April 28, 2003
BY DREW SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
ORLANDO -- Contrary to Rick Carlisle's belief, the playoffs are about adjustments.
Now comes the most difficult adjustment of all for the Pistons. They're a loss away from a long, lonely summer of knowing that they were nothing but frauds.
Someone's got some explaining to do.
And that someone is the head coach.
Forget the hollow platitudes about how well Orlando has played or the lame rationalizations about what little separation there is between No. 1 and No. 8 in that junior varsity jumble that is the Eastern Conference playoffs.
Despite the Pistons' personnel issues, there's no justifiable reason for them to be down 3-1 against what's basically a one-man operation.
"I've got nothing to say," said a slowly boiling Ben Wallace, the only one who went to work for the entire game Sunday, with 12 points and 24 rebounds in 40 minutes. "Let them think that they had a great season."
The Pistons were understandably mad following their 100-92 loss. They were ticked about the officiating, peeved about how their defensive principles crumbled in a decisive 18-0 Orlando run.
But irritating them most was the realization that a second straight 50-win regular season and back-to-back Central Division championships is one loss away from being wasted.
"Yeah, I'm shocked and disappointed and anything else you can think of," Corliss Williamson said. "You give an underdog confidence, and they're going to believe that they can do anything. They're a very confident team, and it shows. But now it's up to us to put up a fight because it's not over."
Yes it is.
Does anyone expect a team that has lost seven of its past eight playoff games to somehow win three straight?
Would it surprise anyone if the team that prides itself on "goin' to work" decides to take an early lunch if things sour quickly in Wednesday's Game 5 at the Palace?
There's sufficient blame for everyone, but the first finger is pointed at the coach.
This is the second straight playoff series in which Carlisle has been outcoached.
At some point, a light must click on upstairs, reminding the coach that the better teams are proactive. Take your strengths and force your opponent to adapt.
Carlisle remembered in Game 4 that his team has a size advantage on Orlando. So why did he wait this long to use it?
The problem with eighth seeds is that success makes them forget their place. Confidence comes with each victory, and the Magic sensed that it had taken control of this series. The Magic has the stunned Pistons on the floor, and it's not about to let up for a second.
While the Pistons stalled offensively once again, the Magic got contributions from everyone. Darrell Armstrong heaved a turnaround prayer off an inbounds pass just before the 24-second shot clock buzzed, and it cleanly swished through.
Why shouldn't it? Everything is going the Magic's way.
"They're playing harder and with more passion," Jon Barry said. "We're looking like we thought that as soon as the playoffs came around we would suddenly start playing better, but we haven't played well for a long, long time. This is just a carryover from the end of the regular season."
The Pistons need a second ballhandler who's capable of getting them into their offense. Chauncey Billups is so fatigued from the Magic's constant hounding that his shot loses some lift in the fourth quarter. Rumor has it Richard Hamilton was seen on a milk carton; he was nowhere to be found in the TD Waterhouse Centre. And Cliff Robinson, playing like someone's 80-year-old uncle, spent most of the game cursing the officials.
Seeing it all slip away, the Pistons lost their composure.
There's no denying that the officiating was suspect, particularly in the second quarter. But you've got to rise above the piddling stuff and keep your eyes on the prize. Aside from Wallace, the Pistons looked disinterested in the fourth quarter, and that's alarming.
They quit because they know who's the better team now.
And Carlisle is the first who should be held accountable.
It's time to step up or step out and the let the real men continue on. The Pistons had a great opportunity to reintroduce themselves to a community that's long thought spring was hockey's exclusive domain. And they're blowing it.
Nobody's happy, and everybody's wondering how this could have happened to the league's best defensive team.
But defense requires effort, passion and a sense of purpose.
In this series, the Pistons have exhibited all but three of those qualities.
April 29, 2003
BY DREW SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
The Pistons have assumed the personality of their head coach.
And that's why their season is on the verge of crashing in flames.
They vow that there's one good fight left in them, but it will be interesting to see if the last swings are directed toward each other.
Opportunity is rigged in their favor for Wednesday's Game 5 against Orlando. Expect a home-cooked taste to the officiating and a relaxed opponent holding a sixth game at its home court as a trump card. But should an unemotional Pistons team show up merely to say good-bye for the summer, it will trigger an off-season of serious re-evaluation.
Rick Carlisle's future in this organization will be on the line.
What good are two straight 50-victory seasons and back-to-back Central Division championships if the team is ill-prepared for the changing currents of playoff basketball? What good is intensity if that's the only bullet you have in the chamber, drastically reducing any margin for error?
There's no elasticity to the Pistons' offense.
