Source : http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/truebluepistons.html ********************************************************************* Hamilton becomes sixth man; lineup change is permanent Posted Tuesday, January 20, 2009 ********************************************************************* For six seasons, the surest thing in Detroit sports was Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton lining up in the Pistons’ backcourt. One half of the union dissolved two games into the 2008-09 season when Joe Dumars traded Billups to Denver for Allen Iverson. The other shoe dropped Tuesday when Michael Curry made the decision to bring Hamilton off the bench, ending the small-ball experiment that had Tayshaun Prince playing power forward and Hamilton lining up at small forward to accommodate an Iverson-Rodney Stuckey backcourt. Here are the nuts and bolts and ramifications of the move: Amir Johnson, who didn’t play in Monday’s win at Memphis, will be the starter alongside Rasheed Wallace most nights. But against really big teams – Curry cited the Lakers, with 7-footers Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol – Kwame Brown will be the starter. Hamilton will anchor a second unit that will include Antonio McDyess and Jason Maxiell at the power positions with Will Bynum at point guard. It’s not an experiment. “This is for the rest of the season,” Curry said. All bets are off in the fourth quarter. Many other teams also go small in the fourth quarter in an effort to put their five best players out to finish games. Hamilton will be just as likely to finish games as Iverson or Stuckey or anyone else. And his minutes shouldn’t change much, if at all. Curry broke the news to Hamilton on Tuesday morning and Hamilton gave every indication he’s ready to embrace the sixth-man role. “You want to win games and me and Allen both knew (what was being considered),” Hamilton said after Tuesday’s practice. “When they told me I was coming off the bench, it was something MC wanted to do and I said, fine. Bottom line, you want to win games and if that’s the best way that we can go out there and try to win a championship, then I’m all for it.” Curry said the decision to bring Hamilton off the bench instead of Iverson was driven by a number of factors. Even though the Pistons’ defensive ranking has climbed to fourth in both scoring and field-goal percentage, he thought the defensive and rebounding tone set by the small lineup in the first quarter put the Pistons in a hole they had to fight the rest of the game. He didn’t want Iverson playing alongside Bynum, leaving the Pistons vulnerable defensively with two undersized guards. By putting Iverson with the better shooters of the first unit, he hopes space is created for Iverson to exploit with his attacking style; conversely, he thought playing Iverson with the second unit would encourage defenses to gang up on him. Hamilton’s style of coming off screens, he figures, will allow him to remain in much the same role he’s played in his first six seasons with the Pistons – only he’ ll be the clear go-to scorer of the bunch and should squeeze off more shots per minute. It worked that way in the win over Memphis, when Hamilton – after going 0 for 1 in the first quarter while playing with Iverson – went 6 for 6 in the second playing mostly with four other reserves: Maxiell, McDyess, Bynum and Arron Afflalo. “We’ve got two great scorers on this team, bottom line – me and Allen,” Hamilton said. “And we’ve got to figure out a way for us to be our best out there. We got a good rhythm going yesterday in the game, so hopefully we can continue it because we want to go far.” “We feel we’re better defensively and rebounding wise with (the bigger lineup) and we’ve struggled sometimes being able to score points in the beginning of the second and fourth quarter,” Curry said. “We think by featuring Rip during that time, we can do that and it also allows Will Bynum to play with Rip and not just give Stuckey rest, but be able to play also and we want to make sure we incorporate him into the mix.” Bringing Hamilton off the bench balances the rotation and, Curry said, puts the Pistons’ depth back into play. Playing Prince for 16 to 20 minutes a game at power forward effectively cut that many minutes of playing time out of the pool for Maxiell, Johnson and Brown. The Pistons had won two games in December with Hamilton in the lineup when his groin injury caused him to miss eight games after the Pistons had gone 5-3 with the small lineup. They went on to win five more in a row with a more conventional starting lineup that included Johnson at power forward. Curry commented frequently over those few weeks that he thought the Pistons were better defensively and could hold their own on the backboards with the bigger lineup, but he moved Hamilton back into the starting lineup as soon as he was cleared to play. Why? Because the decision to move the franchise’s leading scorer each of the past six seasons to the bench isn’t to be taken lightly. More evidence was needed that the small lineup couldn’t overcome some of its shortcomings with the offensive firepower it had on paper. But a five-game losing streak answered enough of the doubts that Curry felt the time was right to make the switch. “Maybe if we had taken care of business this past week and gone 4-1, then we ’d be 9-4 with the small lineup,” Curry said. “There’s still an argument that maybe you can go with the small lineup and sub quicker and move guys around that way. But we just weren’t big enough. Starting the games off in the first quarter, defensively we never set the tone and we were playing catch-up from a defensive and rebounding standpoint for the rest of the game. ” ********************************************************************* 終於有一些動作了...希望AI可以好好發揮！加油！ -- Only the strong survive- Iverson ⊕ ═█┘ ⊕ ●╱ 　　　 Ｗ ● ●︵ ● ●)) ３╯ <３\ /３⊕ ／３﹚ ３ \\ />⊕ >/ ⊕ ╲> >> ========= http://www.wretch.cc/blog/AWEI3 ========= --

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