Sports Poets Society

https://www.nba.com/pistons/features/draft-tales-they-werent-next-isiah-joe-d-duo-hunter-houston-stood-test-time-pistons-93 Keith Langlois●@keith_langlois Web Editor June 26, 20208:45 AM EDT (EDITOR’S NOTE: Pistons.com continues its periodic series looking at past draft classes as the Pistons prepare for the 2020 draft in October amid the extended off-season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.) The Bad Boys milked everything they could out of their core, winning back-to-back titles in 1989 and ’90 after two excruciating Game 7 losses ended their previous two seasons . Losing in the Eastern Conference finals to Chicago in 1991 was really their last hurrah. By the end of the 1992 season – when the Pistons lost a first-round series to the Knicks – the organization understood it was at a crossroads. John Salley was traded later that summer to Miami for a first-round pick, a move that also put the Pistons under the NBA salary cap of – wait for it – $14 million, giving them more trade flexibility...

https://www.nba.com/pistons/features/10-years-ago-04-finals-swung-pistons-way-game-3-smashing-lakers Keith Langlois ● @keith_langlois Web Editor June 10, 201410:00 AM EDT The 10-year anniversary of the 2004 NBA championship won by the Pistons comes Sunday. If you’ve got a 10-year-old bottle of bubbly saved for the occasion, Father’s Day sounds like a good day to pop it. But if it’s looking good to you today, well, today’s not a bad day to uncork it, either. Because today marks the 10-year anniversary of Game 3, and when it ended – an 88-68 demolition of a Lakers roster dripping with future Hall of Famers – the series was over. It really didn’t take much of a shove. When the series left Los Angeles, the Lakers were showing glaring signs of a fragility nobody believed possible when the ’04 Finals matchup was set. The teams split the first two games at Staples Center , the Pistons winning Game 1 87-75 with a dominant defensive second half, limiting the Lakers – Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe B...

https://www.nba.com/pistons/features/goin-work-pistons-5-fingers-became-iron-fist Keith Langlois ● @keith_langlois Web Editor June 16, 20149:39 AM EDT Late in the 2012 season, Ben Wallace and I sat in the coffee shop of a Charlotte hotel. I was writing a Courtside Quarterly article to send him into retirement and he said he could give me 30 minutes after we landed late that afternoon from Orlando. We wound up talking about three times that long. It’s because the subject turned to the Goin’ to Work Pistons he anchored as the four-time Defensive Player of the Year . And he turned nostalgic, philosophical and wistful while choking up once or twice along the way. “I don’t think there are too many teams in any sport that ever won a championship with a team like we had,” he said. “Guys that truly cared about each other and didn’t care who scores as long as the points were going up on the board, don’t care who’s getting the stops as long as they’re not scoring.” Early last season, I pushed...

https://www.nba.com/pistons/features/big-deal-pistons-deadline-acquisition-rasheed-wallace-shook-nba-and-brought-another-banner Keith Langlois●@keith_langlois Web Editor June 1, 202012:00 PM EDT (EDITOR’S NOTE: While the NBA season is in limbo amid the coronavirus pandemic, Pistons.com will periodically look back at some of the most significant personnel moves – trades, free-agent signings, draft picks – in Pistons history.  Next up: The trade-deadline deal that brought Rasheed Wallace to the Pistons in February 2004.) Your team being ecstatic after pulling off a trade-deadline deal isn’t the best barometer for gauging its ultimate success. When your rivals recoil in disgust over your heist, then you might be on to something. The Pistons – front office, coach Larry Brown, the Goin’ to Work playing cast, Hooper the horse, everybody – were beyond thrilled when Joe Dumars barely beat the buzzer to pull off the three-team deal at the Feb. 19 trade deadline in 2004 that added Rasheed Wa...

The Palace of Auburn Hills in Auburn Hills, Michigan, October 6, 2019. /VCG https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-13/See-you-The-Palace-It-was-more-than-that-notorious-brawl-S68oS2HEHK/index.html The Palace of Auburn Hills, former home arena of the Detroit Pistons, was leveled via implosion on Saturday. According to CNN, it took 800 pounds of explosives to demolish this 32-year-old arena with a capacity of 23,000 people. The Pistons moved to The Palace in 1988 and left for the Little Caesars Arena in 2017. It was also used by the WNBA's Detroit Shock, the International Hockey League's Detroit Vipers, and several other teams as a home court. The referee (C) tries to seperate Ben Wallace #3 of the Detroit Pistons and Ron Artest of the Indiana Pacers in the game at The Palace of Auburn Hills, November 19, 2004. /VCG The first thing most recalled about The Palace was the Pacers–Pistons brawl, or to fans, the "Malice at the Palace," or to press, "the worst night in NBA h...

