Detroit Pistons 'Bad Boys'

This is part of a series of articles about lessons from sport that I think my hometown Rugby League team Warrington Wolves need to learn if they are to become Champions for the first time since 1955.

Detroit Pistons

The Bad Boys look to end the wait to be Champions.

The Detroit Pistons basketball team came into existence in 1948. Forty years later they still hadn’t won an NBA Championship. The had a long-held reputation for being losers. In the early 1980s Jack McCloskey took over as General Manager and set about changing that reputation and bring the franchise its first title. Basketball in the 1980s was all about the rivalry between the LA Lakers and the Boston Celtics, a strong case can be made for that rivalry making the NBA what it is today. If the Pistons were to become champions they would more than likely have to beat both of those powerhouse franchises. The Celtics were steeped in history and the most prestigious franchise in the game, the Lakers had plenty of history of their own and could also use their Hollywood reputation to attract star players. Detroit was a city in decline, the motor industry and the music it was famous were no longer making it a prosperous place. McCloskey couldn’t count on the pulling power of the franchise or the City to attract enough star players to build a winning team that way.

Feeling that he couldn’t beat the Lakers or the Celtic at their own game McCloskey set about doing things differently. First he wanted to establish the style of play he wanted, he choose one from his past, what he would call ‘Coalminer style’. Essentially this meant, tough, no thrills basketball where no one would be more aggressive or enthusiastic than his team. He also wanted to breed a no superstar culture where everything was about the team. Crucial to implementing that point was that his best player, the focal point of the attack, Isiah Thomas completely bought into the team first approach. Growing up on the mean streets of Chicago, Thomas had developed an obsession with winning. He showed a complete disregard for his own reputation in that he always did what was best for the team. As with most American spots there is an obsession with statistics. Thomas knew that these statistics went a long way to determining a players worth and the size of their contract. He knew he could shoot more, score more and produce more assists and be able to demand a bigger wage, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was winning a championship, he knew he could do a lot of things for the team that would show up on the stats but would increase the team’s chance of winning, so he did that too.

Basketball is a 5-a-side game, played over four quartres of twelve minutes in the NBA. It places great demand on both anaerobic and aerobic fitness. With unlimited amount substitutions no player plays every minute, all of them taking some well earned rest at various stages. Traditionally teams would have a strong starting line up and they would begin the game and be there at the end when the game was decided. Whoever had the best starting line-up with the biggest stars tended to win most games. When the starters came off and the bench players came in there was a noticeable drop in standard of play. This was another aspect that Detroit wanted to do differently. They put together a squad with nine excellent players, rather than three supertars, two excellent players and some reserves. When the bench players came into the game they were either going up against tired superstars or weaker bench players, either way it almost always resulted in Detroit winning that section of the game. Often the time that the ‘Killer B Team’ were on court was what helped Detroit win a game that they otherwise would have lost.

In 1987 they won more than enough games for people to take them seriously, and to not be a laughing stock of a franchise anymore. They advanced to the Eastern Conference finals in the play-offs, one step from the championship game. Waiting for them were the Celtics, who ended Detroit’s dream and set up their latest clash with the Lakers for the championship. A year later the Pistons made it a step further and took the legendary Lakers all the way before losing the final game of the seven-match series in heart breaking fashion. Getting so close two years in a row lent credence to the thoughts of their fans who believed the franchise was cursed. The phrase associated with them from their fans was ‘they’ll break your heart.’

By this stage the Pistons had completely committed to their owner’s desire for a ‘coalminer’ style of play, so much so that they had been christened ‘The Bad Boys’. Even though they still hadn’t won the Championship they were rapidly becoming the most hated team in America. Their own fans bought into it, chanting bad boys and buying the T-shirts. Players like Laimbeer and Mahorn were the leader of the bad boy style, aggressive, intimidating and with several deliberate fouls in a game. They were the enforcers on the team and would seek out their equivalent in the opposition and set about asserting their dominance. Some teams would be genuinely intimidated. Others would be so determined to show they weren’t scared that they would focus on fights rather than basketball. Either way the bad boy image helped Detroit win plenty of games. In Rugby League terms they were ‘bringing back the biff.’

