The 2004 Detroit Pistons and the greatest upset in Finals history

The 2004 Detroit Pistons and the greatest upset in Finals history

Let me guess you think that winning an NBA championship is hard yeah I get it I would too if I wasn’t so much smarter than you the truth is winning a championship in the NBA is fairly easy the formula is I should say it’s simple and it wasn’t until later

Reflection that I found that my formula is unfortunately similar to that of a certain Boston sports fans oh well great minds think alike here’s the formula have one of the five best players in the league give them at least one all NBA caliber sidekick throw in a decent coach

And some quality role players and then just get lucky that’s it really aside from the luck the hardest part of that formula is getting one of those topshelf Superstars there’s only so many players that can be him here’s the list of guys since the three-point line who were the

Best player on the team that won the championship Kareem bird Moses magic Isaiah Jordan Hakeem Duncan sha Wade kg Kobe Dirk LeBron Steph Kawai Durant Giannis and joic that list makes a ton of sense for the things they did before and or after they became Champions all of those guys

Established themselves as guys who deserved to be on that list maybe the ring solidified what we already thought maybe it was the thing that they were missing but it’s a list that just feels right of course I’ve excluded the 04 Pistons from that list their best player

Either Ben Wallace my pick or Chanty bips a totally acceptable pick does not make sense on that list the 2004 Detroit Pistons are the anomaly they are the team that won it all that does not belong they did not follow the formula they do not make sense their victory in

The finals against the Los Angeles Lakers was and Remains the greatest upset in NBA finals history let’s talk about the Lakers first because really they’re the ones that set this whole thing up every David needs a Goliath the Tyson to their Douglas the USSR to their

Red white and blue the 04 Lakers were World beaters if you’re watching this video I should barely have to tell you about their roster and accomplishments Shaquille O’Neal toe Bryant Derek Fischer Gary Payton Carl Malone Phil Jackson the Lakers had threee his Champions with the core of Kobe Shack and fiser three consecutive

Championships a feat that has not been accomplished since their run was ended by the Spurs in 03 but La had retooled and were back on track to continue a dynasty that had every possibility of continuing for several more years they had added supernova star power with Carl

Malone and Gary pton both first ballot Hall of Famers who had been denied titles in their primes thanks to Jordan’s Bulls the two were both past those primes but were still more than capable contributors and with that Championship core still intact under the tutelage of no one other than the Zen

Master the 04 Lakers were really the first super team as we know it they walked their way to 56 wins okay walked might be an exag duration they dealt with some injuries and Kobe was flying back and forth from Court appearances in Colorado but the point remains they were just too damn

Loaded they rolled through the playoffs shaking off Yao’s Rockets the defending champ Spurs and MVP Kevin Garnett’s Timberwolves on their way to their fourth finals in 5 years and their opponent was the Pistons these Pistons it wasn’t going to be a contest in the Lakers last last nine finals games they had lost

Once nobody picked the Pistons everyone just thought that it was neat that they had made it ready to give them the a Shucks good job good effort treatment the first game of the series was played on June 6th 2004 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles California there the seams of History

Began to burst but who are these Pistons why were they so heavily discounted and what makes them so dog on weird essentially the Pistons were nobody’s they were a ragtag group of Misfits that teams had either overlooked or given up on chony bips was a guy who had been

Traded 50 games into his rookie year by Celtics fan favorite Coach Rick patino he’ bounced around the league and had basically become a bust when he signed with Detroit in ‘ 03 it was his sixth team in seven years the Pistons drafted taan Prince with the 23rd pick in the O2

Draft that class turned out to be one of the weakest in recent memory so you know saying he was a long shot was like saying I don’t have my life figured out they got Rip Hamilton from Washington in a trade because Michael Jordan ever the competitor who really put the killer in

Team killer during those years with the Wizards wasn’t really interested in developing young Talent RIT was only on the team because the Wizards didn’t see a future with him Rasheed Wallace was a mid-season acquisition noted for being the face of the jail Blazers during his time with Portland

Setting an unbreakable record with 40 technical fouls in a single season and for once getting suspended for threatening a referee on a loading dock and Ben Wallace wasn’t even drafted his journey to Detroit went through J D2 basketball a try out in the Italian League the Wizards and the magic he’d

