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Rasheed Wallace, of all people, was the only one who understood what was going on Thursday and he was the only one to back off. Referee Jack Nies has a short fuse on most nights, and he has virtually no fuse when it comes to the Pistons. So Wallace was smart enough to step back and not provoke him -- at least not as much as he would almost any other official. Sadly, Richard Hamilton didn't follow suit. Hamilton argued with Nies after he got kicked in the hip by Lamar Odom and earned the foul. Rip's parting shot was, "You are still blind." With that, Nies T'd him up and the Pistons didn't get another favorable call from Nies until the fourth quarter. The Lakers had 22 free throw attempts to the Pistons' two in the first half and it completely turned the game around. The Pistons should know better. There are a bunch of officials they know have little or no patience with them -- Nies, Steve Javie, Bill Kennedy, Marc Davis, just to name a few. They need to tread a little lighter when those guys are working games. It's a battle they will never win.
I saw something Thursday that I never thought I would see in my lifetime. The Palace did an in-game promotion for a concert at Joe Louis Arena. What's next, dogs and cats getting along? Peace in the Middle East? If you don't know, there has been no love lost between Palace Entertainment and the Ilitch operations downtown over the years. But there was Kid Rock and Reverand Run sitting along one baseline and Peter Wolf, the former J. Giles front man, sitting behind the Lakers bench. My buddy Pete Skorich put Wubba-Grubba Wolf on camera, gave him a microphone and let him both pump up the crowd, which he did, and shill for his show with Rock at JLA -- which he darn-sure did. It was a beautiful moment -- especially for this unabashed fan of Peter Wolf -- almost brought tears to these old eyes.
Last note -- now do you see why everybody was so excited about Rodney Stuckey? The kid can do things that no other Piston can do. He has the ability to fracture a defense off the dribble and he is extremely strong at the basket. He's going to go through more struggles, more growing pains, but he's going to be a special player. That said, it's a good thing Flip Saunders reconsidered and put Chauncey Billups back in to finish the game. Saunders said he contemplated letting Stuckey finish, leaving Mr. Big Shot on the bench. That would have been a disaster. Not so much that the Pistons couldn't have won the game with Stuckey closing, but you don't do that to the captain of your team, especially on a night when he was playing well. That would have gone over poorly with the other veterans. Saunders would have had a huge mess to clean up had he not went back to Billups.
