Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 108: Change of Pace - Let’s Talk Pistons History (with Keith Trudeau and Mike Payton of Bad Boys & Beyond)

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

This episode, recorded in the midst of Summer League, features Keith Trudeau and Mike Payton of Pistons history podcast Bad Boys & Beyond, who join to (of course!) talk some Pistons history! Summer League recap episode next week!

Welcome back, everybody. You're listening to Drive into the Basket, part of the basketball podcast network. I am Mike, joined today by the two co-hosts of the new Bad Boys and Beyond podcast, podcast for all of your Pistons history. I'm with Mike Payton and Keith Trudeau. Well, us, thanks for joining the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for having us.

Yeah, so why don't you tell the listeners what your show is going to be about? So, you know, Keith and I are basketball nerds. We've been watching basketball our entire life. It's our first love. And we know things that people probably shouldn't know. Like, who's Tony Massenberg? And stuff like that. So we decided we were going to get together and we were going to start talking about the Detroit Pistons and some NBA history as well.

The crux of what we do is every other week we cover a certain Detroit Piston. We do it long form. We go through their entire career. the highs, the lows, maybe drop a little history that you may not remember. For example, in our first episode, Isaiah Thomas may have almost gotten traded to the Knicks in his last year. So we dropped little stuff like that that you probably forgot about. And then in our opposite episodes, we talk about NBA history. Last week, we did a redraft of the 1984 NBA draft.

That's the Michael Jordan year. We did that in full, gave some announcements. talked about how those players would fit with the team that were that the that the that we're currently being on the court so yeah you know we we love history and we're going to talk about it for a long time and this this coming week we got lindsay hunter coming up and I'm looking forward to seeing where this thing's going to go fantastic yeah me too let's talk some pistons history where would you each say that that your Pistons fandom began myself uh my self uh my My fandom, really, as a Pistons fan, and I tell people that, when people ask me what my first Pistons game was, I tell them it's the Birdsteel game.

Now, I was five. I have no way of actually remembering if that's what it was, but I remember distinctly the Parquet floor of the Boston Garden. I remember it was an exciting game. I remember there was a lot of reactions. It probably was the Birdsteel game, but I'm not 100% sure of that. But anyway, as a very young guy. kid. I was just thrilled with the Pistons because I grew up in a world where and people are going to find this hard to believe that, you know, the Pistons were world champions. Like they were at the top of the

NBA for years and I didn't know any other, any other league. So as I got older and the bad boys started aging out, you know, I was old enough to finally, you know, understand what was going on in the court. And even though that the Pistons were no longer nearly as relevant, I found myself, you know, very interested in, you know, the game, learning the game and studying things that were happening around the league and why they were happening. And from that point on, really from the age of probably 10 or 11, I really became a historian, someone that, you know, studies the game. And, you know, for the last, you know, 25, 30, that's kind of been my passion.

My side hobby in life is, you know, learning as much as I can. And, you know, to this day, I'm still learning stuff. over the years I've collected a very large collection of old basketball games. I've digitized it. I've long since digitized it all, but don't get this image that there's a room full of VHS tapes in my idea if there's not. But, yeah, I do have to get a new hard drive, though. I filled up about 12 terabytes worth if that gives anyone some kind of a scope.

Yeah, you post a lot of clips on Twitter. of these old games. Yep, yep. That's honestly how this whole thing got started is, you know, on a Twitter, I had a Twitter account which I started just, you know, to aggregate information about the team. And I never thought about putting stuff out there myself, but, you know, I put out a few clips here and there,

and it got such a great response. I said, okay, what's the, I can put out a whole two plus minute, you know, highlight clip of something that happened that people probably either haven't seen before, don't remember. And the whole Twitter thing kind of took off for me. And then when Mike came to me with this idea for our podcast, I was honestly quite thrilled about it because it got to, I still got to be a Pistons fan, which I still am to this day. You know, we will be talking about a different Pistons legend or Pistons related legend, you know, every other week. But it also got to, it allowed me to talk about other stuff like the redraft

that we just did, which I was honestly unsure about how it was going to go before, but having done it, taking the, you know, as I phrased it, the quantum leap approach, not just taking the first 14, you know, your 14 best players in a redraft, but actually trying to make the right pick for each team that was drafting. I thought that was really cool, and I can't wait to do more of these. And I'm thrilled to share all of this with everybody, you know, as our podcast grows and we get more people listening. Fantastic. You know, for me, it really starts with, I have ADHD.

So it's hard for me to focus on things. So when I find something that I can focus on, I do what's called hyper-focusing, which is kind of like a big part of being ADHD, people hyper-focused. So early on, like I always knew what the Pistons were in my early life. you know, I had the old, remember Keith those old t-shirts of the, the cartoon Pistons, like after they had won the championship, they're on the... Yeah, like the little characters. Yeah, so I had those shirts, but like I didn't really pay much attention to.

They were just a team, you know, they were just, they were just a sports team. And then in 1992, we went and seen, my Uncle Jim took me to my first Pistons game. It was Pistons versus the Pacers. And I just fell in love immediately. And, you know, we got this little, they were giving away these Joe Dumars jerseys at the door with like, they had like a bunch of sponsors and stuff on them. They weren't real Joe Dumar's jerseys. But I wore that thing out.

I wore it all the time. And then he gave me this 1988, Detroit Pistons year-end review cassette tape. And I watched that thing over and over and over and over and over again. And then I started collecting basketball cards and I would just sit and read them, read the back of them. Like I've just, it was like insane, the hyper focus that I was able to do. And it was all pistons led, you know, and I would do the thing that most people would do. I'd go out into the driveway and pretend to be Grant Hill or pretend to be Isaiah Thomas or, you know. And that love just, it just kept growing and growing and growing.

And here I am. I'm 36 years old. and I don't miss a game. I love this team. I always will. Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, the fandom of each of you guys, Antidates mine by a couple of decades.

Like, I was around for going to work days. I wasn't, I would imagine, back then anywhere near as hardcore fan as the two of you were. And then I was largely during that time, just a very hardcore Rebbing's fan. I got alienated by Ken Holland. And then that's magical month or so after Josh Smith was. his wave came along, I started watching the Pistons. And, yeah, ultimately moved on to the Pistons in my hardcore fandom, a team that was actually even more poorly managed in the Red Wings back then.

So, yeah, it's only about eight years for me. So it seems like you guys really grew up watching into, you know, just the immediate post-bad boys era and into the TL era. Yeah, which seems to be a pretty forgotten era in Pistons history. I'm sure Mike Payton is going to chime in and say something similar. but, you know, your formative years are kind of, you know, the years that you have some of your sharpest memories, because those are the things that are just, like, ingrained in you. And that's, to me, that's, even though my first memories are for, you know, of the bad boys, that's where I

started, like, my most vivid memories are from the mid-90s to late 90s. Um, like, as the bad boys were getting torn down and then Grant Hill and Lindsay Hunter and Allen Houston were walking, uh, in through that door, you know, and a couple years later, transition to the teal, which that that's a whole thing that resonates with people, whether they've even seen it, whether they've even been around for it or not. But yeah, those, like the disaster that was the first, you know, six or seven years of the Tom Gorz era following Bill Davidson's passing, those years are kind of, I mean, I could probably give you some details about each season, but those are just one big pile of crap for me.

