Top Listener Email from Professor D!

What’s up guys? It’s your long lost friend again. Here are my thoughts after watching game 3 of the pistons vs. the sixers: After being bewildered by the pistons performance in games 1 and 3 I have come to the same conclusion that I have come to for the past few years when the pistons have let me down. I blame the lack of leadership on the court and on the sideline. Specifically I am choosing to blame Chauncey Billups and Flip Saunders, not necessarily in that order. But we can start with Chauncey. I think Chauncey Billups is all around the most versatile player on the team. He can do everything except dunk on someone in the paint. With that said, I think Chauncey Billups has been the biggest disappointment to the team for the last few playoff runs. As the captain he seems to be either unwilling or unable to lead his team when they need him most, in the playoffs. The pistons are a team of really good players, but someone has to be in the driver seat and steer this team to success. As the captain and I think best all around player, Chauncey Billups should be that driving force. Here’s the bottom line for Chauncey. Win or Lose Chauncey Billips need to be extremely aggressive, take shots, take some chances and leave his guts on the court every night during the playoffs and demand the same from his team. If he does that and we still lose, that I can live with, but nothing less. As for Flip Saunders, I think he is a good coach, but this is what I think Flip needs: Flip Saunders needs to be tougher on his team. Someone needs to sit Flip down and explain to him that he needs to change his coaching style during the playoffs. Someone should tell him that it’s OK to threaten players when they don’t do what they’re supposed to do. It’s OK to curse at players and call them out of their names during the playoffs when they aren’t giving their best effort on the court. It’s OK to take his foot and place it in a players butt during the playoffs and possibly break it off and leave it in there throughout the playoffs. It’s OK to take a player into the locker room where there are no cameras and threaten physical violence if the player doesn’t give his all. Someone needs to let Flip know that this type of behavior, though normally frowned upon, is perfectly alright during the playoffs. After all it is his butt that is on the line if we don’t get to the finals this year. Anyway, those are my thoughts, and that’s what I’ll be praying for during this playoff run.