seeing how the warriors are in the playoffs for the 1st time in 13 years, i'm gonna hold off sharing the pistons dvd until they're knocked out, OR until the nba finals has ended.

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if you want to know the short end of why the lakers got swept by the pistons, byron scott was out with a left hamstring injury, magic johnson got one near the end of the 3rd quarter of game 2, and kareem was 42 playing in this series. but that's based upon what the lakers did. the lakers also apparently did not face a deep, physical, defensive team in the pistons until they reached the nba finals, whereas detroit had to go through chicago in 6 before reaching the finals.

nevertheless, my respect for joe dumars and dennis rodman has jumped 10-fold after watching most of the games on the dvd set; it's one thing to read about all the accolades that a player has, it's another to watch the tapes and games(i of course plan to someday own some dvds of hakeem olajuwon and bill russell, and maybe a few others, completing my collection of "retired nba players i admire the most."). hubie brown constantly on the games called joe dumars "a coach's dream," pointing out the versatility of him being able to score, play point and defend. and he constantly quoted chuck duly in saying something to the extent of "i wish everybody i coached worked as hard as rodman; he plays as hard during practice as he does during games."

game 2 might've been the greatest scoring exhibition i saw of joe dumars. he got 22 in game 1, but the box score states he got 33 in game 2, at least 20 before ending the 1st half(if pat riley didn't tell his players to lock up dumars after the half, who knows how high dumars could've scored in game 2?), one of them involving him perform 4 crossover dribbles low to the ground(left to right, then through the legs back to left, left to right, then through the legs back to left) on magic johnson before blowing by him and kissing it off the glass with the left hand. did i mention joe dumars was the one in charge of guarding magic johnson? i mean, in the chicago series, dumars also had to guard jordan, but the resposibility of being the main defender was split between him, rodman, maybe vinnie johnson, and mark aguirre. but here in the laker series, all dumars.

and while rodman didn't kill on the boards, again he got like 5-6 charges where he fell down, somersaulted backwards and landed on his feet, pumping his fists. and then there was the play where isaiah fell down on the right side on his knees, but maintained his dribble, saw rodman cutting and threw it to him, where he got an uncontested right-handed dunk. that pretty much brought the house down, and forced riley to take a timeout. when rodman jogged back to the bench, ton of the pistons were mobbing him, he goes up to salley, and then you see them both do an "X" with their arms and lock it together, kinda like how ben wallace used to do on the pistons. haha.

(btw, seems like rodman and salley were close buddies on the pistons)