TAKE FIVE
A five-point dissection of the Western road trip finale

1. Running on empty – After trailing for the first 47 and two-thirds minutes Friday night, the shorthanded Pistons dug down deep to escape Denver with a win. They deserved Saturday night off.

Instead, they got a quick flight to Salt Lake City – where they haven’t won since November 2002 – to face the Jazz, to whom they had lost seven straight. Life in the NBA just isn’t fair.

The Jazz jumped on Detroit early, building a 14-2 lead, with former Piston Mehmet Okur doing most of the early damage. As they had the night before, the Pistons did not let the game unravel, and the bench came through in the second quarter. Arron Afflalo scored nine consecutive points, and later chased down a loose ball that led to a Jason Maxiell dunk. The Pistons trailed by only four with two minutes left in the half, but three subsequent turnovers helped Utah take a 57-47lead at the break.

“From the beginning I didn’t think we had it but I thought we could just keep playing to find some combinations to give us a chance," Pistons coach Michael Curry said. "I thought we had some good combinations with two minutes to go in the second quarter ... even though we had five turnovers in the first half we had three in the last two minutes and that kind of hurt us. Overall we just totally didn’t have it tonight.”

Despite a slow start in the third – scoring three baskets in the first five minutes – the Pistons managed to close within six again, 70-64, with 2:50 left in the quarter. But the Jazz closed the third out with nine unanswered points, pushing their lead to 15 points. If the Pistons were running on fumes, Utah’s 9-0 run emptied the Pistons’ tank.

The Jazz, who had two days to rest and wait for the Pistons, quickly upped the lead to 19 to open the fourth, which then escalated into the 20s for their eighth consecutive win over the Pistons.

Unlike the double-overtime affair between these teams Dec. 19, there were no eye-popping stats this time around. With just nine points and seven rebounds, Jazz forward Paul Milsap’s 19-game double-double streak came to an emphatic end. Deron Williams added seven points and nine assists.

For Detroit, Allen Iverson had 11 points and five assists, and Rip Hamilton missed his eighth consecutive game. The duo combined for 68 points in the previous meeting.

TEAM COLORS
The story of the game in Pistons red, white and blue

2. – Well, this should stir a fresh round of “Why didn’t we keep him?” e-mails to Pistons Mailbag. Okur has had big games against his former team previously, but never so immediately as he did Saturday night. He scored Utah’s first eight points and drew two Amir Johnson fouls in the first three minutes. His first of two triples in the quarter gave him 11 points and the Jazz a 14-2 lead. Okur closed the first quarter with 15 points on 6-of-6 shooting. He had 20 points on 8-of-9 shooting by halftime.

Okur picked up his third and fourth personal fouls in rapid succession in the third quarter and finished with 22 points and six rebounds.

3. BLUE COLLAR – When you drive to the rim as often as Rodney Stuckey does, you’re going to take more than your share of licks. But the Pistons’ second-year guard showed Saturday night he won’t let body aches diminish his aggressiveness.

Despite an achy back that limited his minutes and effectiveness in Denver, Stuckey made sure the Pistons fought back after falling behind big in the opening minutes. During the 8-1 run that helped the Pistons pull within four in the first quarter, Stuckey drove repeatedly into the lane – netting five points and an assist to Tayshaun Prince. In the third quarter, he beat three Jazz players to rebound his own missed layup, drawing a three-point play on the putback to pull the Pistons within nine.

Stuckey finished with 19 points in 33 minutes – both team-highs – and was 7-for-7 at the foul line. Thanks to the tone Stuckey set, the Pistons actually outscored Utah in the paint most of the night and had a slight advantage at the foul line as well.

While on the subject of playing through pain, Rasheed Wallace came off the bench to play in his first game of the road trip. Though visibly uncomfortable on his sore right foot, Wallace gutted out 23 minutes, chipping in eight points and four rebounds. “For the last few games just seeing my team out there going through the trials that they were going through, I was saying it looks like I can help here or here," Wallace said. "But maybe I should have waited until next week to come back.”

4. RED FLAG – To the Pistons’ credit, tired teams often settle for jump shots. Stuckey made sure they did not.

Defensively, however, they often were a step slow anticipating screens and unable to fight through them, providing Utah’s shooters plenty of open looks. The Jazz shot 53.5 percent from the floor, including 5-of-11 from 3-point range. Detroit also was unable to force turnovers, although the Jazz commit nearly 16 per game, the NBA’s fourth highest average. The Jazz had just one turnover in the first half and 10 total, leading to just four Pistons points.

THE LAST CALL
A little perspective on the road trip split

5. - It seems like there are mystical forces at work in Salt Lake City, where the Pistons dropped their 17th game in 19 visits since the Bad Boys’ 1989 championship season.

But there’s no mystery to Saturday night’s defeat: the Pistons were drained. They had been on the road for seven straight days, played three exhausting nail-biters – which they came one Iverson jumper from sweeping – and were coming off the emotional encounter with Chauncey Billups in Denver just the night before. A 2-2 mark with a healthy Rip Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace would have been par for the course – to accomplish it without Hamilton and Wallace is a birdie or better.

"We did some good things, we did some bad things. We should have won the game in Portland," Iverson said of the trip. "Obviously tonight we didn’t have a chance in this one from the beginning. We won two other games. We’ll leave the bad things right here and take the good things back to Detroit.”

As for the Utah curse – the Pistons’ last victory there came Nov. 6, 2002. It was just the fifth game of the season, with a day off leading up to it. No doubt many Pistons teams over the past two decades would find similar success if the NBA schedule-makers ever gave them that opportunity again.