End of an Era: Passing Judgment

You can write many chapters, but can’t close the book yet on Pistons era

Passing Judgment

by Keith Langlois

Friday, March 21, 2008

Sometimes the simplest questions require the most complex answers. If you don’t believe me, have a few kids. And wait until they find out the Earth is round. And they ask you why things on the bottom of the globe don’t fall off. Simple question. Complex answer.

Every once in a while I get one of those submitted in Pistons Mailbag. David from Grand Rapids wants to know how these Pistons will be remembered. Simple question.
Impossible to answer fully right now.

David set up his question in such a way as to suggest he doesn’t think they’ll be remembered as they might have been. “The Pistons have been to five straight Eastern Conference finals,”

he wrote, “and have just one ring and two Finals appearances to show for it when they were the favorite to win the whole thing at least one or two other times in that five-year span. So how do you think the Pistons will be remembered once this run is over.”

OK, first, that’s a lot easier question to answer when the run is over.

It’s not over this year, for certain, and my hunch is there isn’t going to be anything dramatic done this off-season, although I’m getting ahead of myself there, too. Because just as you can’t “remember” something that’s still ongoing, neither will Joe Dumars reach a decision on whether to administer reconstructive or cosmetic surgery until he sees how the playoffs unfold.

But let’s wipe that out for a second – let’s suppose that Chauncey Billups had left as a free agent last summer and Rasheed Wallace had retired and Rip Hamilton had been traded and the cast of characters had turned over so radically that the Goin’ to Work Pistons era had effectively ended.
How would they be remembered? As the third-most successful NBA franchise of this millenium, that’s how. The Lakers won three straight titles after the force of Phil Jackson’s personality melded a Shaq-Kobe harmony that lasted until even he couldn’t buffer their egos any longer. The Spurs have four titles spread out around that Laker run and could still add one or two more before Tim Duncan’s odometer spins back to zeroes.

But the Pistons come in right behind them if it ended today. Barring the collapse of the free world, Joe Dumars’ creation will rack up its seventh consecutive 50-win season by winning one of their final 14 games. That’s remarkable in itself, second only to San Antonio. Five straight conference finals, with a decent chance of making it six straight, stands alone.

That’s certainly enough to separate the Pistons from Miami, the only other franchise with an NBA title since the Jordan era closed in Chicago. The Heat went from ’05 conference finalists to ’06 champions to ’07 first-round sweep victims to ’08 lottery losers.

Would anybody prefer that? Would anyone contend that the Pistons and Heat have the same resume for this decade based on the fact they both have one NBA title?
Let me answer my own question. Yeah. A lot of people would say one title apiece makes them equals, that titles count and nothing else matters.
To which I say: garbage.

The payoff for fans isn’t only in the parade. It’s in the journey. It really is. The reward for fandom isn’t only in post-victory celebration, but in preseason validity to the belief it could happen, and in-season validation of that faith. Anticipation of a great thing happening is sometimes every bit as fulfilling as the realization.

And the Pistons have paid off by that measure every year since hinting at their possibility in the 2002-03 season when they pushed to the conference finals for the first time. They began their 50-win streak the season before. Not even the most devout Pistons fan went into that postseason thinking an NBA title was within reach, but for the first time since the dying days of the Bad Boys, there was the unmistakable sense that the train was headed in the right direction and not merely making loops on a circular track.

Let’s revisit David’s preamble to the question and correct a misimpression. The Pistons haven’t gone into any postseason other than 2006 as the favorite to win it all. That was their 64-win season, but the truth is that they hadn’t been a dominant team since the midway point of that year. They started 36-5 and finished 28-13. They went from nearly invincible to very, very good. And they ran into a Miami team with the greatest big man of his generation abetted by an emerging superstar playing a level above he’d ever played before or since – and lost in six tough games to the eventual champion.

They weren’t anyone’s favorite to win it in 2004. The perception of imbalance between the East and West was even greater then than it is today. Until the Pistons crushed the Lakers of Shaq and Kobe and Karl Malone and Gary Payton in the “five-game sweep,” the West had won all five Finals played since the demise of Jordan’s Bulls – one sweep, two in five games and two in six.
The year the Pistons beat Indiana to get to the Finals, the feeling was that the Lakers, Sacramento, Minnesota, Dallas and San Antonio were all superior to anyone from the East. This year, as dominant as the West appears, you’ll find no shortage of credible basketball analysts who’ll tell you the East, though no match for the West’s depth, at least is home to the NBA’s two best teams, Boston and the Pistons.

So spin it any way you want, but it’s both harsh and just plain wrong to say the Pistons have underachieved during a period where they’ve managed to survive the turbulence of roster turnover necessitated by the salary cap’s impositions to join San Antonio as the NBA’s beacons of sustained success.
That’s the long answer.

The short answer is this: If it ends now, they’ll be remembered for remarkable consistency capped by a championship in an era otherwise dominated by the Lakers and Spurs. If they tack on another title and a few more honest runs, they’ll be remembered right there with the Bad Boys.

Earlier this week, Juan Dixon was late to practice when he was involved in a minor fender-bender. Friday, he missed it altogether – but he had a pretty good excuse. Dixon’s wife, Robyn, gave birth to the couple’s first child. A boy, Corey Wade Dixon, was born near the couple’s Baltimore-area home at 2:36 a.m., checking in at 7 pounds 7 ounces and measuring 20½ inches. Sounds like a shooting guard.

The Pistons recalled Cheikh Samb from Fort Wayne of the D-League and he went through Friday’s practice. In 19 games with the Mad Ants, Samb averaged 10.9 points, 7.1 rebounds and four blocked shots per game. His 11 blocks on Feb. 1 set a D-League record.

“It’s tough for big guys (in the D-League),” Flip Saunders said. “It’s a guard-oriented league where guards get the ball and they want to shoot all the time, so big guys don’t get a lot of touches. But I think it’s been good for him to get playing time and get on the court.”

Samb likely will return to Fort Wayne at some point, Saunders said, but while the Mad Ants are on a West Coast trip “we thought it would be best to get him back and have him around us a little bit again.”

Well, anyone judges the Pistons' performance, they were trembled by the celtics and the cavs this year? for me? theyll be back as title contenders and a finals team again.

Underdogs can make the difference

DEEEETROIT BASKETBALL!!!!