A spur in the side

Daniel Mears/The Detroit News

This seems like a good opportunity for Fried Rice Thoughts' first "Fill in your own caption" contest, doesn't it? The Pistons' Antonio McDyess seems to be caressing and gazing at that giant gold basketball rather wistfully.

So it looks like an all-sports Friday blog. (Sorry, Dayna.) Last night was Game 1 of the NBA Finals, and my excitement was eventually tempered by the Pistons 84-69 loss to the San Antonio Spurs. That Manu Ginobili dude is pretty good, eh? He looked unstoppable in the second half of the game. But I think some of that could be attributed to the Pistons' fatigue.

As I said in my comments on John's blog, Detroit looked like a team that had just finished a grueling seven-game series with Miami, while San Antonio looked like a team that had a week's rest. (Detroit ran out to a 17-4 lead, but I think that was due to the Spurs' rustiness. Once they got back into sync, Detroit was in trouble.) The Pistons just had no juice at the end of the game, which I think was most apparent in the fourth quarter play when Jabroni drove right through the lane and dunked the basketball. With fresh legs on defense, I don't think Detroit would've let that happen.

But let's see what happens on Sunday night, now that both teams have a game under their belts. I'd be surprised if the Pistons headed back to Detroit, down two games to none in the series. I hope I'm right.

EDIT: And I forgot to mention the most entertaining moment after the game. Did anyone catch the post-game press conference? Detroit's Chauncey Billups was talking to the media, and then some poor guy from the AP - Greg Bertram (sp?) - stood up to ask his question and completely blanked out. "Um... er... do you think... uh... ah..." Finally, Chauncey said to him, "You want us to come back to you, man?" Hilarious. But I felt bad for the reporter. How embarrassing - especially with TV and radio replaying the flub repeatedly.