Like, they kind of all, um, uh, gel together. But I could give you breakdowns of how the team was different between 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99. Like these, those are all like individual like mini movies for me. Like each team was, was very distinct in at least one different way because they, especially when Grant Hill came aboard, they tried to reinvent themselves, like in a hurry to get good every single year. And that's one of the, maybe the most interesting time in Piston's history for me, even though it wasn't the most successful. Yeah, I mean, just to kind of echo what Keith is saying, it's like, it's like a movie that plays in my head. You know, I remember, especially that 97 season that they were 54 and 28, they went to the playoffs.

They were like, you know, a really good team. Obviously, the Bulls were unbeatable at that time. But, you know, I just remember tuning in to the games and the opening package and, you know, they were destroying the other team's logo and all that stuff and like a cartoon type thing. And you got George Blaha and Kelly Trujuka calling the games. And it's just, I remember vividly like after the Jerry Stackhouse trade, watching Jerry Stackhouse and Aaron McKee get off the plane and thinking like, we're going to win it all. like this is the greatest time of my life. And it's just, you know, you just remember stuff like that. It just never goes away.

Yes. I mean, you guys were around through a lot of years that I feel like the teal years and certainly almost the 90s, 90s as a whole after the Pistons, really after the Bulls took over, seemed like kind of a lost era for the Pistons because after that, you know, in Pistons history, rather, because after that you saw the transition, you know, starting, you know, on 2001, if I remember correctly, so they go into work. era. So, yeah, what were really the defining as a defining characteristics of the 90s of that teal era for you guys? There's a jersey and it starts with numbers 33. Yeah, he was important.

Even though Grant Hill came aboard a couple years prior and he left a year before the teal era. And Grant, Grant Hill, if you bring up the teal era to anybody that was around at that time, they're going to say the first name that comes to mind is going to be Grant Hill. Grant Hill, and I've said this before, but he is still the greatest forward ever to wear a Pistons jersey. Now, you can throw his overall team record in my face all you want, but all that says to me is that, you know, he didn't play with as much talent around him as guys like Mark Aguoy or Adrian Danley or Tashon Prince or Rashid Wallace. And in some ways, he was kind of a blessing and a curse because, you know, people forget, like they were only in the lottery for this only there's, this

was only their very first attempt at tanking. Like they were in the lottery previously, but they were trying to make the playoffs. They just missed it. And then in year two, the whole thing just went to hell and they decided we're going to bottom out. And they did. I think they lost their last, something like their last 11, 12 games of the season. And they didn't land.

They had the second worst record. They actually dropped one spot. They landed the third pick, but in a way that I think is analogous to what happened this past year with the Pistons landing fifth, but somehow J.D. Ivey drops to them. In a way, it was something very similar to where the Pistons actually dropped a third in the lottery, but the best player in the draft fell to them anyway. And Grant Hill was so good right out of the box that you could almost feel the pressure coming from the front office that we, all right, this kid is going to be one of the top players in the entire league. A lot of people were

anointing him as the successor to Michael Jordan. I mean, this isn't hyperbole. This isn't, no, this was actually going on at the time. Like, he wasn't just a young star. He was the young star of the league. They wanted him to be that guy. And for the front office, it was just unacceptable for them to be, you know, mediocre. They, they were obsessed with taking advantage of having this immense talent that just fell in their lap immediately. You know, so, and I'll give you a quick a rundown of how his career went out, or how his career played out in Detroit. So, you know, 94, 95, they had a bad season again, even though he was very clearly the best rookie.

Jason Kidd made a little push at the end. They gave him a sympathy tie for a rookie of the year, but really, Grant Hill was the best rookie. Right. And after the season was over, they fired both the coach end of the GM, hired Doug Collins and gave him what everyone younger today would know as the Stan Van Gundy role, coach NGM. And, yep, Doug Collins, brilliant, brilliant coach. One of the smart.

I'm sorry, go on. He was Jordan's first coach, right before Phil Jackson, he was my George's coach. He was Jordan's second coach. Okay. Yeah, he was his original coach and his name is just slipping my mind right now. I'm sure I'll think it up in a minute. But anyway, yeah, he was, he was the first coach that Jordan had. a real rapport with that they won its playoff series with.

And he was every bit as maniacal and is obsessed with winning and losing as Jordan was. And I don't want to say that Doug Collins was cold or cruel, but he was just so single-minded in his, all right, I'll give you an example, Theo Ratliff, one of the Pistons draft picks in the mid-90s. I used to think that the Pistons would run a play called Theo, because every time, you down the court, Doug Collins would be shouting, Theo! And it would, no, I'm not even exaggerating. This isn't that I literally thought that they had a play called Theo because he was yelling at him probably two out of every three times down the court. And as smart as Doug Collins was,

it just grated on people. And the person it probably cost them initially, the first cash, The first casualty of that was Alan Houston. After Doug's very first season in Detroit, Alan Houston, he wasn't playing very much early. Doug Collins didn't like his defense. Doug Collins didn't like this about him, that about it. But by the end of the season, he had grown to the point where people were in Detroit, at least locally, were discussing, okay, who's the real alpha dog of our team? Is it Grant Hill or is it Allen Houston?

Like, it sounds ridiculous today, but I'm just saying. that playoff series that they had against Orlando, Alan Houston was probably the best piston on the court. And it was just a bone crusher when he left, you know, immediately after a free agency. Now, the front office had a lot to do with that. And if I go into the disaster that was the offseason of 1996, we'll be here all night.

So I'm just going to say that the front office fumbled the bag in the summer of 96, worse than I think the pistons had ever fumbled it in any year ever. It was one of the biggest debacles, I think, for a team to have a heavy potential because that team really if you look at the roster and the money that they were about to have that team really had the potential to be a contender it really did and that was the one time in grand hills career where they had a window and as soon as alan houston left that window closed and they didn't replace him with anybody because everyone saw all in houston leave and they said oh god

grand hill's there and they still have guys you know running for the exit what's going on and yep and so Doug Collins, he lasts another year and a half, does a great coaching job. Like Peyton said, they won 54 games with basically Grant Hill and a very old Joe Dumars, well, by NBA standards, old Joe Dumars, you know, and a bunch of guys. And it was masked by the fact that Doug was slowly wearing them down with his overbearing coaching style. And they should have fired them anyway after that 54 one season. They didn't.

And because of that, they went into the next season. They missed the playoffs. Doug was fired two months into that season, replaced with Alvin Gentry, replaced as a GM, I think, with Rick Sund, who, again, we'll go into him in a minute. So that season, 98 season was awash. And now you've got two more years left until Grand Hills' rookie season runs out. So 99 comes along and they have again this amount of cap space that they should have paid Alan Houston but they didn't so and like Peyton said they they did trade for Jerry Stackhouse

midway through that loss season so you know there was some hope there that they could rebuild and they gave that extra money to Brian Williams who most people would know as the tragic story of Bison Dealey Bison Daly yep very shorted center. I put out a video of him a while ago that I retweet every now and then. Bison Daly was not a bad player. If like if you look at the sheer talent that he had and what he could do on a basketball for, he was well worth the money. But if you look at the amount of teams that he bounced to from team to team to team over his career prior to that point, you could see like, okay, there's something else going on here because it's definitely not the fact that he can't play. And Bison, I want to say

this gently because, you know, he's passed away. I don't want to... That's a sad story. Yeah, yeah, it is. But in terms of a basketball player, it was very similar to Andre Drummond, but worse. Where some nights, he would show up and he would dominate and even against good players where he would just be, oh my God, this guy's lights out. And then the next three nights, he would show up and he would, he would look like a guy that didn't even, that had to be forced into a uniform. Like, he would commit poorly foul. like lazy fouls, and then he would sit down, and he'd come in the second quarter, commit another foul.

