Little Caesars Arena was dotted with jerseys from the past on Sunday — Wallace, Hamilton, Billups.
It’s been more than a decade since any of the players last put on a Detroit Pistons uniform, but they still generated some of the loudest cheers of the afternoon.
It’s been 20 — yes, 20 — years since the Pistons won their last championship in 2004. The organization honored the “Goin’ To Work” era before and during the team’s 104-101 loss to the Miami Heat. Chauncey Billups, Ben Wallace and others signed autographs in the arena’s concourse pregame while walking down a blue carpet.
Ten players — Billups, Wallace, Richard Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Darvin Ham, Mehmet Okur, Elden Campbell, Mike James, Lindsey Hunter and Tremaine Fowlkes — were present at the halftime ceremony, along with former and current Pistons general manager George David, former assistant GM Scott Perry, trainers Arnie Kander and Mike Abdenour, and others.
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Former head coach Larry Brown and team president Joe Dumars weren’t present, but sent congratulatory video messages that aired on the Jumbotron in-game.
“When you get in that room and you hear Lindsey Hunter, the way that he’s talking and cracking jokes, and the same jokes that he was doing today was the same jokes he did 20 years ago, it brings you right back to the locker room all over again,” Hamilton said before the game. “If you talk to guys, especially when they retire from the game and go about their lives, especially the second half of their lives, the one thing they always say is we miss the locker room. To get back there with the guys and be laughing and joking, those stories, is amazing.”
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The Pistons’ starting five in 2004 — Billups, Hamilton, Prince, Rasheed Wallace and Ben Wallace — were nicknamed “The Best Five Alive.” They pulled off one of the greatest upsets in NBA history by defeating the heavily-favored Los Angeles Lakers, led by Hall of Famers Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, in five games.
They were renowned for their stifling defense, holding teams to an NBA-low 83.5 points per game during the regular season. They held an NBA-record 11 teams under 70 points, an unfathomable accomplishment in today’s offense-happy league.
And they did it without a textbook superstar on the roster, though Billups and four-time Defensive Player of the Year Ben Wallace are recognized as two of the best players of their era.
“We didn’t, and we actually took pride in that too,” Billups said on Sunday. “We didn’t have no superstars, I would agree with that. We had All-Stars, but superstars are different, and most teams that win it all usually have one or two of those guys. We were able to do it without that. But we had guys that could dominate games night in and night out still not be considered that.
“We never took offense to that. I know I personally didn’t. We didn’t have superstars, but we had All-Stars and we had a great team.”
Though those Pistons thrived in a different era, where hand-checking was permitted and teams took far fewer 3-pointers, Hamilton believes the 2004 team still would thrive today. He noted the Pistons’ starting frontcourt featured two players that could defend the perimeter. Also, the 3-point shot was a favorite of Rasheed’s.
“I think so,” Hamilton said. “I think we would’ve done really well at it because you gotta remember with our team, and if you look at teams now, it’s all about can your bigs guard 1-5. That’s a big part of it. And Ben and Rasheed, they were able to switch out on LeBron James. LeBron is the greatest player that’s playing basketball right now. He’s still probably a top-five guy in the league. With our squad the way that we were playing, Sheed was a guy that picked and popped. People always say you need to go in the post, you need to go on the block. So he was before his time. We would fit right into today’s game.”
Though this championship group may not get together often, Hamilton said they all still stay in regular contact. Some still have prominent roles in the league — Billups and Ham are both head coaches with the Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Lakers, respectively, and Prince is an assistant general manager with the Memphis Grizzlies.
“Memo, we was supposed to play golf every month but he keeps dodging me because he doesn’t want me to see his true handicap,” Hamilton said. “Darvin, we see Darvin in L.A. all the time. Elden, we talk on the phone about his real estate endeavors. So we still talk a lot, man. This wasn’t just guys that played basketball together. We were more of a family.”
That family dynamic, along with the way the team epitomized Detroit’s culture of hard work, are key reasons why the team’s popularity endures two decades later.
“It will never die,” Billups said. “What we did, it can never be undone. We had a lot of success. We only won one championship, we felt like we should’ve won more, had more. But we did win that one. I always say this, the way that we did it — the personnel, the talent, the salary cap and all of those things — it will never be done again. We love that. We talk about that all the time. We took pride in that.”
Contact Omari Sankofa II at osankofa@freepress.com. Follow him @omarisankofa.