It's rigid and downright boring to the point that the Magic can set the time for what the Pistons will do and when they're going to it. Granted, the Pistons aren't blessed with the offensive spontaneity so essential in the playoffs, but that's when it falls upon the coach to mix things up and make the most of what he has at his disposal.
And this is where Carlisle has failed.
He didn't properly use the regular season as a vehicle for getting his team ready for a playoff run. If he had, he would have used rookies Mehmet Okur and Tayshaun Prince more, letting them grow through their inevitable mistakes -- even if it came at the expense of some victories and a higher playoff seeding.
Carlisle should ask himself exactly what good is the No. 1 Eastern Conference seed doing for him now?
Prince might have provided the team with an extra ball-handler at small forward, taking some of the pressure off Chauncey Billups, who has gotten mugged by the Magic. Okur has the ability to create matchup difficulties for opponents. In Sunday's Game 4, he offered a tiny glimpse of his inside-outside capabilities in his first extended minutes of the series.
But the strongest indictment comes from Carlisle's own words. He set the standard when he said coaches are ultimately measured by their playoff worth. So how much value is there in a 1-7 record in his last eight playoff games?
Carlisle has one year left on a three-year contract that pays him around $2 million annually, and this is the right time to aggressively pitch for an extension. But the irony is that Carlisle will have practically no leverage, despite reaching 100 victories faster than his predecessors and becoming the first coach since Chuck Daly to win consecutive division championships.
Carlisle must change his approach. He needs to curb his stubbornness and patiently nurture young players. He must be open to the possibility that his stoical, regimented style might not be what this franchise needs to become a championship contender. There's too much predictability to the Pistons' offense, limited as it is, and that's a guaranteed death sentence in the playoffs.
To his credit, Joe Dumars, the team president of basketball operations, hasn't meddled. Perhaps he hasn't agreed with some of Carlisle's decisions, but he has quietly deferred to the man he trusted to lead his team two years ago. As a former player, Dumars understands how uneasy the locker room atmosphere becomes when a coach is constantly looking over shoulder because of management interference.
But after this embarrassment, Dumars must do more than ask Carlisle what he needs to be successful. He needs to tell him what the team president wants for this team to be successful.
If that means demanding that Michael Curry and Cliff Robinson be benched in favor of Okur and Prince, regardless of their inexperience, then so be it.
If Carlisle can acknowledge his errors and is receptive to change, the Pistons will give him an extension, probably for two years.
Should his stubbornness take hold once again, he will be fired.
Bringing Carlisle back without an extension would be Lionesque in nature, opening Dumars to justified questioning of his judgment. Don't forget that his credibility also is at stake if the Pistons take another playoff dive.
Dumars is roundly hailed as the NBA's top executive for spearheading the moves that lifted this franchise from the ashes, but losing to an overachieving eighth seed would negate any previous steps forward. And Dumars would be left wondering if he erred when he sat beside Carlisle at the coach's introductory press conference and spoke glowingly about how he and Carlisle shared the same wavelength.
But Carlisle apparently doesn't understand that there's a difference between coaching in the regular season and the playoffs.
Coaching is a constant evolution. Change is mandatory. If Carlisle doesn't grasp that concept soon, he and his boss could find themselves at polar opposites.
May 1, 2003
BY DREW SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
The Pistons live to see another day, but the long-range forecast remains gloomy.
They staved off execution Wednesday night, but nobody's fooling themselves. The Pistons' dominating 98-67 Game 5 victory over Orlando is meaningless unless they do something Friday unseen since April 27, 1997, in Atlanta -- win on the road in the playoffs.
No. 1 seeds don't get credit for a close series against an eighth seed.
For one day, the pressure nipping at the head coach's heels subsides.
For one day, the players can look themselves in the mirror knowing they gave maximum effort.
"We've got to start somewhere," Michael Curry said.
For one day, the Pistons can take another breath.
One in particular breathed a sigh of relief.
Tayshaun Prince arrived at the Palace believing that, like in Game 4, he would be ignored.
"I didn't even have a clue that I was playing so it was a surprise to me," Prince said. "It was frustrating when I didn't play at all before, but I kept telling myself that if I got the chance, I had to make the best of it. I wanted to make it hard for them to take me out."
Prince's 33 strong minutes made it harder for the Magic to take the Pistons out, but they remain in trouble.
They know it. The Magic knows it.
Desperation is a wonderful propellant. You run a little faster, jump a little higher and execute with a little more certainty. It's especially noticeable when it's a one-sided emotion.
Nobody understood that better than Pistons coach Rick Carlisle.
Perched at the brink of a humiliating five-game elimination, Carlisle tweaked his rotation after the Pistons took a double-digit lead into the second quarter for the third straight game. He rode rookies Prince and Mehmet Okur heavily, giving the Magic a lineup it hadn't seen in this series.
