"I wouldn't be like them for all the money in the world," another broadcaster laments. Celtics broadcaster Johnny Most complains in that wheezy whine of his about another "disgusting display" of basketball thuggery.
"I hated them to death," says ex-Chicago Bulls forward Scottie Pippen. Outside of the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan, that range of emotion ranged somewhere between hatred and loathing. Thursday on ESPN, says those Pistons elicited "a wide range of emotions" among fans. The production notes for ESPN Films' "Bad Boys," which is set to air at 7 p.m.
DETROIT BAD BOYS PRO
Theirs was an exquisite exploration of the nuanced possibility of the cheap shot.Īnd for it they earned as much scorn as any championship team in pro sports, scorn they encouraged, scorn they bathed in, scorn that gave them sustenance and strength. That's a breathtaking level of talent for one basketball team, one that made the NBA Finals in 1988 and won in '89 and '90.īut that quality tends to get lost because of the manner in which they conducted their bludgeoning business with elbows, hips, forearms and whatever other weapon can be found on a human body. Coach Chuck Daly, Hall of Famer.īecause the Detroit Pistons treated defense as a form of assault and battery, you might forget how supremely gifted and skilled those teams were in the mid- and late 1980s.īill Laimbeer.