And at the end of the game, he'd have four fouls and three points and one rebound in 25 minutes. And those games were frequent with him. And you also had a developing problem, which again, I won't take up too much of your time with, but Joe Dumars at that point was clearly the GM in waiting. He was still playing, right? He was still on roster. That was his last season, that 99 season, that lockout short and season. And he created kind of a power dynamic where Al, he had no business starting for that team.

He didn't. Right. Jerry Stackhouse, this young, again, he had kind of a rocky start to his career, but still, everybody saw the talent. He just needed minutes. And he was the perfect running mate alongside Grant Hill to get up and down and put pressure on teams in transition. And Jerry Stackhouse was kind of a six-man. You know, and he shouldn't have been because he was better than Joe.

Joe DeMars could still shoot, but he really wasn't capable of doing anything else at that point. He couldn't defend. He couldn't handle the ball like he used to. He was a guy that he was a spot-up shooter and a guy that could pass a little bit. It was about 35 at the time, right? Yeah. And what happened was, I don't think that there was any chance that he would have started

if Alvin Gentry didn't know that he was going to be working for him. in a year. Oh, interesting. Yes. So it created this weird dynamic where Joe was starting and playing. He was happy. Jerry Stackhouse was clearly unhappy. He did not have a very good season coming off the bench.

And everyone was kind of just waiting for that year to be over, which was such a disappointment because that was the year that, you know, the Miami Heat got knocked out in the first round as the number one seed. And that team, if you look at that weird lockout short and season, they could have had a path to the finals, and they really didn't in the end because they got knocked out of the first round by Atlanta, a team that had a lot less talent than they did. Yeah.

And that was. Yep. And that was in, yeah. So Alvin Gentry gets fired. You're seeing a theme here. Alvin Gentry gets fired shortly into the next season. And this is Grant Hill's last season, right? So, man, this is pretty much it for that, for that era of the business, huh?

Yep. Yep. And then Alvin Jett, yep. And then George Irvin takes over. And then it looks like they may have something going. And then Grant Hill's injury problems happen. And, you know, the doctors just fumbled it. They misdiagnosed it.

And he played on. And it probably cost him several years out of his career. And, you know, at that point, everything just kind of fell apart. And Joe Dumas decided to pretty much wipe the, just burn it all down and start from the beginning. Gotcha. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's, you've just told me a great deal more than I ever knew about that era of Pistons basketball. And now a quick word from our sponsor.

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Now, now something I think, like Grant Hill, I agree with what you said, based on I know about him, bro, at this point, has the best pedigree of any four, whatever to put on Pistons uniform. I agree with that. But despite that, people don't really know, I think myself included in a lot of, a lot of Pistons fans who may not have been watching back then or maybe young back then, don't know a ton about him. So yeah, Mike, how would you sum up Grant Hill? Like, you know, for the, for the Pistons fans of today who weren't quite as familiar with him. Yeah, I mean, it's exactly what Keith was saying.

Like, he, people really don't think about, about it because the way his career ended, you know, with the, in the injuries and, and things like that. But he really was compared to Michael Jordan. He was expected to be the league's next number one guy. And, and for a while there, I mean, he really stepped up to it and you could actually see that that was something that could potentially happen. But, you know, his teams just never figured it out. And it's weird because when you look back, if you're somebody who knows anything about the NBA in the 90s and you don't know who's on what teams, but you know what players are good and you look at some of the players that Grant Hill play with like the Allen Houston's, the Jerry Stackhouse, Joe Dumars, Christian Leitler, Stacey,

C. Ogman, Rick Mahorn, Joe Duma. I probably said Dumears already, but like, it's, it's, it's crazy to think that, that this guy never, never won a championship. And, and it's just weird to think that this team never put it together. But that's, that's what the 90s Pistons were. They were the team full of talent that just couldn't put it together. And they were somewhat similar to the, you know, the late 2010's early, or, you know, the late 2010, mid to late 20s. 2010 Pistons where they had guys like Chris Middleton and and you know it just didn't know what to do with them and like and and and and and and and and and and and and and and you know, he wind up trading him away and and and and and and Houston leaves Detroit. He's a much bigger star in New York and and, you know, Stackhouse you probably had his best days as a piston but once he left he you know he became kind of a you know a better player a little bit. Uh and it just kind of goes on. Lindsay Hunter he goes he he he leaves to go to LA. has more success there. And that's just what it was.

It was the Pistons were like this team just couldn't put it together. And as soon as you left the Pistons in that era, you were probably destined to be a bigger star. Yeah, it was just, I guess the one thing that I would, because the team in the late 2010 didn't have, they had talent, but they didn't have, you know, like the Grant Hill, you know, to get everybody fit to get it. Like, there was a lot of hopelessness in those early 2010 years. because they spent a lot of money and they didn't, the guys that they spent a lot of money on turned out to be, you know, highly unproductive. Like, it wasn't just the fact that they spent the money on,

on those guys. If they had gotten the version of those guys that were, that came from the other teams, they would have been, you know, still not good, but it would have been at least understandable. But the versions that they got were, like Charlie Villanueva, as hard as it is to believe, might have been the most accurate free agent,

a big free agent deal that they handed out during that time. Like Ben Gordon was a shell of himself almost from day one. Like that guy that lit up the Celtics for the Bulls and the playoffs. And he came to Detroit and it was like, it was almost like Bison Dayleigh all over again where he just didn't want to play a lot of nights. Yeah, he was bad. Yep.

And Josh Smith was almost, I think, I still think Ben Gordon was a less productive signing than Josh. Smith because at least Josh Smith tried. No, I don't know. At least Josh Smith, like, he gave you. He gave, no, no, he, I seriously think that Josh Smith, like, gave you what he had. It just wasn't very good. I'd say the least.

Yeah, like, he would fill up a box score almost every night, but he would do it on, like, three for 20 shooting and he'd mishead his three throws and he'd airball a two, three pointers. But he'd still give you a good amount of, you know, block, steals, assists. where he was just one of the worst one of the least efficient shooters I've ever seen he was horrible yeah it was amazing yeah but I mean yeah the yeah the the problem with the uh one last thing to note about those those grand hill teams uh it really starts from the top it's the mismanagement and that's I think where the real parallel is between those teams and the 2010s teams

is Grant Hill had four head coaches and three GMs and six seasons. Not ideal. No. No, that's terrible. That's awful. And I compare that to like the Isaiah Thomas era where, yeah, he had, he went through, you know, a few coaches and a, he only had one GM.