Been with Detroit since 01 as a throwin for the Grant Hill trade and had carved out a starting role but the defensive minded Center ended his career without ever averaging over 10 points a game for a season that was the Pistons a journeyman bust a late round long shot a reject a

Headcase and an undrafted specialist the only man in the locker room with a championship pedigree was the man holding the clipboard head coach Larry Brown Brown had led the Kansas Jayhawks to a title in 1988 but Detroit was Brown’s seventh stop in 21 years as

A head coach in the Pro ranks he’d worn out his welcome at every stop of his career not to mention the impossible odds he faced in his pursuit of an NBA ring that no coach had ever won a championship in both college and the NBA

When you look at it like that yeah it’s no surprise that nobody picked the Pistons on paper they were one of the most underwhelming finals teams ever on paper Detroit was going to get smoked like a cigarette around my drunk mom and yet in game one of the finals those

Pesky Pistons wouldn’t go away sure Kobe and sha were getting theirs but the Pistons were hanging with them and you wouldn’t believe it but in the fourth quarter they started to pull away in a shocking upset the Pistons beat the Lakers 8775 on the road it was a defensive game

To be certain but the Pistons had put on a CL I of Exquisite passing great spacing and off ball movement it wasn’t a singular Force taking on an unkillable Behemoth instead the Pistons stunned the Lakers and the world with solid defense and unselfish Play No Bells no

Whistles for the first time in years the Lakers had been soundly defeated in a Finals game in the second game the Pistons again acted under the delusion that they belonged they traded punch with Los Angeles for four quarters fighting kilos above their weight they would have won the game in regulation

Had Kobe not hit a game tying three with 2 seconds left giving the Lakers the chance to steal the game in overtime with the series tied at a game AP piece the teams traveled to Detroit where the next three consecutive games would be played there would be no game back in

Los Angeles the Lakers didn’t know it yet but they had already lost because in in spite of everything I’ve said and in spite of the sheer abnormality of their composition the 04 Pistons played in a special way a way that few teams even champions in sports have ever played distilled into a single

Sentence they played the right way if you know about these pistons and you know about Larry Brown you knew that was coming as Howard Beck once said there is no more recognizable idiom in his lexicon it’s a it’s a phrase that is universally preached by coaches everywhere at every level of every sport

But one that is irrevocably linked to Larry Brown playing the right way it was an idea that he’ carried with him at every stop of his journey each to some measure of success from the nuggets in the 76 ABA finals to Danny and the Miracles with KU to the Spurs Clippers

Pacers and Sixers we don’t have to talk about the Olympic team or SMU or the Knicks Brown is coaching royalty not just because of his championship rings but because of his adherence to that philosophy he was named one of the 15 greatest coaches in NBA history not just

Because of his win loss record but because he has influenced the culture of the game the right way in as few words as possible commit on the defensive end keep the game simple find the open man make the right PA sacrifice for each other and win as a team I know not

Exactly revolutionary stuff right but Brown as much as any coach made it so with his unwavering commitment to that higher ideal he occupies a special place is himself a special branch on the coaching tree of basketball he was a disciple of Dean Smith who was taught by

Fog Allen who was taught by Dr James naith and I know what you’re thinking Clayton shut up you sound old fog Allen in what AM radio playing with a wheel and a stick in the yard world does a grown man go by fog all this play the

Right way sacrifice come together as a team and make the right past stuff is all Spurs stuff anyway the stuff pop has been preaching and winning titles with for decades first you must be new here this is my dojo we talk about the old stuff here second

It shouldn’t surprise you then that Greg papovich was taught by Larry Brown the difference between the two is that pop has always been very selective about the players the Spurs bring in not everyone can leave their egos at the door but I think Brown was under the impression

That everybody could do it that once they saw what buying in would do for them they’d never look back I don’t know if he realized how special it was that he’ found himself in this situation with a team of guys who could play the right way but this Pistons team was special

They could and did play the right way they were talented bips was Mr big shot rip led the team in scoring Prince was a phenomenal glue guy and a Defender who owns maybe the second most famous block ever Sheed was probably the best all-around player on the team when they

Got him and Ben Wallace might have had the best defensive season a player has ever had not to mention great bench players that bought in and did their jobs to a te they were a team they bonded over the fact that they were rejects it was their strength they liked

