No, This Isn't Clinton Portis

Yes, Ben Wallace is my hero. Hell, even Joey likes the Pistons. I'm having flashbacks to those Life commercials: Joey likes it! He really likes it! I second his swipe at Larry Brown:

In previous seasons when Brown DMC was still the coach, it took Herculean efforts to reach 100 points; guys would get yanked if they weren't "playing the right way" and running DMC's unimaginative offense; and every deficit engendered anxiety because you never knew when the isolations and curls would stop working. These are not those Pistons.

Most prominent and mystifying was Brown's aversion to any and all three-pointers, which was retarded given the various strokes he had available. This year the Pistons are hitting 41% of their threes (eFG = 62%!), second in the league... good thing we weren't taking any of those last year.

It's like this: there's this crazy old guy who hangs out in the student section at Yost. This particular habit has receded recently, but a year or two ago whenever anything of dodgy legality occurred to one of our skating warrior-poets he would burst into a Timmy-with-Tourette's explosion of staccato one word anger:

HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY!

Eventually the student section picked up the chant and the entire arena would leap into sustained bursts of "HEY!" whenever it wanted a penalty. Good harmless fun directed at annoying the refs. Now take this man, make him your hall of fame basketball coach, and have him scream "HEY!" on every damned possession: Larry Brown. Watch your players glance towards the bench like they're about to have scalding water thrown on them after every missed three pointer. Listen to postgame press conferences delivered in excuse-me-I-have-to-go-kill-myself style. Do not wonder why he wanders around the league like John the Baptist: sooner or later everyone gets tired of prophets and the stones come out.

We now return to your regularly scheduled Michigan Wolverines coverage.