An adjustment? Who would have thought?
Trusting rookies? Aren't they too inexperienced to contribute in such a critical situation?
But Prince had career highs in minutes and points in the team's most important game of the season to date.
Hmm, interesting.
Could it be that Carlisle is bending just a tad?
Could it be that a coach who must depend on a full allotment of role players to compensate for the lack of a true go-to guy finally realized that there's value in everybody on the bench if used properly?
"Curry's early foul trouble dictated Tayshaun's getting in earlier," Carlisle said. "I anticipated that he could play, but the way that it went when he got in there and played so effectively . . . it was hard to get him out. He's been a big factor for us in our two wins, and I'm sure he'll be a factor on Friday as well."
The second quarter was the turning point. Prince and Okur combined for nine points, but more importantly, Prince did a pretty good job containing Tracy McGrady. And a 13-point lead quickly blossomed into a 22-point advantage.
This wasn't like Prince's decent Game 2 fourth-quarter effort when McGrady, clearly fatigued from carrying his team, didn't have much left in his shot by the time the rookie entered the game. McGrady was looking to inspire another Orlando comeback, but he couldn't get into a rhythm.
T-Mac finished with 19 points.
T-Shaun countered with 15 points.
"I thought that I could bring an energy that was missing," Prince said. "And part of that energy was contributing on the offensive end and delivering a complete game. That's how I have to be, and it was good that I got the chance to play through any nerves I might have had."
The nerves might now belong to the Magic, which played with a risky nonchalance. The Magic wanted to win this game, but it knew that the Pistons needed to win this game.
But there's always more pressure on the underdog in an early series clincher. Although Orlando has the comfort of a home game Friday as a security blanket, it needed to kick the Pistons while they were down and blaming one another.
Although the Magic has been the better team this series, it couldn't take the chance of providing the Pistons with the slightest whiff of air..
But the Magic has to hope the Pistons aren't capable of replicating this effort in Orlando's house. It's going to be the Magic's joint jumping Friday. It's going to be the Magic's crowd screaming at the top of its lungs. The shots that clanged off the rims with regularity will find their mark when it's necessary in Game 6.
But that's dangerous because the Magic is banking on this becoming a one-game series in its favor. And whereas the Pistons needed to win Game 5, it's now the Magic that needs to win Game 6 because it doesn't want to surrender the home-court advantage it secured after the first game.
But you have to be careful giving the condemned another day to breathe, another day to think they have a chance to survive.
U.VA. NOTES
May 01, 2003
POSTSEASON POSSIBILITIES: The 16-team field for the NCAA men's lacrosse
tournament will be announced Sunday night, and second-ranked Virginia (11-2) can
expect no worse than a No.3 seed. That will mean a first-round home game for the
Cavaliers, who lost in last year's NCAA semifinals to eventual champion Syracuse
in double overtime.
This year's quarterfinals will be played at Towson and Syracuse. The 10th-ranked
Orangemen have struggled this season but are expected to make the NCAAs. That
could create an unattractive quarterfinal matchup for one of the tourney's top
seeds.
Should the'Cuse win its first-round game, it would play its quarterfinal in the
Carrier Dome, most likely against the second-, third- or fourth-seeded team.
Nothing like a huge home-field advantage for a mediocre Syracuse team, eh?
"That's the booby prize in this thing," U.Va. coach Dom Starsia said. "Clearly,
as an observer looking at this thing, you don't want to be playing Syracuse in
the dome. Nobody wants to do that. But if that's what we have to do, that's what
we have to do."
The No.1 seed almost certainly will be Johns Hopkins. If the Blue Jays win their
first-round game, they would play their quarterfinal at Towson.
STRONG SHOWING: U.Va. basketball recruit Gary Forbes scored a team-high 20
points and added eight rebounds and three assists in last weekend's Derek
Anderson Derby Festival Classic at Louisville, Ky.
A 6-5 swingman, Forbes averaged 27 points, 13 rebounds, three assists and three
blocked shots this season and was named all-New York City. With 1,512 points,
he's the all-time leading scorer at Benjamin Banneker High. Forbes totaled five
points, six boards and one block in 13 minutes at last month's Capital Classic
in Washington, D.C.
ATTRITION: Freshman defensive back Stefan Orange, an all-Group AAA performer
from Culpeper High, has left the Cavaliers' football program.
The 6-2, 184-pound Orange redshirted last fall and might not have made U.Va.'s
two-deep on defense this season. Among those ahead of Orange in the secondary
were four classmates: Marcus Hamilton and Tony Franklin at cornerback and Willie
Davis and Lance Evans at safety.
