Sports Poets Society

Detroit Pistons: The 5 Baddest Boys of the Bad Boys Era KYLE GIBBONS JULY 8, 2011 If you weren’t a Detroit Pistons fan in the late '80s and early '90s then you undoubtedly hated the “Motor City Bad Boys.” And that’s how we like it. Led by a physically aggressive, defense-orientated core of players, the Detroit Pistons literally fought their way to back-to-back NBA championships in ’89 and ’90. And when it came to defending the “Bad Boys” moniker , no player was safe. Not Barkley, not Bird and especially not Michael Jordan. Detroit’s initial inability to successfully defend “His Airness” led to Pistons head coach Chuck Daly instituting the “Jordan Rules.” Daly vowed that Jordan himself would never defeat the Pistons again. Essentially the “Jordan Rules” indicated that No. 23 was to be stopped by any means necessary. Ultimately, it was this mentality to win by any means necessary that allowed the Detroit Pistons to steamroll opponents. The 1988-89 and 1989-90 Detroit Pistons te...

University of Detroit's Dick Vitale converses with forward Jeff Whitlow before  sending him in against Michigan, March 17, 1977. Vitale's team lost the Mideast regional …  UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/sports/nba/pistons/2022/04/02/green-ex-detroit-pistons-u-detroit-coach-dick-vitale-recovers-after-toughest-seven-months-my-life/7242901001/ Jerry Green | Special to The Detroit News April 2, 2022 It turned out on the drive that I learned that I — a newspaper guy — was making more dough than Vitale, a college coach. I thought then that was a cockeyed standard of values. This was nearly 50 years ago, but I recollect Vitale said he was earning $7,900 bucks a year to coach major college basketball. Vitale eventually would make it up. We got to the Catholic Central gym, and Vitale latched on to some basketballs. “I like shooting free throws,” he said. So, he stood at the free-throw line and started popping them in. One after another, swish, swish, swis...

https://www.vintagedetroit.com/john-long-worked-hard-to-make-it-to-the-nba/ by  DAN HOLMES  on  APRIL 7, 2018 After a tough loss during his high school career with Detroit Mercy, 16-year old John Long and his teammates received a tongue-lashing at the hands of their coach. The verbal “whuppin” made such an impression on Long that he put his sneakers back on and slipped out the side door of the gym, running the two miles back to his house. He wasn’t running away, he was working himself out after a bad game. Long was never afraid of hard work, and he usually didn’t need motivation. The Romulus native was driven to be a great basketball player. That drive led him to a college career at the University of Detroit and spot in the backcourt with the Detroit Pistons. After a 14-year NBA career with four teams , Long moved to the broadcast booth. He’s currently in his 18th year as a member of the Pistons radio team . A second story illustrates the determination that was stamped o...

https://thegregger63.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/john-long-nba-champion/ September 9, 2016 Author: thegregger63 1 In its nomadic days of the 1950s and ’60s, the NBA instituted a geographic element to its college draft. The league allowed teams to claim certain players without fear of competition, based on “territorial rights.” So the Pistons, for example, would be allowed their choice of players that attended the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, the University of Detroit or any other Michigan college. Each NBA team could utilize one territorial pick per year. Sometimes the league fudged a little. Wilt Chamberlain, who attended the University of Kansas, was allowed to go to the (then) Philadelphia Warriors as a “territorial” pick in 1959. Why? Because Wilt had grown up in Philadelphia and starred there in high school! And the NBA didn’t have a franchise anywhere near Kansas. The Pistons had bad luck with the territorial rule. The NBA abolished the rule in 1966, the year ...