Pistons 99, Rockets 97
Boxscore
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Recap
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January 22, 2006
The Palace of Auburn Hills, Auburn Hills, MI |
| Points: | (DET) Two Tied, 24
(HOU) T. McGrady, 43 |
| Rebounds: | (DET) B. Wallace, 15
(HOU) J. Howard, 12 |
| Assists: | (DET) C. Billups, 9
(HOU) T. McGrady, 5 |
| Blocks: | (DET) Three Tied, 1
(HOU) Two Tied, 1 |
| Player of the Game |
Richard Hamilton
Points: 24
FGM-A: 8-14
Rebounds: 5
Assists: 4
Minutes: 40
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Pistons Head Coach Flip Saunders
On playing his old team, Minnesota on Tuesday:
“If we weren’t 33 and 5, and being as gaudy as we are, you’d go in thinking, ‘boy this is a big game.’ Just where we’re at record-wise you don’t have to worry about that - for us, it’s another game. Things always work out for a reason, you never know why when it happens, but things always work out for the best. I’m very fortunate to have came into a new family.”
On Tracy McGrady:
“They’re a different team with Tracy, he was phenomenal tonight. At times, even before we could try and get to him to trap, he was shooting it - he was on fire.”
“You can’t be afraid to win a championship - you can’t be afraid to make plays. The play that Rasheed (Wallace) made, the lob pass to Ben Wallace, there’s about one percent of the players in this league that might make that play. Sometimes you’re going to win them, sometimes you’re going to lose them, but you can’t be afraid to try and make it.”
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Pistons Guard Chauncey Billups
“They came in and played good. I mean they are a real disciplined ball club and they play good defense. They got T-mac (Tracy McGrady) which can’t hurt, especially when he had it cooking like that, but it was a good game.”
On the close game:
“It has been a while, but I like games like that much better than like the games when we win by 10, 15, or 20 points. I don’t like playing games like that.”
On their Defense:
“It took us a while to try to adjust to it. They were trying to get the ball out of my hands or try to disrupt the play, but they did a good job of it. As soon as I was attacking it and knowing that we had numbers. I was holding it out and ended up having to take a tough shot.”
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Pistons Forward Tayshaun Prince
“It was a tough situation having to guard them on the pick and rolls, we weren’t able to get back to them quick enough and they had some good looks at their shots.”
On his foul trouble:
“The foul trouble didn’t ruin my rhythm at all. I know how to stay out of foul trouble if I pick up quick fouls. So I didn’t have a problem with that.”
On Tracy McGrady:
“He creates so many problems in the fact that we pay so much attention to him, it helps other people to have open shots.”
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Rockets Head Coach Jeff Van Gundy
On the Pistons record:
“I was telling Flip he should worry about that road record. They’ve lost one more on the road than at home and they’ve really struggled lately, only going 8 - 2 out of 10 games. They’re a hell of a team and he’s a hell of a coach. He was a hell of a coach before he came here, if you coached against him, this isn’t like something shocking. Every year he’s been in Minnesota he’s done a hell of a job with that team. The Pistons have had a remarkable run over the past five years. They’ve gotten better each year, even last year I thought they were better than the year before, but I think San Antonio was better than the Lakers that they played. To be this dominant in this league, where there are so many great players and so many great coaches, says about their team and says a lot about Flip.
On the Rocket’s play:
“I think what you want on any team is to maximize your abilities. There were some things we could have done better, I think, that could have changed the result. We played well. Our guys are competitive and are playing a lot more minutes than they probably should. On our bench, with Ryan Bowen out, we had four guys that weren’t in the league last year. There’s a lot of things that we can be proud of.
On Ryan Bowen’s injury:
“He’s had this problem before, hopefully everything will be fine. Maybe we can shock him back, so that’s what we’re hoping for.
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Rockets Forward Tracy McGrady
On the Rocket’s play:
“We felt real confident. We felt confident enough to get the big stop when we needed it. That last play that we drew up was a hell of a play but they didn’t fall for it. We had a couple mistakes at the end of the game by fouling and putting them on the free-throw line. Other then that, we played extremely hard. That’s a great team over there and we held them to 40% shooting.
On the game:
“We definitely felt like that we let this one get away, although that is a great team. We had a chance to win the ball game. It just didn’t go our way tonight. We’ll keep our heads high and know that that’s how we should play night in and night out. That’s the best team in the league right there and if we come to play like this night in and night out we can be pretty successful.”
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