Early last month, Orange left U.Va. and returned to Culpeper. Orange, his mother
and former Culpeper coach Lou Sorrentino - who's now at Hylton High - met with
Virginia coach Al Groh at the McCue Center on April 17. The meeting went well,
and Orange could have rejoined the team but, after weighing his options back
home, chose not to do so.
Orange is the third freshman to leave Virginia's football program this school
year. The others were unheralded offensive linemen Damian Spradlin and Brett
Tobin.
NFL-BOUND: The Philadelphia Eagles, who drafted Virginia wideout Billy McMullen
in the third round Saturday, don't seem concerned about his lack of breakaway
speed.
"What separated him from other guys was his size," said Tom Heckert, the Eagles'
director of player personnel. "He's a 6-4 kid, and he has the ability to go up
and get the ball, and that intrigued us."
Also taken in the third round, by Buffalo, was Virginia linebacker Angelo
Crowell. He figures his time spent with Groh will pay dividends. Groh coached
for more than a decade in the NFL before returning to his alma mater in December
2000.
"I"ve been under Groh for two years, and he ran an NFL system," Crowell said.
"He treated us like grown men, ran practice like the NFL. We studied film, and I
felt like I was already in the NFL while I was in college."
STRIKE UP THE BAND: Athletic Director Craig Littlepage has received plenty of
feedback from alumni and other fans about U.Va.'s plans to form a marching band.
"I would say the reaction has been about 70 percent in favor," he said Tuesday.
Starting next school year, the Pep Band no longer will perform at U.Va. athletic
events. But Littlepage said U.Va. hopes to have student musicians in place by
the start of the 2003-04 basketball season to play at University Hall.
- Jeff White
Athlon Sports No. 23
By Athlon Sports
Date: Apr 30, 2003
Billy McMullen, the leading receiver in UVa history, and leading tackler Angelo
Crowell are gone, but Virginia quarterback Matt Schaub was the ACC's leading
passer and Player of the Year last fall, and he's back.
Coach Al Groh hit the mother lode in recruiting last year, and he threw his
novices right into the fire. Tight end Heath Miller was the ACC's top
pass-catching tight end and a Freshman All-American, running back Wali Lundy led
the Cavs in rushing and the nation's freshmen in all-purpose yardage, and
linebacker Darryl Blackstock was the National Defensive Freshman of the Year.
Offensive tackle D'Brickashaw Ferguson, the anchor of the offensive line, and
end Kwakou Robinson, one of four returning D-Line starters, also broke in last
year as true freshmen. The linebacking corps of Blackstock, Kai Parham and Ahmad
Brooks, who comes to Charlottesville via Hargrove Military Academy, will make
history before their college playing days are over.
The Cavaliers play host to Florida State in midseason and to Virginia Tech in
the finale, but must travel to NC State and Maryland for consecutive November
matchups.
Mountaineer mauler: Wali Lundy amassed 239 all-purpose yards and scored four
touchdowns in Virginia's 48–22 Continental Tire Bowl win over West Virginia.
Youth movement: Of Virginia's 22 bowl game starters, nine were freshmen.
Ball! Virginia led the nation last season in fumble recoveries with 22.
2002 results: 9–5 (6–2 ACC)
Bowl Game: Beat West Virginia 48-22 in Continental Tire Bowl
Returning starters: 9 offense, 7 defense, both kickers
2003 Schedule:
A. 30 Duke
S. 6 at South Carolina
S. 13 at Western Michigan
S. 27 Wake Forest
O. 4 at North Carolina
O. 11 at Clemson
O. 18 Florida State
O. 25 Troy State
N. 1 at NC State
N. 13 at Maryland
N. 22 Georgia Tech
N. 29 Virginia Tech
Schedule Analysis: The heavy hitters come late in the season for Virginia. Al
Groh's young squad will have an excellent chance to take a 5-0 record to
Clemson, a team the Cavs beat 22-17 last year. The Florida State home game on
Oct. 18 will obviously be the biggest home game in years for Virginia, but the
Cavs also face stiff road challenges in November with NC State and Maryland.
Should Virginia split with Florida State and NC State, the Thursday night game
at Maryland on Nov. 13 could be for the ACC title.
Final Word: The top four teams in the ACC all look like title contenders prior
to the season. Virginia's strengths are its momentum from last season, strong
recruiting classes and a top-flight quarterback. Weaknesses include a defense
that was soft against the run and an offense that did not run effectively last
season. Virginia could finish first in the ACC just as easily as fourth, though
with what Groh is building in Charlottesville, the Cavs can expect to be closer
to first than fourth for the foreseeable future.