He had another GM towards the end of his career. But during that, that playoff run, that nine-year playoff run, he had in Detroit, one head coach, one GM, one voice the entire time. So one star player, same head coach, same GM, same voice, same direction the entire time. Grant Hill's team never had a direction at all. It was just a whole lot of let's throw slop at the wall and see if it sticks, which is I think kind of how the 2010s were, you know, really up until recently when they hired, you know, Troy Weaver and kept Dwayne Casey.

And it seems like we finally, for the first time in maybe 30 years, this Pistons organization has a solid front office that has a plan and is sticking to it and knows what they're doing. definitely so yeah Mike you do you noted though that that that that Grant was one of the rare examples so back then he was really the only example of a player who was at his best with the Pistons I'm just I'd like just get to you know to get an idea from you guys what was it like to watch grant Hill on the core like what made him as you guys have said like the best forward to date who has ever put on a uniform for the Pistons oh he I mean he could do so many he could handle

which was kind of you know a little different for forward at that time. I mean, you know, the NBA was such a different world. It was the bigs were not like, you know, shooting threes and, and doing a lot of things that they're due now. They were, they were bigs, you know, they were there to rebound. They were there to, to kind of, to, to, to dunk the ball and do, do basically, you know, block shots. They were there to just be there. And Grant Hill, you know, while he's not as, as big as, you know, a lot of other forwards, he's, he could he could he was a playmaker i mean he could he could he could handle the ball he could shoot the ball he could he could he could drive the ball he could dunk he could do everything that you

you could you could think of i mean and he did it with flash and flare i mean it was it was it was never boring you know you go back and watch some of these highlights and you go well geez i mean like grant hill could probably play in in today's era like you know i don't know if i could say the same for a lot of his teammates i don't think they that it would work out but i but i think that Grant could dominate in this era. I think he's, Jesus, I'm almost going to say he was like the 90s version of LeBron James. Like that's, but obviously not as great as LeBron. But he was like what LeBron could do.

He was like what Magic Johnson could do in the 80s, what LeBron could do in the 2000s. It was kind of like that all melted into a ball. I mean, it was just, it was so much fun to watch. Yeah, it was a sort of very early point forward. back when there hadn't been very many of those. Yeah. It was just an excellent score and just had a great ability to set up his teammates. Yeah, I mean, the NBA had point forwards.

I mean, I try to make it clear that, you know, Great Hill wasn't the first by any stretch. You had, Don Nelson, you know, the guy who really came up with the idea for the position, you know, he was in the NBA in the early 80s or the, I should say, the late 70s. Like, we had part-time power forwards to begin with, like, Paul Presley, or say Scotty Pippen,

with the Bowls, but we had not had someone before Grant Hill that was a forward that played point guard almost full time. And Doug Collins, then that was his idea more than anything, because he had, his son played with Doug Collins at Duke in Grant's senior year. And he had, and Shoshchevsky played, essentially played Grand Hill at point guard that whole season. And he almost won a national championship with Grant Hill and, you know, a bunch of guys. and that was his idea, especially because the Pistons really didn't have a pure point guard. You know, they had Alan Houston, they had Joe Dumars, Lindsay Hunter. None of them were really capable of being a starting NBA point.

So he just plugged Grant Hill in there, and it was a major success. I mean, think about it. Grant Hill, it's not the triple doubles that impresses me about, you know, the things that Grant Hill. It was the fact that the Pistons played such a remarkably slow pace. because they didn't have a ton of, they had Grant Hill, but they didn't have that overwhelming talent that allowed them to, you know, play racehorse basketball with other teams. Grant Hill, that not, that 97 team, that 54-197 was, I think, one of the 10 slowest pace teams in NBA history, you know, in post-shot clock.

Like they played that. Honestly, it wasn't. That wasn't, huh? The half-court offense they ran was so frigging gorgeous. Oh, really? Yep, they hit Terry Mills, one of the original stretch fives. You had Otis Thorpe, and I'm sure Mike could say a lot about Otis Thorpe. A bit of a bit of a grizzled veteran at that time.

But, you know, he had the biggest hands, like, of any basketball player. You know, maybe Michael Jordan or Julia serving, you know, or Wilt might have a case, but Otis is right up there. Like, his hands were that big. And Grant could run a pick and roll with him and throw the ball literally anywhere. Otis would catch it with one hand and dunk it without needing to put another hand in the ball. And you had Joe Dumars who could still shoot. I already brought up Terry Mills.

Like it was a very forward-thinking offense. Like it was similar to how teams set up half-court offense today, to be honest with you. They just didn't run as much. And, you know, the funny thing was people would look at these low scores, you know, these 94 to like 88 final scores. and they would think that the pistons were, you know, they had this great defense. No, they weren't. Like, their defense was very mediocre, but their offense was so efficient, and they didn't turn the ball over. I think they set the league record for fewest turnovers in a season.

I know it's been surpassed since then, but that's how efficient they were. So not only did they not run, they didn't let anyone else run. And the fact that I told you all of this, this deliberate slow pace that they play, Grand Hill had 10 triple doubles. Yeah, 10 triple doubles in extremely limited possessions. Yeah, they averaged, I'm looking at it, they averaged 94 points a game. Yeah. That's in that season.

Yeah, that was really the, like, whatever you want to call it, like in the NHL had its dead puck era. This was, this was whatever the NBA equivalent of that was. But if you look at their offensive efficiency, it was actually, you know, pretty high. It was just, they limited possessions. played such a slow pace. But it was really fun to watch, though, at least for me, because they shot, you know, a large number of the percentages were kicking out for three-pointers, which was, I don't want to say it was new at the time, but it was new to me because that was the

first time the Pistons really explored it. Yeah, it was rare for the stretch fives were virtually unheard of at that time, too. I didn't know anybody. I don't know about, I don't know about any of this. I honestly never heard the name. Oh, Terry Mills? No, it was it, sorry, Otis Store or Terry Mills? Otis Storpe. Otis Thorpe, yeah. The problem with Otisthorpe, and where you'll probably hear his name more often than not,

is that Otisthorpe's trade to the Grizzlies got themselves, or got the pistons the pick that wound up being Darko Milichich. Oh, wonderful. That's great. Yeah. Poor Otis Thorpe is always going to be kind of tied to that. Oh, so it was Thorpe, so he was the center for that team

or the power forward? Power forward. Oh, okay, gotcha. So, yes, you had a legitimate stretch five there. Yeah, that's, that you wouldn't see very often. I remember it was in 2015, we had Mike Breen gushing over Myers-Leonard being a stretch five. So I didn't know that that guy had even existed, to be honest. Yeah, so that's, how was it like when, so you had this team that won 54 games,

and then they go and just completely flame out in the playoffs. Yeah. To the honest. Okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mark. Well, I was expected. I mean, you know, they, once they got to the playoffs, the Hawks were, that's the year they lost to the Hawks, right? Yep.

