Ode to Defense: A Love Letter to the 2004 Detroit Pistons
This is a guest blog post by Peter Stafford, NBA Top Shot Collector and die hard Detroit Pistons fan.
Chauncey, Rip, Tayshaun, Sheed, and Big Ben.
The Goin’ to Work Pistons are the team that made me fall in love with basketball.
The 2004 NBA Champion Detroit Pistons may be one of the most unique teams in NBA history. A team not constructed out of a skilled supporting cast orbiting a white-hot supernova, but one that put their hard hats on and got to work.
Every night, they showed the world how five badasses working as a team and getting after it on the defensive end could wreak havoc on an NBA season.
Not to say that this team was without offensive talent; Chauncey Billups didn’t get the nickname “Mr. Big Shot” for no reason.
His playmaking and shooting prowess were the engine that drove the Pistons offense, and he always came through in the clutch. His half-court buzzer-beater in the Eastern Conference Semifinals forced OT in a Game 5, which the Pistons would eventually lose. However, his clutch shooting gave the Pistons the confidence to rally and win two in a row to finish off the Jason Kidd-led Nets in seven games.
Billups’ leadership and play earned him the Finals MVP, and his elite basketball mind and respect throughout the league has led to him being hired as the Head Coach of the Portland Trailblazers.
At the shooting guard, there was Rip Hamilton, the man who rocked the facemask better than anybody else ever will.
Once a young understudy of an elder Michael Jordan in D.C., he was traded away for Jerry Stackhouse when the Wizards were looking for more scoring punch to pair alongside MJ. In Detroit, he was given the chance to blossom, and became a mid-range sniper and the leading scorer for an NBA Champion.
At the small forward; Tayshaun Prince, a maestro on the defensive end.
A modern-day blueprint for any successful 3-and-D wing, with arms that seemed to stretch for miles on either side of him. He was the author of one of the most iconic moments from this Pistons playoff run, fittingly a defensive play. In the Conference Finals against the top seed Indiana Pacers, when Tayshaun did his rendition of The Block on Reggie Miller in the waning seconds of Game 2 to secure a Pistons victory.
Then, of course, Rasheed Wallace, the glue that held this team together and pushed them to be a championship-caliber team.
He was traded for after a midseason malaise and helped inject a level of intensity and personality into the team in a way that only he could. Along with his grit and confidence, he provided the necessary skills of a stretch four to pair alongside Ben Wallace, long before its standard use in today’s game.
Without Sheed, there is no question that this team would have failed to reach its full potential, making trading for him one of the most important mid-season moves in NBA history.
Finally, my personal favorite, “Big Ben” Wallace.
At only 6’9” he was an undersized center by NBA standards, yet he was one of the most feared defenders in the league when he was at his best. One of the hardest workers in NBA history, he went from being undrafted to becoming a four-time Defensive Player of the Year.
Big Ben was an absolute rebounding and rim-protecting force with an iconic afro that gave birth to the saying “Fear the ‘Fro.”
He was the Pistons lone All-Star representative that year, and the only one to make an All-NBA team (2nd). This highlighted his elite defensive prowess as he was the lowest scorer of the Pistons starting five, not even cracking double digits during the regular season with an average of 9.5 PPG.
These Pistons were not the prototypical build of a championship team, focusing on grind-it-out defense instead of the flashier offenses at the time.
Up until then, the Spurs and Lakers had been hoarding championships since 1999, riding the offensive firepower of their respective star duos of Robinson and Duncan or Shaq and Kobe. These Pistons didn’t have generational offensive talents that could always trade buckets in the games biggest moments, but what they did have was a team-wide commitment to be the hardest team to score on in NBA Playoff history.
The list of defensive records they set in the 2004 playoffs is extensive, including the best defensive rating (92.0) of any champion in the three-point era (1980-now).
It was a level of communication, energy, and effort on the defensive end that we have not seen since and may never see again.
As a young burgeoning basketball fan, it wasn’t the stats that attracted me to this team, but the sheer joy they took out of throttling a team on the defensive end.
Seeing Big Ben swat a shot into the tenth row, earning a roar from the raucous Palace crowd, was absolutely electric.
Even Sheed bellowing “BALL DON’T LIE!’’ after a missed free throw on a call he seemed to disagree with, gave me such immense joy.
As much as I love the offensive revolution that has taken place in the years since, I yearn to see another NBA team that had such a locked-in approach to defense. Yet I doubt that we will ever see anything close to an effort like the ’04 Pistons, who kept their playoff opponents under 80 points a record eleven times and joined the ’98 Bulls as the only teams to hold a playoff opponent to under 60 points in a game.
With Carmelo Anthony recently saying that the Pistons had promised to take him with the second pick in the famous 2003 Draft, many have pondered what kind of dynasty this team could have been if they had drafted Carmelo instead of the much-maligned Darko Milicic.
Imagining the kind of scoring injection Melo could have brought to this stalwart defensive squad is mouthwatering, and one of the more interesting hypotheticals of the mid-2000s.
Even Melo says that he still thinks about it “to this day,” and I can’t blame him as it could have completely changed the trajectory of his career.
Could Melo have helped shape this squad into a dynasty?
I know he certainly could have helped in the 2005 NBA Finals versus the Spurs, in which Robert Horry broke my heart by sinking a game-winning triple in overtime of Game 5, leading to the ’05 Spurs winning the title in seven games.
Nevertheless, even without one of the best young scoring talents of his generation, a rookie who averaged more than 3 points per game than the Pistons leading scorer Rip Hamilton that year, this defensive-minded team was able to take down a star-studded squad of prime Shaq, young Kobe, Karl Malone, Gary Payton, and Derek Fisher in only five games. Ironic that the newest version of the Bad Boys could pull off a gentleman’s sweep.
I believe this team holds a special place in NBA lore and should be better lauded for their achievements and the impact they left on the game. No doubt this could have been a potential dynasty if they had chosen Carmelo Anthony, but the team we got was just as memorable and iconic.
Thank you ’04 Pistons, you will forever be in my heart.
