Sports Poets Society

https://eu.freep.com/story/sports/nba/pistons/2021/03/18/ben-wallace-detroit-pistons-nba/6940151002/ Bill Dow | Special to Detroit Free Press As part of his series on former Detroit sports figures , Bill Dow caught up with Detroit Pistons legend Ben Wallace, who 20 years ago arrived in Detroit to become one of the game’s most dominant defensive players and a fan favorite. Last week, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame announced Wallace is one of 14 finalists for the 2021 induction . The Class will be announced May 16. It is the third time he has been a finalist. How we remember him During the second golden age of the Pistons in the mid-2000s, the undersized center at 6 feet 9 and 240 pounds of solid muscle became one of the greatest defensive players in NBA history , as he helped the Pistons crush the heavily favored Lakers — led by Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant — four games to one to win the 2004 NBA championship . Although he was not a high-scoring player, in the cli...

The Detroit Pistons may not be much fun to work, but everyone does his job and does it well. Oh, and they win. What more do you want? -- by Michael Bradley SLAM magazine, issue 67 - March 2003 Get out those lunch pails. Dust off the hard hats. Pay your union dues. Lace up the boots. eat a good breakfast. We're going to work. No other NBA city has a team that so closely reps its personality than does Detroit. The Pistons have adopted "Goin' to work. Every night." as their marketing slogan, and it might as well be a team mantra. The coaches preach it. The players believe it. The fans love it. Pistons games are rarely works of art, but the outcomes can be quite beautiful. Last year may have been short on basketball ballet - that 66-64 playoff loss to Boston comes to mind - but 50 wins and a trip to the second round of the playoffs (Detroit's longest postseason journey since '91) were undeniable. And in the Motor City, where the ultimate grind-it-out sport - hocke...

https://www.slamonline.com/the-magazine/st-cecilia-pistons-slam-241/ For this season’s City Edition uniforms, the Detroit Pistons are paying homage to St. Cecilia’s gym, a community staple whose history dates back over 50 years and that has seen some of the biggest names in the game play on its floor. “Anybody that was anybody passed through St. Cecilia’s,” says Earl “The Twirl” Cureton, a two-time NBA champion (1983, 1994) during his 12-year playing career. Cureton, who is now a community ambassador for the Pistons, grew up in Detroit and first hooped at St. Cecilia’s legendary gym (“The Saint”) in the mid-’70s.  “It definitely was the proving ground,” he says. “That’s the place where you had to go play. If you didn’t come through there, then you weren’t real.” In the wake of the devastating 1967 Detroit Riots, Sam Washington—the athletic director at St. Cecilia’s—was determined to create a safe place for kids to play basketball. Washington opened up the doors to St. Cecilia’s gy...