They were on a red hot at that time. they were red hot metambo was like uh you know really coming into his own as like i mean he obviously was great in denver but he was really uh became like you know this huge block shot blocker in atlanta i would say um and and that team was and plus they had mooky blaylock they had a really good team over in Atlanta and it was kind of expected that the pistons would flame out and it really didn't matter at that time because when you once you got to the bowls you were going to lose because they were just they were the unbeatable team i i mean right that's the year that they know actually it's a year after

they won uh 70 games or 69 games and um and and and they were you know they were just the team of the 90s man there was just nothing you know there was never at any point in in in my late 90s life when i thought the pistons could win it all even though i said earlier when when jerry's tackos got off that plane that they that they were going yeah they didn't even make the playoffs say here um So, yeah, it's, they were going to lose. It was expected. Okay.

Yeah, but you weren't necessarily sure that they were going to lose before the Bulls, though. Right. Well, you know, I thought at least in 97, I thought there was a chance they could go deep and at least kind of make it to that Eastern Conference Finals area. But it just, you know, the Hawks were, it was their time, and they were hot. And there was just nothing the business could do. That's rough. Yeah, the, I mean, on a side note, the funny thing is,

the people remember the Bulls winning 72 games in 1996. They don't remember that they came very close to winning 70 again the next season. And where their momentum kindly got chopped down ironically was the Pistons beat the crap out of them on national TV with like a few games remaining. And that was, it's funny because that team was struggling so badly. Like I can't overstate how good they were to begin that season. I think they started the season 13 and 3 and then ran that to 20 and 4. Like they had a better start than any of the bad boy teams at the midway point. They had a better record.

Like they were that hot. And this, I think you can attribute probably two-thirds of it to them just turning on Doug Collins. Because chemistry was so important to that team success. And it just slowly eroded to the point where they went from the second best record in the East, then they were the third, then they were the fourth, and then in the last week of the season, they dropped from fourth to fifth, which I think cost them tremendously against Atlanta,

who was a team that they had crushed throughout that season, but it wasn't the same team anymore. And I remember to this day that game five, where they still could have won the series, despite everything falling down. The whole house was burning down. They were still competitive. because they still wanted that playoff win.

And as the story famously goes, they go into halftime, and I think it's tied or they're slightly ahead. And Doug Collins says something along the lines of, you know, guys if we can just keep this close in the last few minutes, I will find a way for us to win this, to which Otis Thor, you know, shouts back at him. What are you going to do? Get out there and put on a uniform.

Wow. And yeah, and this is it, yeah, their most crucial game of the season, but that's how fractured they were. And that's how much a disarray that was going on between they and Doug Collins. And I remember how the game ended where Steve Smith, I think they were down by a point with a minute left. And Steve Smith throws this absolute garbage. He hadn't hit a shot the entire second half. Throws this absolute garbage from the corner to beat the shot clock that switches through.

And I can remember, you know, 15-year-old me is just like, I was face palming with like two. hands and if I had a third hand I would be doing the same. Like it was just like, oh, this is, this is going to be how it ends. Like, you know, Steve Smith hitting a shoddy and no business hitting and doing a little shimmy. Like, but that was just, it seemed like it was faded. That season was faded to end that way and just disaster. But yeah, like, yeah, just to summarize what Peyton said, you know, we, even though the Pistons, I think clearly had the better team because Grant Hill was better than any two guys,

Atlanta had on their team. it felt like they were going to lose. You know, that 97 Bulls team that won 69 games, I was just going to talk a little bit about the Toronto Raptors meeting of that year. It was like the biggest upset that anybody had ever seen. They were like a year off of expansion. And Stoddemeier, Damon Stadermeyer, the rookie of the year that year, put up 31.

You remember that game, Keith? That was a big deal. They actually beat them twice, I think. They beat them The Raptors beat them in 96 and 97, I'm pretty sure. Wow. They beat them during their 72-1 season. I'm almost certain of it.

I could be wrong. I'll look it up, but I'm pretty sure they beat. I know they beat them in 97, like you said. But I think that was almost like a theme for them for the expansion Raptors. I'm pretty sure Isaiah threw in like some kind of an illegal bonus if they could beat Michael Jordan. Because they saved their absolute best for when the Bulls. came to Toronto. It was kind of funny to watch. So I want to ask this, what was it like to be

a piston, like the hardcore pistons fans during the era of Michael Jordan when it seems like basically, if he was playing, the Bulls were going to win a championship? And how does that figure in for you guys in terms of the discussion of who's the greatest of all time between Michael Jordan and LeBron James? Because you guys have been around for both of these. I, you know, it was, you would think that we would, I mean, I don't know, I can't speak for Keith, but you would think that like we would hate Michael Jordan, that we would hate every time that he would come to town. But like, it was Michael Jordan. It was, it was a show. I mean, it was like you had to be there. You knew the pistons were more than likely going to lose. And it didn't matter because we knew we were witnessing.

We knew that we were seeing the greatest player of all time. I mean, I had Michael Jordan posters on my wall. I'm supposed to hate the Bulls, but, uh, and everything that's in Chicago. But, you know, I don't know. I mean, it was just incredible to see him play. And, you know, especially, you know, the big rivalry that the bowls and the pistons had. And unfortunately, you know, I kind of, we, you know, I'm not old enough to remember that that big rivalry that was in the late 80s, early 90s. So by the time that, you know, I really got into basketball, we were kind of just watching Michael, you know, just dominate the pistons. But, you know, it was just something that you had to. see. And it's much like LeBron James, you know, you had to be there. It's, you had, it's something that you had to see. I, I, I still think that Michael Jordan is the greatest player of all time. And there is no LeBron James without Michael Jordan because Michael Jordan just opened so much doors for LeBron James. Not just in a, you know, on court fashion, but in terms of being a superstar. I mean, Michael Jordan was like the NBA's first mega star. Magic and Bird were, you know,

were certainly kind of, you know, the guys that put the league on the map in terms of getting it to be a sport that everybody watched because before Magic and Bird, like, the NBA were, you know, like pre-taped games that they would show later on at night. And, you know, like the games had already happened. And everybody, you know, knew, like, the final score. You know, somebody would, your friend would call you from Boston like, hey, the Celtics, they won like three hours ago. And, you know, nobody cared about the NBA.

But Jordan took it to this point where it was like, here's a guy that's like in McDonald's commercials. He's in movies. He's in rap lyrics. He's like, everybody knows who Michael Jordan is. And I don't think that LeBron James gets half of that if there is no Michael Jordan. And in terms of playing, you know, it's such a hard conversation to have because the errors are so different. And Michael played in a much more. or physical era, whereas LeBron, I think you could make an argument that he plays in a more

talented area. You know, there's a lot of guys that even, you know, the 11th man on teams can get hot these days. I just don't know if that's something that was really happening back in the 90s. You know, I'll let you speak out of Keith. No, we're along the lines of what he just said. Like, if someone's asked me who would win between, you know, Jordan's teams or LeBron's teams or I'll even throw Steph Curry's teams in there because that gets brought up.