https://www.nba.com/pistons/features/draft-tales-pistons-struck-gold-grant-hill-94-payload-wasnt-realized-until-his-free-agent Keith Langlois●@keith_langlois Web Editor May 22, 202010:21 AM EDT (EDITOR’S NOTE: While the NBA season is in limbo amid the coronavirus pandemic, Pistons.com will periodically look at past draft classes to illustrate the uncertain nature of the draft or to illustrate how even draft classes considered weak – as the 2020 draft is reputed to be – can yield impact players.) The 1994 NBA draft stands as the tipping point in the way elite basketball players viewed the traditional path that delivered them to the sport’s pinnacle, the NBA. Though no rule at the time barred high school players from bypassing college altogether – a result of legal challenges dating to the early 1970s – it was still more the norm that players would spend a bare minimum of two years in college and more often three and four. The top of the 1994 draft showed how the sands were shifting. The...

https://www.nba.com/pistons/features/palace-still-jewel-forever-changed-way-nba-ran-its-business April 10, 201712:31 AM EDT AUBURN HILLS – The Red Wings are leaving Joe Louis Arena because it was an outdated and ill-conceived arena the day it opened 38 years ago to critical disdain. The Pistons are leaving The Palace even though it remains among the NBA’s jewels in its 29th season. “This building being so far ahead of its time and still one of the nicest buildings in the league , among the oldest , I think it’s a great tribute to Bill Davidson, the foresight he had,” Stan Van Gundy said as the clock ticks down on the Pistons’ time in the place that’s been their home longer than any other . “Really, all the buildings that have come after have been influenced by this building.” He’s not kidding. Van Gundy entered the NBA with the Miami Heat, who came into the league as an expansion team in 1988 calling the newly constructed Miami Arena home. It was abandoned in 10 years, rendered in...

https://www.nba.com/pistons/features/what-game-dalys-first-season-pistons-helped-set-nba-all-time-scoring-record Keith Langlois●@keith_langlois Web Editor June 30, 202010:01 AM EDT (EDITOR’S NOTE: Pistons.com continues its period series looking back at some of the greatest and most significant games in franchise history.  Next up: The highest-scoring game in NBA history.) Fans who bought tickets to the Pistons-Nuggets game at McNichols Arena for Dec. 13, 1983 expected to see a lot of points put up. They got their money’s worth. They got, in fact, the highest-scoring game in NBA history – and more than three hours of entertainment. There was a coaching axiom often cited in the NBA of that era: “First team to 100 wins.” The Nuggets and Pistons were the first and third highest-scoring teams in the NBA that season, Denver at 123.7 points and the Pistons at 117.1. A different standard was in order that night. “Before the game, I told (Denver coach) Doug Moe that we should make it the...

https://www.nba.com/pistons/features/big-deal-late-summer-stunner-swapped-out-stackhouse-hamilton Keith Langlois●@keith_langlois Web Editor July 7, 20209:33 AM EDT (EDITOR’S NOTE: Pistons.com continues its periodic look at some of the most significant personnel moves – trades, free-agent signings, draft picks – in Pistons history.  Next up: The September 2002 trade, on the eve of training camp, that sent leading scorer Jerry Stackhouse to Washington for Rip Hamilton.) No matter when news had come that the Pistons traded their leading scorer, it would have been a “whoa” moment. But the timing of the Jerry Stackhouse-for-Rip Hamilton trade – a few weeks before the start of training camp, Sept. 11, 2002 – made it especially stunning across the NBA. September, after all, is typically the slowest month on the NBA calendar . If there’s anything done, it’s adding a veteran free agent to a minimum deal or inviting the last few NBA hopeful to training camp on non-guaranteed contracts . Tra...

https://www.nba.com/pistons/features/draft-tales-3-top-15-picks-79-could-have-transformed-pistons-turns-out-it-did Keith Langlois●@keith_langlois Web Editor July 14, 20209:39 AM EDT The 1979 draft – in which the Pistons held three of the first 15 picks – had a chance to be transformational for a franchise that had spent 22 seasons in Detroit and had three playoff series wins to show for it. As it turned out, it kinda sorta was. But the payoff came thanks not to the general manager who exercised those three picks – Dick Vitale; yes, that Dick Vitale – but to the guy who succeeded him, Jack McCloskey . The Pistons went into the 1979 draft with the fifth, 10th and 15th picks, the first earned the hard way, a 30-52 record in Vitale’s first – and only – full season as coach. The 10th pick came from Buffalo via a 1977 trade that shipped Marvin “Bad News” Barnes to the Braves for Gus Gerard, John Shumate and the ’79 first-rounder. The 15th pick came when the Pistons returned hometown star Ra...