This is why nobody should bet on sports.

Two nights after looking horrible in the third quarter of a runaway loss to the Celtics at Target Center, the Wolves sauntered — yes, you should have seen them before the game — into the Palace Sunday and thumped the Pistons (the only team that has beaten the Lakers this season, by the way) 106-80.

Who were those guys?

(That applies when asking about either team).

For starters, the Wolves, finally, got some real point-guard play from Randy Foye, who said a new simplified approach to the team’s offense helped produce his 23-point (season high), 14-assist (by four his career high) night that gave his team direction and allowed them for the first time this season to stomp on another double-digit lead and this time build it to as many as 28 late in the game.

Mike Miller’s 9-point, 8-rebound, 7-assist game sort of went unnoticed because of Foye’s play and a Wolves defense that held Rip Hamilton to 2 for 11 shooting, Allen Iverson to 3 for 11, Rasheed Wallace to 3 for 10 and Rodney Stuckey to 0 for 5.

This time, instead of making just two shots in the entire third quarter, as they did Friday, the Wolves used a 17-3 run to late in the quarter to  turn an 11-point lead into 25.

“I was happy to see Coach smile,” Foye said.

Foye said he suspected he’d have a good night when every floater he threw up in pre-game warmups came down through the hoop.

“Everything was simplified,” Foye said. “He (Wittman) brought me to the side a couple times and just told me to go. Today, there was just so much energy from everybody, even in the (morning) walk-through.”

You could attribute this victory to Foye, just like you might be tempted to attribute the team’s 1-8 start to him in a young season he which he admits to “struggling.”

“I look back and our record could be so different because we’ve had so many 12-point leads we’ve given away,” he said. “Those first 11 games feel like a whole season already. I think as a team and a unit we’re going to come together and I think we’re going to do some special things together.”

This time, Pistons fans were the ones who left the arena early grumbling. Before they did, they cried out for Chauncey Billups, traded for Iverson on Nov. 3, to return and some guy yelled out in frustration during the second half, “It’s Minnesota, for crying out loud.”

“If we can win here, we can win anywhere,” Foye said.

Randy Wittman admitted the Wolves caught the home team on an “off night”: The Piston hadn’t played since losing at Boston Thursday and that ended a tough six-game stretch where they played four on the West Coast and then beat Cleveland and lost to the Celtics on back-to-back nights.

This was the third consecutive week the Pistons played a 6 p.m. Sunday game. They lost by 12 at home to Boston two weeks ago, got beat by 18 at Phoenix last week. Coach Michael Curry shook things up and cancelled the morning shootaround today, opting instead to hold an abbreviated shootaround after Saturday’s practice.

Didn’t work.

“This tells me we’re not ready to play,” Curry said. “As professionals, we have to get ourselves ready to play whether it’s an early game or a normal 7:30 game.”

Iverson said his team has had “some tough shooting games before, but you wouldn’t expect it tonight against a team that had won only two games.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.