Well, what set of rules are we playing by? Because, you know, in the 1990s, you didn't, you couldn't, you couldn't, you weren't allowed to hide anybody behind his own defense. Like, people try to make the argument that you could play zones back then. No, you could trap back then. Yes, that's a type of zone, but it has to be aggressively, two guys had to be going to the ball at all times. You couldn't just play a passive zone, you know, and wait for the offense to come to you like

teams can do today to cut off triple penetration. Like, Jordan was great at dominating his era, and LeBron was certainly mastered dominating his. Do I think that Jordan had more of an effect on a basketball game at the highest level than LeBron did? Yeah, but I, look, that's my opinion, and it may very well be colored by the fact that I grew up watching Michael Jordan. And I didn't like Michael Jordan at the time because I was a piston. fan, but it's kind of one of those things where you don't appreciate what you have until you

don't have it anymore. Like, I didn't really appreciate Jordan for what he could do on a court until he was gone, or at least until the rivalry was gone, and then I could try to look at it more objectively. Same thing with Kobe Bryant. I didn't really like him as a player until after he, again, maybe not even after he retired, but after he was no longer, you know, relevant at the top of the totem pole. and you know I kind of feel like I'll feel that way about LeBron like LeBron right now like everyone brings up like the you know the killer instinct like the fact that Jordan was 6 and 0

in the finals and that Jordan would you know he was obsessed with winning and losing and even though he had so many other commercial ventures like when he stepped on the court um you knew you were going to get you know Jordan's maximum effort and with LeBron it's like he it always seems like he has more than one thing going on, like he has other interests. Like, you could never not call him a winner. He obviously is. But you get the feeling like his attention is never 1,000% on, you know, winning this specific game, which is, you know, to someone that grew up in the 90s, you're kind of put

off by that. But at the same time, it's a new era. And I understand that, you know, how I remember the game isn't how it is now. and, you know, I need to accept that. And look, Jordan, someone that would have good knowledge of both, the situations that both guys were in said to me, Jordan is probably the best player still, but LeBron has had to put up with a lot more crap than Jordan ever did. Like, Jordan has more, you know, quote-unquote haters, you know, than, you know, Jordan was very much celebrated. outside of Detroit, maybe, you know, Cleveland.

Like, even as he was kicking your ass, like, you know, even the home fans were, you know, in awe of what they were watching. LeBron, you get some of that, but not nearly as much. You get as many people trying to tear LeBron down as you see trying to build them up, which is, I think, kind of a, you know, a side note that I won't get into. It's kind of like the downside of the social media system that we're in right now. It's just, you know, as one side of fans is obsessed, with, you know, creating a pedestal for LeBron, you have another side that's the polar opposite

that feels like they need to be just as loud in tearing LeBron down, which I don't think is necessarily fair. I kind of want to, and I don't want to, like, beat this topic to death or anything, but I kind of want to, like, just kind of delve into the idea of, like, I think it's two different things. I think for LeBron, the player empowerment era, I think it kind of hurts him because when when people like my age and geez i guess we're old heads now because we're talking about the the good old days or whatever but for for people like me you know and and i'm all for the player

empowerment error i mentioned it on our last episode like i'm cool with it players should be able to play where they want to play but at the same time you look at lebron and it's hard not to look at him like uh you know i don't remember jordan being you know trying to be the gm of the bulls you know like it like georg i don't remember a time and maybe it happened and i but i don't remember a time when jordan was like oh we got to get my guys here we got to get my friends here and and i don't remember a time when jordan's agency almost ruled over the nbaa as it does now like as as as lebron's you know agency does um i can't remember the the name of it at this at this moment but and then i think the other thing for lebron and and i i think i think you got to go back to like when he was in

high school. And everybody, you know, the, like big media, the national media where it's like really shoving LeBron down down your throat. And, and, you know, and obviously for good reason, like, he's an amazing basketball player. He's amazing high school basketball player. But, but so was Kobe Bryant, so was Kevin Garnett. But we weren't watching those games on ESPN. And we were being told that LeBron James is like, the next Michael Jordan. He's the next great thing. Like, you're being told over and over again. And I think that triggered a lot of people in the sense that like, I need to go against the grain here because it's almost as if, I think it's just a mental thing. It's like, it's, it's as if the, this new school is, is attacking my old school. And like, I don't know how to feel about it,

because now I'm being told that whatever I felt growing up about Michael Jordan being the greatest player of all time may not be true. And now I'm constantly being told that this person is surpassing what I always expected to be the greatest thing that would never be surpass. So I don't know. You know, it's hard to answer that question for anybody because I think it's all based on the era. You know, my era is always going to say Michael Jordan. Your era, Mike, is probably always going to say LeBron.

And the next era, when whoever that next guy is, you know, is always going to say somebody else. Maybe they'll say it's Luca. Maybe it'll say it's Cade. I don't know. We'll see. Hopefully. Hopefully, right?

That's what we're all open for. Yeah, but I like during what you said about Jordan, though, in terms of in terms that it was still exciting to see him, even as a Pistons fan, when Pistons fans really just supposed to hate the guy. I mean, I've seen LeBron play in person. And actually the first playoff game I ever went to, first Pistons playoff game I ever went to. Of course, there haven't been a ton of them since then.

But it was game five, I believe, at the Palace in 2006 against the Cavaliers and the Pistons lost. And then they won them. next two games. But yeah, I can only imagine what it must have been like to watch Michael Jordan in person. Yeah, it was one of those. It's amazing. Yeah. It was kind of like watching the Grim Reaper like walking. And I'm coming from the, no, and the thing is I'm coming from the perspective of the bad boys beat the crap out of Michael Jordan's teams. You know, they beat them three out of four. Yeah, they beat them three out of four. They were, they were just better. But, you know, watching Jordan walk

onto the floor, it was like the inevitable. Like, if he had it going that night, there was nothing he could really do to disrupt him, you know, other than, you know, send three guys out of him and hope he's in a passive, enough mood to move the ball that day. Like, it was

like Thanos. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was kind of like how Kobe Bryant was, but better. If you're Kobe fan, I'm sorry if you don't like hearing that, but Jordan was pretty much better than every, Jordan and Kobe were very similar to each other, but outside of maybe three-point shooting,

like range shooting, Jordan was a little bit better at all of it, which was fine. I mean, he was really, really close. Toby carved out a great legacy for himself, but that was...

Absolutely. Yeah, if Jordan wanted to take over a game, it was almost like there was nothing you could do about it. Like, you saw him, you know,

come out in that number 23 jersey and like, God, I hope he doesn't have it today because there's nothing we can do. really do about it if he does. Like it was that kind of, like he said, like, like Peyton said, it was inevitable. Like, you could not stop. Like, it was that kind of like fear, even as like a little kid, like a fan watching

from the stands. Like, it was fear looking at him because he was that much better than everybody else in the court. It reminded me of like this little, and here's a little personal story. When I was in high school, I was a wrestler, and I had to face the best guy in the state. his name was Lee v. Davis. And like everybody, yeah, everybody's like, dude, you're going to lose. And I'm like, yeah, I know I'm going to lose. And everybody showed up, though, to like watch it happen.

And that was like, that was what it felt like. When Michael Jordan was coming out, it was like watching Lee v. Davis come to the mat. It's like, I'm going to lose. But like, it's going to be a show. Everyone's going to be here to see it. And, you know, that's what it always makes me thinking. Yeah, the only player, that's funny story. Yeah.

the only player it makes me think of these days, because I don't think LeBron has ever quite been like that. Like you said, different areas, different ability in terms of how you can play on defense and so on and so forth. But the only player comes to mind like that for me today is Kevin Durant, where with every player, every other player in the NBA, you know, you do your best, you guard him, and you just hope that he misses.

