I have always thought that one of the signs of greatness in a team is closing out a playoff series on the road though they have one or more opportunities at home coming up. One great example of that were MJ's Chicago Bulls who closed out many of their championships on the road. The Baby Bulls are not there yet, but the Detroit Pistons are pretty close. They showed it today by winning this series at a tough place like Chicago. This team seems to lose focus at times and let up mentally a little bit. You would hope they had more focus and killer-instincts at times, but you know they will always come around when it mattered most. May be this is where the fact that they don't have a dominant super-star affects them because number-23 will never let his team lose focus in games like that game 5 they lost at home. So the Pistons let up when they were up 3-0 and Bulls got to 3-2, but today they wrapped it up on the road in style.
Pistons started strong and as always won it defensively in the fourth. They held the Bulls to 16 points in the 4-Th. The games in this series have gone to the guards who have played well and this one was a little different. Both the guards had OK games. For Detroit, Rip was good with 23, but Billups shot just 3/12. For the Bulls, Hinrich had 11-3-11, but shot only 3/13 and Deng had a good game with 17-5-4 on 7/14 shooting. Ben Gordon had a 7/18 night for 19 points. Not enough juice for the Bulls to win this one. Detroit got good work out of it's front court to help their guards as Sheed had 16-13 and Tay had 17-9. One of the stories of the game was P.J.Brown for the Bulls having a huge first half with 20 points, but he ended up with just 20 for the entire game. Detroit did what it had to in the second half and put the Bulls away.
Good playoff run for the Bulls. Talented, young nucleus with Hinrich, Gordon, Deng, Nocioni, Thabo and Tyrus Thomas. They have everything except a reliable low-post scorer and that weakness was exposed by Detroit in this series. They might still need that do take the next step and this where they may have over-paid Ben Wallace for his great, but one-dimensional defensive game. This might come back to bite them in a year or two. But they should be a playoffs regular for a long time to come.
Detroit @ Chicago - 95-85
Playoff schedule for 05/18/2007
Phoenix @ San Antonio - This one is a BIGGIE for both teams.
Cleveland @ New Jersey - I doubt if Cleveland is good enough or mature enough to close the series out on the road.
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