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  • Maurice Cheeks Fired As Head Coach of Pistons

    With NBA All-Star Weekend quickly approaching, marking the league’s halfway point, most teams are taking a look at what they’ve accomplished in the first half of the season.

    And while some teams like Oklahoma City and the Indiana Pacers are playing extremely well, and probably won’t make too many changes, other teams are doing poorly and are switching things around a lot.

    One team that’s made a big switch from the top down is the Detroit Pistons, as they’ve just let go of their head coach Maurice Cheeks.

    Joe Dumars, president of basketball operations for the team, said it was incredibly tough to let Cheeks go, but he had to. “This was a difficult decision for the organization to make but we needed to make a change,” he said. “We have great respect for Maurice and appreciate his hard work.”

    However, team owner Tom Gores wasn’t as kind when talking about Cheeks and the job he did this season, and he started out by criticizing the team’s record to make his point.

    “Our record does not reflect our talent and we simply need a change,” he said in a statement. “We have not made the kind of progress that we should have over the first half of the season. This is a young team and we knew there would be growing pains, but we can be patient only as long as there is progress.”

    And with a current record of 21 and 29, most would probably agree that the Pistons had to make a change and bring in someone who the players responded to a little better, because sometimes it’s best to just make a clean break and bring in a head coach with fresh ideas, so he can build a new level of respect between him and the players.

    But Gores was quick to point out that it’ll take more than just getting a new head coach to turn things around. “The responsibility does not fall squarely on any one individual,” he said. But right now this change is a necessary step toward turning this thing around. I still have a lot of hope for this season and I expect our players to step up. I respect and appreciate Maurice Cheeks and thank him for his efforts, we just require a different approach.”

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  • Rodney Stuckey Injury: Pistons Guard Needs Surgery

    Rodeny Stuckey, the point guard for the Detroit Pistons, is injured and out indefinitely. He recently hurt his thumb after slamming it in his car door. His thumb reportedly became caught in the door jamb of his vehicle when the door was closing. He is a 27 year old player who has been in the league for 6 years.

    The incident occurred on Wednesday afternoon, and just minutes before the Pistons’ first preseason game against the Miami Heat on Thursday, team officials announced that he had suffered a broken right thumb. Stuckey has faced an injury while on the team before and was forced to sit out for 27 games as a rookie, due to a broken bone in his left hand, according to the Detroit Free Press. He is one of the familiar faces on a struggling Pistons team, but even still, it is not guaranteed that he would have started in their season opener on October 30th. Head coach Maurice Cheeks had already determined that the veteran Chauncey Billups is the player who is most likely to start in the point guard position when the regular season stars. Billups, who led the team to a national championship in 2004, is returning to the team after years of playing with the Denver Nuggets, and two seasons with the Los Angeles Clippers.

    Stuckey will undergo surgery on Friday, although it is up in the air when he will be able to make it back on the court. After the surgery, the team officials will be able to determine a timetable of when he will be able to join the team again. He was drafted by the Pistons in the first round of the 2007 NBA draft, and averaged 13.4 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 4.2 assists per game, during his first 6 years in the league.

    As a comparison with other players who have suffered a similar injury, Sports Ilustrated mentions that Nuggets forward Danilo Gallinari was out for four weeks with a fractured thumb in 2012, and former Bucks guard Luke Ridnour had the same timeline with his injury in 2009.

    Image via Youtube