With Durant, you do your best and you guard him, and you understand that sometimes it's just not going to matter at all and you just hope he's having a bad night. I mean, from a certain standpoint, because Jordan had a million ways that he could do that post-fade, he could slash to the rim all day and collect fouls or just dunk on you. With KD, it's pretty much, you know, is his jumper falling today or not? But you're absolutely right. Because of the unblockable nature of his shot, it is a similar feeling.

You're absolutely right. Where if he has it going, I think about that Milwaukee series that he had last year, yeah, where he almost beat the. the future, the eventual champs pretty much by himself. And it was, yeah, were they just every, they, they pretty much had to wait and hope that he ran out of gas. Yeah, definitely. Like I remember after that they beat the Clippers, the Warriors beat the Clippers.

I think this was 2019. Yeah, it was 2019, definitely. Like, it's Tobias Harris was no longer on the team. He'd been traded Philly. So they had Patrick Beverly and Lou Williams up at a press conference after the game. And somebody asked, which is, let's be honest. It's not a very smart question, which is, you know, basically did you guys do everything you could to stop Kevin Durant? And Patrick Beverly being who he is, of course, wasn't too kindly disposed toward that.

He's like, what do you think? What do you think? Like, it's Kevin Durant. You know, he's Kevin Durant. And Wu Williams speaks up. He's like, I promise you we tried. But there's just nothing you can do. All right.

So let's finish this off by playing a little game. It's called Weist's favorite Pistons memory and most favorite Pistons memory. So just for the sake of ending on a happier note, why don't we go with the Wiesd favor first? So, Peyton, what's yours? Oh, the 2005 Piston Spurs finals, Robert Ory hitting that three. And just there was just, I just remember coming into that game and Matchbox 20's song was like, the this is how a heart breaks was like the theme right i was like the theme of the series and like i just that every time i hear that song i i cringe because like it always reminds me of of that night

and robert hoary hitting that three and and the piston's losing that series and it just that that to me is despite going through years of uh you know futility in the 90s and and obviously we had a lot of problems since 2009 or 08. But, you know, we're in this moment where it's like the Pistons are one of the best teams in the league and it's awesome and we're back in the finals and maybe we could go and we could

pull it back to back again and how great would that be. And I always kind of look at that moment, you know, that series and losing that series is kind of the beginning of the end. and it really sort of went towards, you know, what kind of what we've gone through for the last, you know, 15 years or so until, until now. And yeah, that's, that's a hard one to think about. You got to answer the question. Do you blame sheet at all for any of that? Yeah, man, I don't know where he was on that, but you've got to get on Robert Orr.

I mean, how many times we've seen it with Houston, we saw it with L.A., like, this is what big shot Bob does. Like, I just, I don't know. I, I don't know. I, I don't know. don't want to talk about it. Back then, I didn't know too much about Robert Horry, but when I did know about him, yes, my like really backdated anger at Rashid Wallace grew quite a bit because it's like, this is one of the great, he didn't score many points.

I mean, you know, the guy average eight points per game in the playoffs, but he's one of the great clutch shooters of all the time in the postage. Right. He's an assassin. And when you have a guy like that, in a moment like that, that's built for Robert Ory, you, you got to get on that guy. And she'd, she'd, man, he just blew it. Yeah.

Yeah, Keith, what come to you? What's your darkest Pist in Memory? And I looked it up, by the way, seven rings for Robert Horry. Yeah, so, I mean, there are a lot of candidates that I've been going over for the last several minutes. I mean, there's the Steve Smith prayer that I just brought up earlier in 97 that caused them the 97 series. There's, you know, the walking off the court and knowing that it was that was over in 9. against the Bulls. Not that I disapproved to them walking off the court because that was entirely

defensible if you take it in context. But it was just like the end of an era type deal. And just the very last Pistons game that I attended, you know, before I moved out of Michigan was that 2008 game six against Boston where they had control. It looked like they were going to push it to a game seven. And then they kind of collapsed in the fourth. And that it had the exact same feeling for me. But I'm going to push all of those.

side and I am going to bring up game two of the 2000 first round series against the Miami Heat. And this is going to tail onto what I said before when I was talking about the teal era in how the 90s ended. Grant Hill was having the best season of his career. He really was. And originally it was, you know, he had sustained a back, I think a back injury and then it was his foot and then his foot they just thought it was a bone bruiser a sprained ankle and they they took MRIs of it frequently and but MRIs really only show a soft tissue they didn't ever took an x-ray so they

never and this is just mind-blowing that they didn't do this because it was actually his his his his foot his left foot was was slowly breaking down and they didn't know about it and they they sat him and they figure, okay, it's just a bone bruise or a sprained ankle or whatever. You know, he'll be fine for the playoffs. And then game one of the playoffs starts, and he's up against Jamal Ashburn. A good player, very good player. Grant owned Jamal Ashburn pretty much through the entirety of his Pistons career. And Jamal Mashburn was going right by him like he was a stop sign.

Like it was just just like he was just standing in quicksane. Like he was making Grant Hill look slow. And it was, it was like, you were wondering what's going on. Like, why is, why is Grant suddenly struggling, you know, with this slow Miami Heat team that should be a perfect matchup for him? And, you know, they, they get blown out. And then the second game, game two, this is the game that I'm talking about. And it gets worse. And Grant Hills, something happened.

I think he went for a rebound or he was trying to deflect. the pass where he landed on that foot and his his foot just gave out like it was like it popped like it was a complete like fracture of the foot and he and the the amazing what really blows my mind is he still try to keep playing and he was limping like not Isaiah Thomas in the finals limping where it was just like he was moving fast but he was dragging one ankle no no like he was like moving like he had a wooden leg like it was really really bad like he was just standing in one spot on offense and, you know, hoping to, you know, hoping the defense would just leave him, like, kind of bad.

And he was in so much pain you could see him on his face. And after a few minutes, you know, they finally decided to pull the plug. Because it was like watching a boxer, right, that had taken way too many hits. And you're just, you're waiting for the trainer to throw in the flag. Like, he's really, really hurt. This isn't going to get better. And that was one of the more saddest, that was probably the saddest I've ever felt as a Pistons fan. Not that I believed it was over. I didn't think that that incident would cause him to leave

the team necessarily, but it was just watching someone that, you know, I spent a lot of my four hundred years, you know, rooting for watching him grow, you know, and this was the stage that it looked like he had a chance to really advance his career and just to see it end that way. And that was the last time he put on a Pistons uniform, you know, was my last memory is of him, you know, needing help, limping to the bench. That must have hurt. Yeah, I still think about it. It's, and Grant has never watched that game to this day.

It's kind of, and I, I, I don't blame him. Because it's just, it's such a sad thing to watch. Yeah, that's rough, definitely. Yeah. All right. So on to most favorite, warmest, piss of memory. Yeah, we'll keep on you, uh, why don't you start us up with this? Okay.

