Chauncey Billups single-handedly blow the game in the final two minutes. My yearly playoff dream team has had Chauncey at the point for 3 years running, but if last night’s game was a sign of things to come, the ride may be coming to an end. Analysis will point out the disgraceful numbers produced by Webber and a bad night from Rasheed, but like I said before, expecting Webber to make your team better is a mistake, and with Sheed’s production throughout the playoffs, I’m not laying game four on his shoulders. This one belongs to my guy Billups, and worse than anything, his poor decision-making spanned a couple timeouts, plenty of time to get your head back to where it needs to be.
That didn’t happen. He iced the game for Cleveland with a stupid pull up 3 pointer in transition. So maybe he figures out what made him lose 50 points on his basketball IQ in game 4, and it turns out to be a fluke. I hope that’s the case. Because if Detroit has a 3:1 or 4:1 chance of beating San Antonio in the finals, then I’d put Cleveland at 6:1. I’m rooting for the Pistons, but above everything else, I’m rooting for the chance to see San Antonio sweat at some point in their series. And yes, that means I have indeed written off Utah. Deron Williams cannot do it alone. Kirilenko and Okur need to donate their game 4 checks to charity. Doom and gloom…
As usual, I’m pulling for the Pistons, but I don’t think they’ll win. On my blog, I predicted that Cleveland would win in seven games, and right now that looks about right. I was a bit unnerved by the near-meltdown against Chicago. Whoever wins from the Eastern Conference will probably get steamrolled by San Antonio anyway.