Each other they were constantly out to dinner together Hamilton wanted his son to grow up and marry Chon’s daughter they all still stay in touch and if you believe rip still talk to each other two or three times a week the more I read of how they felt

About each other other the more I was reminded of ironically the Bad Boys Brothers in Arms United around a unifying idea it’s us against the world and the more discounted we are the more we believe in each other which could not have been any more antithetical to the

Way the Lakers felt about each other Kobe was the NBA’s Persona NR and he and Shaq hated each other they’d been able to stick to the script and follow the formula before but it was boiling over at this point the team had sacrificed thoughtful depth and balance to bring in

Malone and Payton who even though they were statistically productive tipped the balance of stability for them and primed the team for an all-time ego implosion they were the been there done that we have the notoriety flip the switch and try hard when it counts team of all teams they’d lost the

Hunger the cliches about the inverse Natures of the two teams are endless star power versus underdogs individuals versus a team the shallow Glitzy Glam of Los Angeles the blue collar going to work Detroit a group that Rose to the occasion who found the most important impactful allies to be each other and

The one that caved at the first sign of adversity whose most lethal enemy was themselves and on the court it just happened the Pistons transcended and as one cohesive entity subjugated the Lakers their scoring was ludicrously balanced and almost every player on their roster contributed in some meaningful Way Big Ben was fantastic

Against O’Neal and taan harassed Kobe into a historic shooting slum rip led the team in series scoring Rasheed had stretches of true dominance and bilps set everybody up taking home the finals MVP as Detroit when the next three games on their home court and captured their first championship since

1990 it is a championship victory that has no equal in its improbability just by the odds the Pistons were 5 to1 underdogs in the series the longest finals odds for a champion in any data I could find at the time they had the second worst record of a champion since

1980 they are still the lowest scoring champion since the shot clock they are the only championship team without a player that was named to the 75th Anniversary team in the 40 plus years since the introduction of the three-point line even more not one player on their team was a first team all League

Selection at any point in their career not one not not once the only such champion in NBA history but they beat the breakes off of a star studded Lakers super team they killed and buried a dynasty Shaq was gone in days Phil retired Malone retired Payton left fiser

Left just like that it was over for the Lakers meanwhile the Pistons almost went backto back they Prov proved they weren’t a fluke they made the finals again the next season and took the Spurs to seven games and then they made three more straight Eastern finals appearances they contended for another

Four years after this title yes they won with defense not exactly as exciting as Showtime or the beautiful game and yeah that era might have favored defensive teams more than other Arrow would have but I L that they were a defensive team there’s just some something I don’t know romantic about it

Defense is still one of the aspects of basketball that we don’t really have easy to follow figures for it exists as an absence of something and it’s also really really damn hard to do it takes the whole team playing just right for an entire possession to get a good stop and

To do that for a whole game a whole series it takes communication high IQ and a shitload of effort effort to that end the Pistons held their opponents to the fewest points of any champion in the shot clock era and tout the best defensive rating by a champion since the three-point

Line when I said that Ben Wallace might have had the best defensive season ever I meant it his 04 season ironically the One season in a 5-year stretch where he didn’t take home defensive player of the year has no equal when it comes to the advanced metrics

The most defensive win shares in a regular season since the merger the best defensive rating for a regular season ever the most defensive win shares in a postseason ever and the best defensive rating for a postseason ever he was the captain of the team The Hub of their wheel and the Catalyst for

So much of their intensity I don’t want to say that he led them to the title that convention goes against everything they stood for for again they did not follow the formula on the list of Hall of Fame title winning captains Ben Wallace exists in a place all by

Himself then again he was never alone the 04 Pistons are anomalies you cannot reconstruct them you can’t just find players like them that have the same stats they were coached by a generational leader and bought into to the innate power of Team their competitive Advantage was each other and

Their belief in the things they could do together this Pistons team was and is the example of a basketball team that succeeds because of their cohesiveness the 2004 Detroit Pistons won the championship with the greatest upset in the history of the NBA finals and they W it because they played the right Way

In the 2004 NBA Finals, the Detroit Pistons met the Los Angeles Lakers. The Pistons victory against the Kobe-Shaq Lakers – by almost any metric – is the biggest upset in the history of the NBA.

How’d that happen?
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Thanks to Nic (the real GOAT) for the thumbnail: https://nicstelter.com

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