With the superstars of the Celtics and the Lakers getting old, Detroit were favourites for the title for the 1988-89 season in some people’s eyes. That added pressure and would make any heart breaks even more crushing. They got off to a good start but nothing outstanding, and found themselves a few wins behind a young Cleveland team that looked like they might be about to jump the queue in the race for the title. When the season is eighty-two games long getting off to a good start isn’t vital, most people still had Detroit down as favourite for the title along with the Lakers. McCloskey was still worried though, worried that there was something not quite right with his team – something that would stop them winning the Championship. One thing he wanted most of all from his team was chemistry, more so than the quality of individuals on the roster he wanted a team that was more than the sum of its parts.

With Detroit still in great position to make a good run at the Championship, McCloskey took a huge gamble. He traded away one of his top scorers Dantley for Aguirre – a player who already had a bad boy reputation as someone who was difficult to coach and bad for team morale. The basketball press slated him for the trade, thinking it made no sense. McCloskey felt he needed the gamble to become a championship winning team and he felt that Aguirre would have more of a positive impact on the chemistry than Dantley did. Part of his reasoning was that Aguirre had known Thomas when they were kids. The Pistons best player and Aguirre had played basketball together to keep them out of trouble and probably a gang and prison too. Rekindling this partnership was what McCloskey was hoping would be the final piece of the jigsaw.

Traditionally top teams jockey for position in the first half of the season, then crank up the number of wins in the second half as they prepare for the play-offs. After the trade that is exactly what Detroit did, producing one of the strongest second halves to a season in NBA history. Critics were forced to eat at least some of their words as Aguirre played his part in that run and more importantly the team were playing better with him in it. Their strong finish to the season took them past Cleveland and ahead of everyone else to clinch the number one seeding for the play-offs. In the play-offs the highest seeded team always had an extra home game in the series, and with basketball crowds so close to the action and capable of making incredible amounts of noise, home advantage often proved crucial.

Going into those play-offs Detroit had a settled starting line-up of Thomas, Mahorn, Laimbeer, Aguirre and Dumars. Plus the all-important ‘killer B team’ of Salley, Edwards, Johnson and Rodman – who would later go on to more fame and notoriety when he played with Michael Jordan for the Chicago Bulls. They were now definitely favourites to win the Eastern Conference, and probably to beat the Lakers in the Championship game. First up though they had to face another old foe. The Boston Celtics had struggled by their standards, with their superstar Larry Bird injured for much of the year, they had done just enough to get into the play-offs. Detroit showed no mercy for their wounded rivals, winning the series by three games to nil.

The big news in the first round of the play-offs was that Cleveland were beaten 3-2 by Chicago, with them leading the last game with only a second or so left before some guy called Michael Jordan nailed an outrageously good shot to win the game. He was already earning a reputation as the best player in the game, but Chicago were known as a one man team at that time and weren’t expected to go too deep into the play-offs.

Next up for Detroit was a series against Milwaukee Bucks, who were a team similar to them as they relied more on unity and depth than on any superstar. The Bucks were competitive but the Pistons had too much for them and ground out a 4-0 series win, all the series would be best of seven games from that round on. Chicago produced another upset by beating the New York Knicks, it was turning out that being a one man team wasn’t necessarily a bad thing when that one man was that good.

To get back to the Championship finals Detroit would have to prevent Chicago, and more specifically Jordan, from producing one more upset. It was a clash between a team based on no superstars against a team with only a superstar. In a five-side-sport one player really can have a massive effect on the game. Jordan was so good that defending him one on one was virtually impossible, so teams would double or even triple up on him which of course would leave other players open. Even average players could score more often than not if they were all alone. So it was a case of choose your poison, either risk Jordan destroying you all night or see other players run up the points against you. Detroit came up with a specific plan to deal with him, whether it succeeded would go a long way to deciding the outcome of the season.