So, uh, I, I'm going to cheat a little bit because I was still very, very young when this was going on, but it was just so, I remember the joy of it all. And I can look back on it and feel it again at any point in my life is game six of the 88 Eastern Conference Finals against the

Celtics. Yeah, to where... They finally won. After years, after being a dormat, really, for 30-some years for the league, like they were essentially the Clippers before the Clippers, like they were that bad. And for them to take this, you know,

seven, eight, nine year journey with Isaiah Thomas to get to this point and to take down, you know, the league's darling, the Boston Celtics, on their way to the finals. And if you look at the game, like, it was just, I've never seen so much joy on an NBA floor just for an entire building. Like, they all rushed the floor. You know, people are hoisting each other up on their shoulders. It was just just this huge mega celebration that I don't think we'll ever see again, because I don't think we'll ever see an NBA crowd allowed to rush the floor after a

playoff series ends. That would be something. Yeah. But even to this day, I can go back and watch that game. And it just brings a tremendous amount of joy to me, just the happiness. And you can, even if you're not looking at it from experience, you can look on the faces of each of the pistons, like the amount of relief and the joy, like they'd worked so hard for this moment and they're finally achieving it and it was just i don't know it it was almost like a high school

game as is as weird as that analogy is where everyone is just over it's just a overjoyed crowd and and then that was a huge it was like 40 it was like something double the size of lca just the crowd it's like 40 some thousand people they came to see that game they it's something that i will always remember like as a moment that's special to me as a pistons fan fantastic yeah I can't claim to remember that one. All right, Mike, once you close us out here with yours. All right,

I'm going to cheat a little bit. I'm going to do two. But the big one, the big one is, it's 2004, it's winning that championship because, you know,

after years, all I had known really, you know, when the Pistons won their first two championships, I was pretty young. I was like four or five years old. I don't really remember any of that happening. I remember,

you know, people in the house being happy and stuff. But like, that doesn't, you know, it doesn't really translate to what it's like to actually watch your team do it. And it felt like, you know, that 2004 team, you know, going back and, you know, they make the Eastern Conference Finals in 2003. They lose out. And you're thinking, you know, this is what this is what this team's going to be. Like at best, they're going to be a conference finals team. And you, you never, like, I don't remember at any point in 2004 thinking, okay, well, this is a team that could win the finals. Obviously, they went on that streak where they were holding teams to, you know, what was it, under 70 points.

And they were defensively a really great team. But you still, like, in the back of my mind, I'm still like, well, this is going to be a great team, but you're probably going to fizzle out in the playoffs. You know, and then you get to the playoffs and so many big things are happening. Chauncey makes that big shot against the Nets. Tashon with the, you know, maybe the greatest block of all times. and then they get to the finals and it's like, you know, oh my gosh, here we go, this Lakers team. It's Kobe Bryant.

It's Shaq. It's Carl Malone, Gary Payton. And it was like, you know, how are we going to beat this team? You know, this is like the monsters from Space Jam. It was like, this is the team, a dream team that somebody put together. And I remember, you know, there was this one guy. I can't remember who it was, but he said Lakers and four because the Pistons can't score. and it just felt like we weren't going to win that series.

And then to go out there and do a five-game sweep, and I just remember where I was when it happened. I was at a friend's house with a bunch of other people, and we're just going just crazy that night. And it's a good thing I wasn't 21, because I probably would have done some bad things that night. But it was just an amazing moment. And I'll always look back on it.

fondly and the other one is you know i'm 36 years old i've been watching the detroit pistons my entire life and the moment that the pistons won the draft lottery it was great it was i don't think that i mean that's like i was running around the house screaming like i mean like just pure joy i mean it's it's a it's a feeling i had never felt and thought i never would feel and i knew even at that moment is like we're going to get kate cunningham and like this guy's going to change the face of the pistons and while none of that's truly happened quite yet uh he dude has shown that he is he could you know he could very easily be a top five player in the league at some point in his life and to have a guy like that on our team on our team um it's just it's it's it's something i haven't felt since grant

hill and and um you know it just makes me really happy to think about that that moment winning that lottery, just never thought it would happen. That was a fantastic moment. Absolutely. I had very fond memories of that day. I was just like, you know what? I woke up that day. I was like, I am 100% ready and anticipating actually something going right for the Pistons today. Right. Yeah. I just didn't think it was going to happen. And I don't know, but it did. It was a great moment. Can I add one quick story that my favorite moment at a Pistons game? Yeah, for sure. Okay, so this one, and this one's personal to me.

That's why I bring it up. All right. So a buddy in mine, we were washing cars for this guy in his garage, like a professional garage. He asked us to do, to wash his cars for all the cars in the garage for a day. And, you know, in exchange, he said he had, you know, tickets to a Piston Suite that night that he'd take us along with him. And so we went and it was the, This was back in November, this is the early 95-90-60s in like one of the first month or two of Doug Collins' coaching career. And they were playing the Houston Rockets who were the defending champions at the time.

And, you know, I was, you know, 13, I think I was 13 years old. And, you know, the guy that brought us to the game was having a basketball conversation with me about history because, of course, what else would I talk about? And he was telling me that, you know, Elijah one was the greatest thing. things since sliced bread. He'd go down as the greatest center of all time. You know, he might go down as the greatest player of all time. He may have been from Houston. I don't remember.

But, you know, the pistons were winning at the time. So I said to him, I know, I started to shoot my mouth off. You know, so if he's so great, how come the rockets aren't winning, even winning this game? He says, okay, so you want to bet me $50 that the rockets are going to win this game? And I'm like, sure, why not? Because, you know, I'm 13. I have no concept of money. So, and I'm thinking the pistons are up comfortably at this point, and then the fourth quarter happens, and the rockets start coming back, and the rockets then take the lead.

And I'm now realizing that I do not have $50 in my pocket right now. So I'm kind of in a bind. And the rockets, I think, had a one-point lead. I think it may have been some Clyde Drexler free throws, I think, that pulled them ahead with. I want to say three or four seconds left, and the Pistons call it timeout. And all that's going through my mind is, what am I going to do? What am I? I'm 13 years old.

I do not have $50 in my pocket to give this guy. Right. And they come out of the timeout, and Terry Mills, God bless him, takes, I think, one dribble, a step back three with Elijah Juan in his jersey and swishes it at the bottom. buzzer and in the piston and that that I still remember it was a it was this amazing combination of both relief and excitement like I nearly I nearly jumped out of like the skybox that we were in because I was just I had no idea where I was I was just jumping up and down like and half of it was oh my god he hit this incredible shot over over this guy's favorite player you know to win the game

like I wanted to throw it in his face and in the other on the other hand it was It was like, I don't have to give this guy money that I don't actually have. It's not going to send the cookies after you. No, and that's what the guy sent to me. He's like, now, before I give you this 50, did you really have $50 in your pocket to give me? I'm like, we'll never know. Now, will we? Yeah, that's the right answer.

Definitely. That's a good story. Thanks for sharing. All right. Like I said, folks, this is Keith Trudeau and Mike Payton of Bad Boys and Beyond. You can follow them on Twitter at Bad Boys. Boys Beyond. You can listen to them on Spotify and Apple. And thanks, fellas, for joining the show today.

Hey, thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Yeah, so as always, if you enjoyed this episode and previous episodes, consider following this show on Twitter at To the BasketPod. Thank you for listening. Catch you in the next episode.