Armchair Quarterback: I didn’t see that coming
So much for sure bets. My entire belief system as it pertains to professional basketball is now a travis-sham-mockery to steal a line from a popular commercial.
Face it. Unless you’ve got a crystal ball tucked away in your rec-room, you didn’t see the Pistons’ 4-1 humbling of the Lakers coming. I mean, come on, the Lakers beat the defending champion Spurs and then the upstart Timberwolves on their way to the dance. They were apparently for real. Meanwhile the only competition the Pistons had out east were the Pacers. And, we all know there hasn’t been a decent team out east since Jordan retired from the Bulls, right?
Unlike some of you who were open minded and said there was a “chance” the Pistons would win, I didn’t even go that far. Lucky I’m not a betting man or I’d be looking for a new house and car now.
Hey, this isn’t the NFL where teams are seemingly re-drawn every year, where a 5-11 team can rebound to win the Super Bowl the next year. This is the NBA with its joke of a salary cap, where it takes teams years to get to a championship level. This is a league where you have to have a Shaq, a Jordan, a Bird, or a Magic to win, right?
Well, try a ‘Sheed, a Rip, a Billups and a Big Ben. They beat a team with four future hall-of-famers using an ancient art, not seen since the Pre-Bird era in Boston, called teamwork. This changes everything. They’ve proven you don’t have to have a legend to win. You can actually win as a team by spreading the ball around and playing blue collar defense.
Think about it. Every championship team in the modern era has had superstars. Let’s see, we have Shaq and Kobe, Jordan and Pippen, the Admiral and Duncan, Magic and Kareem, and, even the Bad Boys of Detroit had Isaiah Thomas, who according to Isaiah, is on the same level as Magic and Bird. Sure, they each had their supporting cast, but for the most part, the superstars were the teams.
This year’s version of the Pistons had nobody who could even pretend to be a star. Sheed was practically run out of Portland because of his attitude. Rip Hamilton was jettisoned by Jordan and the Wizards and set himself apart in this series, just as did Tony Parker of the Spurs last year, as one of the premiere players in the league. Series MVP Chauncey Billups and big man Ben Wallace couldn’t stay in a town long enough to even learn how to get to the grocery store because they were traded so much.
Make no mistake, the statement the Pistons made will change the game for the better. Teams will now have to adjust their thinking because the Pistons proved having several scoring threats and a solid defense beats having just two superstar scoring threats and little defense. And, just as was the case during the Lakers’ recent glory years, there were just two players, those being Shaq and Kobe. The additions of Karl Malone and Gary Payton only hurt the Lakers in the end, with Malone hobbled and ineffective throughout the series and Payton without any confidence. The Lakers would have been better to go with a supporting cast of Luke Walton, Derrick Fisher and Rick Foxx. The question now is do the Lakers re-load with the same team and try to take on a surging western conference next year or do they start the re-building process, keeping Shaq as their center-piece and sending Kobe packing to Phoenix or maybe even Memphis or a group of prospects? Despite the outcome, myself, I still take my chances on Shaq and Kobe, I just surround them with a supporting cast which does not include the Glove and the Mail Man.