The first game was in Detroit, Jordan was confident before it, feeling that it was the best chance to win the away game they needed to win the series. His confidence wasn’t misplaced, he took over for enough chunks of the game to get Chicago the win. All of a sudden it was Detroit that needed at least one victory away from home to win the series. The second game was in Detroit too and the Pistons managed to win that to level the series, before going to three games in Chicago. Thomas had taken over game two himself, then at the end of the game asked the coaches and staff to leave the changing rooms for a players only meeting. He then tore into his team saying that it wasn’t good for any team to have one player scoring as many points as he did that night, reminding them that their strength was their depth.

In game three Chicago continued to play the part of the annoying team that Detroit knew they were better than but that they couldn’t build up a big lead on. Keeping it close against Chicago was not a good idea. At anytime in a basketball match Jordan was exceptional, but it was in the last two minutes or so that he built his super-human reputation on. Cleveland were already watching the play-offs at home because of his incredibly ability to perform when it mattered most. Chicago kept game three against Detroit really close, trailing by just one point with ten seconds to go. In the huddle during the timeout, Doug Collins the Chicago coach was heard to say something that you perhaps would expect more from a guy watching the game in a bar rather than the coach, but it was probably the right thing to say: ‘Get the ball to Michael and everybody else get the fuck out of the way.’ The plan may have been more predictable than Colombo catching a murder but it still worked, as Jordan sank the game winning shot.

All of McCloskey’s philosophy was being tested. His team unit with all its chemistry and depth was being beaten by the ultimate one superstar team. The bad boy image looked like it was coming back to haunt them too as referees seemed to be getting harsh on the Pistons, calling some crucial fouls against them, especially at the end of the games. Two years ago, Thomas had made an incredibly rare bad pass that cost them the series against the Celtics. A year later Rodman had thrown up a shockingly bad shot that cost them the Championship series against the Lakers. The Pistons did seem to find a way to break their fans heart. Now it looked like they might be finding another way to blow a title chance.

Crucially Detroit’s brutal defense started to wear Jordan down and, they maintain, help him become tough enough to develop into the greatest of all time over the next few years. His supporting cast weren’t capable of taking up the slack for Chicago to stay in the series and Detroit won the next three games to take the series 4-2.

Meanwhile the Lakers had been serenely going through the play-offs in the Western conference without losing a single game. Their high scoring legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar was enjoying his last season, getting stronger as the year went on and looked set on providing the fairy tale finish to his epic career. Whilst Magic Johnson was still playing well enough to compete for the title of best player in the game with Jordan and Bird. Detroit had the advantage of four home games in the series, it was expected to be close enough for that to be significant.

The first two games were at Detroit and both were classics with the result in doubt until the last few moments. Detroit edged out the Lakers in both games, but more importantly the Lakers lost two players to injury, first Byron Scott and then crucially in the last couple of minutes of the second game to Magic Johnson. Two-nil down to Detroit with their best player injured, the series was all but over for Los Angeles. No one was celebrating yet in Detroit yet, they had seen too many heart breaks. This time though Detroit were just too good and too much stronger than their opponents to let the title slip away. They won the next two games for a resounding 4-0 series win. Finally they were Champions.

Despite his selfless style of play that did nothing for his statistics, Isiah Thomas was still inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame and voted as one of the fifty greatest players of all time. McCloskey had his critics but he had stuck to his philosophy and got the ultimate reward. As he said in his speech at the victory parade back in Detroit; “When I first came here, everyone said the Pistons were losers. The players were losers. The coaches were losers. The front office people were losers. I say this to you. Sometimes winners are losers who just won’t quit.”

The Pistons went on to win the title again the following season, before Jordan got enough help at Chicago for them to become the UnbeataBulls and win the next three. In between the dominance of the Lakers and the Celtics, then the Bulls, the Bad Boys had taken advantage of the window of opportunity to become the first Pistons to be champions. For more details and depth on that first title in 1989 you can read Cameron Stauth’s excellent book The Franchise.

Lesson learned: If Wire are to break the stranglehold that Saints, Wigan and Leeds have on Super league, like the Lakers and Celtics had on the NBA, Wire need to create and fully understand an identity of their own and not try to copy any other team. To become champions, they need every player to be pulling together to make the team as good as possible rather than focusing on making themselves look good and they need the whole squad to contribute, not just their best players. They need to build a squad capable of winning Super League, not just hoping that enough star players can win it for them.